There’s more coming in the Autism, Vitamin D and Vitamin K2 MK-4 series, but I’ve been traveling and busy. Stay tuned for the rest, as well as some new recipes. In the meantime, here are some local foods-oriented news items:

This Saturday, September 26th, 2009 is the King County Farm Tour. It’s a free event, featuring dozens of farms in King County. I’ve gone on this and really enjoy it. There’s more information here, and a list of participating farms here. You can download the pdf of the full farm guide here -- it’s also in the September 16th issue of the Seattle Weekly.

Coming up on October 11th, 2009, there’s the 6th Annual Eat Local Now! dinner event at the West Seattle Masonic Hall. Eat Local Now! is a collaboration to promote the importance of and strengthen the local food systems and economies in Cascadia. More information is here.

At this event, the annual Jeff Fairhall Local Food Hero Award will be announced. This award is in memory of Jeff Fairhall, who was significantly active in the local foods movement in and around Seattle, and who passed away two years ago this month. Consider nominating one of the amazing folks out there -- farmers, food systems coordinators, organization staff, activists, restauranteurs etc -- who help make our region one of the best places to eat local in the country. More information and a nomination form are here.


Thanks to photofarmer for the wonderful flickr CC photo!

Part 2 in the series based on a paper I wrote this past spring.
Previously: Autism, Vitamin D and Vitamin K2 MK-4 Part I:
Does nutrition play a role in environmental health?

Autism is a broad term used to classify “autism spectrum disorders,” a category referring to a spectrum of neurodegenerative/neurodevelopmental disorders beginning in early childhood and marked by physiological and behavioral effects on brain function, social behavior, and communication.

While children and adults with autism have a wide range of functionality and unique ways to contribute to society, the disorders pose challenges for those experiencing autism. Some challenges are internal, such as impaired function, and some are external, such as social biases against those with developmental or behavioral differences. Both such challenges can be difficult for children and their families and caregivers. Diagnosis raises questions about who is getting autism, why it is occurring, and whether it may be treated at present and prevented in the future.

As discussed in part 1, I’m interested specifically in the potential relationship between certain fat-soluble vitamins and prevalence of autism spectrum disorders.

In recent decades, the scope of autism diagnosis has risen astronomically, with recorded cases among ages 6-22 increasing nine-fold in eleven years (1992 - 2003; www.fightingautism.org) and the majority of the increase beginning in the 1980s and 1990s (Figure 1).

While autism appears across all populations, prevalence is higher in boys than in girls, in people with darker skin than those with lighter skin, and, some data suggests, in some recent immigrant populations to northern regions.

As discussed in the last post, autism is often linked to methylmercury exposure. However, other factors may contribute to autism’s rapidly-increasing prevalence, perhaps exacerbating effects of methylmercury exposure. It seems, as with many areas of children’s environmental health, autism may not be caused by only one factor, but by a combination of elements. A simultaneous increase in detrimental variables and reduction in protective ones may cause a significant rise in incidence while confounding the process of isolating exposure factors and how they interact.

The timing of the recent autism increase (Figure 1) has aligned interestingly with the recent increase in childhood obesity, which started to rise significantly in the mid 1980s and has continued to climb dramatically (NHANES) (Figure 2) raising risks of chronic disease, metabolic syndrome, and earlier morbidity.

While, of course, correlation does not imply causation, it is worth examining whether some of the same factors that are correlated with the recent obesity epidemic may also be contributing to a rise in autism and related illnesses linked to variables of environmental health.

This brings us back to the decrease in certain protective fat-soluble vitamins, due to changes in sunlight exposure, metabolism, and in diet, and an increase in detrimental foods, such as fructose and omega-6 fatty acids. As I mentioned in the last post, vitamins D3 and K2 MK-4 (menaquinone-4) protect against effects of the depletion of glutathione, an important tripeptide in the brain. Glutathione protects the brain from effects of methylmercury associated with autism, and glutathione is found in diminished levels in children with autism. Fructose, omega-6 fatty acids and other ingredients which promote obesity interfere with glutathione development and affect levels of leptin in a way that limits metabolism of fat-soluble vitamins.

Other explanations for the increase in autism prevalence have been suggested. One hypothesis is that the rate of reporting has increased as awareness of the disease has risen. This may account for some of the change in incidence, but not all, due to the extent of change; overviews of data have established the increase exists independently of awareness and diagnostic biases. Another argument, as this paper pointed out and thoughtfully debunked, is that autism is strictly genetic. While environmental factors may change how genes are expressed, genes themselves have not spontaneously generated in the population in the last several decades and so this factor cannot serve as an explanation strictly on its own.

This is a relatively new topic, one which merits rigorous investigation due to the importance of addressing childhood autism and the critical role fat-soluble vitamins play in health. The possible relationship between vitamin D deficiency and autism has been addressed in a number of places, although it is still considered controversial. The only mention of a relationship to vitamin K I could find, other than what I’ve written, is here and not yet in any formal research.

The question of fat soluble vitamin deficiency is not yet part of public health and public policy intervention and prevention systems for autism. Recommended intakes of vitamin D and K do not take into account factors like autism prevention or potential interaction with detrimental environmental factors, although vitamin D deficiency, and a push for a higher recommended daily dose, is starting to appear in media and on the public’s radar, in connection to health concerns like cardiovascular disease. I hope public exploration of a connection to environmental health and neurodegenerative diseases will also increase.

The next post will be an exposure assessment, aka a discussion of what we’re being exposed to -- or not exposed to-- that may be contributing to the rise of autism prevalence.


Thanks to Norma Desmond for the flickr CC photo

A class I took this spring got me thinking about the multiple ways environmental health and nutrition interconnect and overlap. In some cases, nutrition issues are environmental health issues. In other cases, our nutrition may affect how we respond to contaminants in our environment.

Our food is a source of daily exposure to both protective and detrimental components, and we’re shifting more and more from protective to detrimental. We’ve moved meat production from grass-feeding to fattening in feedlots. We’ve replaced natural fats like butter, beef tallow or lard with highly processed vegetable oils, changing the fatty acid profile of our diet. We’ve shifted the source of our sweeteners, upped our corn and wheat intake, and invented new additives and preservatives. Through a shift to factory farming mixed with fast/packaged food, vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup, and other delicacies of the modern age, our menus have changed significantly.

As the professor of that course frequently pointed out, “environmental health” itself is an extremely broad term, going far beyond contamination and pollution of land, air and water. Food, particularly our exposure to more detrimental and fewer protective substances via food, is as much of an environmental health issue as, say the effects of methylmercury exposure via seafood and other sources. And, curiously, these two kinds of environmental health -- poor nutrition and effects of contaminant exposure -- may be interrelated.

This brings me to a less intuitive, but extremely compelling way nutrition may have an impact on environmental health. Research suggests that our diet may affect the way our bodies respond to contaminants like methylmercury. Poor nutrition may make us more vulnerable to toxic exposure while adequate nutrition may actually mediate some of the effects.

While exposure to toxic heavy metals and other contaminants is a problem whether we’re eating well or not, it’s worth noticing if a poor diet is compounding the problem. A double whammy of an increase in detrimental foods and a decrease in critical vitamin-rich foods may be increasing our vulnerability. As usual, I’m concerned with the animal-form fat-soluble vitamins, particularly vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 MK-4 (aka vitamin K2 menaquinone-4).

Some of this connection is still speculation, but intriguing speculation nonetheless. Here’s an example: our class looked at two classically cited studies of childhood effects of prenatal methylmercury exposure via seafood, one in the Seychelle Islands, and one from the Faroe Islands, two regions with incidents of significant methylmercury contamination. In the Faroe study, children exposed to methylmercury prenatally (measured through hair and umbilical cord levels) showed developmental effects such as cognitive and linguistic delays and social impairment. Follow-up studies showed that effects persisted over time.

In the Seychelle Islands, the results were different; effects from methylmercury exposure, which were lesser, seemed to decrease as children grew older. While some sources have blamed the whale meat more popular in Faroe, allegedly absolving the fish eaten in the Seychelle Islands, I’m intrigued by the fact that the Faroe Islands are far north, near Iceland, whereas the Seychelles are close to the equator, off the coast of Kenya. Vitamin D exposure might be a key difference, since people in northern latitudes can’t generate cutaneous vitamin D for a large part of the year. (If you feel like geeking out, I wrote a paper on my recommendations for seafood consumption in light of methylmercury exposure; you can download it here.)

What if vitamin D and other fat-soluble vitamins counteract some of the effects of methylmercury and other toxins? Evidence suggests they might.

The case about childhood autism is particularly compelling. Autism is often linked to methylmercury exposure -- the level of methylmercury correlates significantly with prevalence of autism. Methylmercury seems to deplete an important peptide called glutathione. Glutathione protects the developing brain from effects of methylmercury associated with autism. Glutathione is found in diminished levels in children with autism (full text) (more information here).

So, what’s the connection to vitamins? Vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 MK-4 counter the depletion of glutathione. Vitamin D3 plays a protective role in glutathione metabolism, specifically by increasing and protecting glutathione and blocking neurotoxic agents. Vitamin K2 plays a protective role in the developing brain from the effects of loss of glutathione, specifically preventing oxidative cell death as a result of glutathione depletion.

So, having adequate levels of both vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 MK-4 is doubly protective: vitamin D3 is proactive, increasing the brain’s resistance to glutathione depletion and aids in creating more glutathione, while vitamin K2 MK-4 is responsive, mediating the effects glutathione depletion would otherwise have on the brain and on child development.

For the record, I don’t tend to think there’s generally only one root of any problem, nutritional or otherwise. I’m not saying vitamin D3 and K2 MK-4 deficiencies are the sole cause of autism, just that there’s a compelling case that the vitamins might mediate the effects of methylmercury, and that deficiency in them might enhance the likelihood, and might do so significantly.

In the next few posts, we’ll explore this subject in much more detail, looking at how our changes in diet, including an increase in fast food and poor quality ingredients, may be relevant -- and not just because they’re lower in important vitamins. We’ll look at statistics about autism incidence, biomarkers and effects of exposure to methylmercury and adequate/inadequate diets, the connection to nutrition, fast foods, and obesity, what’s going on in the field of public health, and what needs to be studied further.


Thanks to smithereen11 for the flickr CC photo.

After Wednesday’s success cooking eggs in my friend Amanda’s car, a group of us decided yesterday to make a full brunch using only car dashboards for our cooking. The Seattle Times checked us out (click on picture 2 and scroll down in the article).

It was a delightful way to spend the afternoon. We basked on a blanket in the shade under a tree by the lake, swam in the perfect-temperature water, and checked on the food in the car. Our brunch consisted of: fried eggs, quesadillas, black beans, sour cream, gluten-free almond poppy seed cookies, warmed fruit with cream, strawberry lemonade, limeade, a casserole (pre-cooked and warmed with cheese melted in the car), and probably some other things I’m forgetting. I think there were about twelve or thirteen of us.

Here are a few more pictures:

It’s HOT. For those of you outside the Pacific Northwest, those of us here are bragging that yesterday, July 29th 2009, set new records for hottest temperature recorded ever -- not just on that date but ever -- in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver.

A lot of people are miserable. For one thing, most houses and buildings around here have no air conditioning. For another, people seem to get used to the weather wherever they are, so that 105°F feels hotter somewhere it doesn’t happen too often than it does in places where it’s the norm. Plus, Seattleites love to kvetch, and the hot weather is a perfect reason.

I’ve been enjoying it immensely. The upside of not finding summer work in a down economy is that I’ve been spending my days either working on my writing somewhere pleasant or enjoying the outdoors. These 100°ish days are perfect days for basking in the shade, running into cold Puget Sound and various warmer lakes, and sleeping outdoors.

What it’s not perfect weather for is cooking. I put the oven on the other day long enough to bake a small dish of potatoes, onion and cream, and the whole house felt like it could be used for baking. So, what to eat during hot weather?

Eating out is an option if you can afford it, and the Thai food my friends and I enjoyed in an air conditioned restaurant the other night was a welcome break. But here are several other ideas for eating without turning on your stove.

Click here if you’re viewing this in an RSS feed and want to be able to see the pictures.

Eight Heat Wave Food Ideas

Fennel Cherry Tomato Salad

The fresh taste of fennel and sweet acidity of tomatoes perfectly balance each other in this light-flavored, easy salad.

2 bulbs fresh fennel
1 pint very sweet cherry tomatoes
juice of 1 meyer lemon
olive oil (about 1/2 cup)
1-2 tablespoons dijon mustard
black pepper to taste

Slice fennel into thin strips about an inch or less long. Slice cherry tomatoes in half
In a bowl, beat together olive oil and mustard until mustard emulsifies. Add lemon juice and black pepper and stir.
Mix in fennel and tomatoes and serve.

Alternative: use apple cider vinegar instead of lemon juice. Rockridge Orchards makes a particularly nice local apple cider vinegar.


Eggs (or other foods) cooked in/on a car

Hot enough to fry an egg? I had to find out. We took a lightweight frying pan, a lid, two eggs, a spatula, and some butter down to Carkeek Park yesterday.

First, we put the pan on the hood, covered it, and left the eggs while we went to swim in the frigid waters of Puget Sound. But when we came back, the eggs were still uncooked. I had heard that mirrors and magnifying glasses can help but I left mine at home.

Amanda pointed out that her car gets really hot inside, so we stuck the pan on the dashboard, covered it, and went back to swim. When we returned, after probably half an hour, we had perfectly cooked eggs, somewhere halfway between baked and fried. Even the yolks were firm.

There’s apparently an entire book about cooking on a car, called Manifold Destiny: The One! the Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine! If anyone out there owns the book, I’d love to know what you think of it (and what you’ve cooked in/on your car!). I think it’s hilarious and wonderful that such a book exists.

Oh, and for the record, we tried putting the pan on hot asphalt. The butter melted, but I don’t think it would have worked for cooking. Maybe if we’d had mirrors and magnifying glasses, but it was much nicer to spend our time in the water and let the car do the work for us.


Solar Oven Cooking
I’m getting tempted by this weather to build a simple solar oven. The internet is full of plans for them. Check out this ultra-simple one made primarily from cardboard boxes and aluminum foil and this neat one made of cob. Cooking in a solar oven generally takes much longer than cooking in a regular oven but, of course, it uses no electricity and can be done outside your house without heating things up.


Cucumbers with Smoked Salmon and Ricotta
Simplicity is key in hot weather and this dish is very simple and cooling.

Cucumbers
Ricotta (or you can use goat cheese)
Smoked Salmon
Optional: fresh dill or fennel leaves, lemon juice, black pepper

Slice cucumbers. Add dabs of ricotta on each slice. Crumble smoked salmon on each slice. Add dill or fennel, lemon juice and/or black pepper if you so choose. Eat, preferably on a blanket in the shade.


Raspberry Lemonade
My roommate brought home from California a bag of gorgeous, deeply-flavored lemons

Three things I’ve learned about lemonade: 1. It doesn’t need a lot of sweetener to be delicious; it’s better when it tastes like lemons than sugar. 2. Adding another element to it, usually another fruit or an herb, makes it wonderful. 3. Adding a pinch of salt to it also improves the flavor and helps you get electrolytes.

Other variation favorites of mine are: blackberry lemonade, rosemary lemonade, basil lemonade, lemon balm lemonade, and cherry lemonade. But raspberry is my favorite this summer.

1 quart jar
Juice of 2 meyer lemons
Large handful of raspberries
Dollop of honey or maple syrup
Large pinch of salt
Water

Mix the above ingredients. Beat with a fork or immersion blender. Add ice if you like.


Berries, Peaches and Cream or Yogurt

Few things make me happier in the summer than a bowl of yogurt and raspberries. Unless, of course, it’s a bowl of raspberries, blueberries, peaches and yogurt. The same concept works beautifully with cream, too.

If you don’t know what to eat and you’re too hot and tired to think about it, a bowl of yogurt and berries is a pretty instant and cheap meal with good fats and sweet flavors.

Homemade Pickles (and other fermented foods)
Food ferments faster in summer, so it’s a good time to make those favorites like pickles and sauerkraut. Don’t forget to add a little more salt than usual in hot weather, and make sure you use filtered water, since chlorine can interfere with fermentation.


Summertime Tomato Salad
This is another old favorite. It’s my mother’s recipe. I remember eating this on a hot summer night in New York when we were in Central Park on the Great Lawn for a nighttime concert of the New York Philharmonic. Lying on a blanket in warm air with my favorite summertime salad; it’s a memory the flavor still brings back today.

I’ve previously posted the recipe; you can find it here.

The Seattle area is full of great local-foods-related resources, and two more just came to my attention.

The first is an entirely human/nature powered CSA (community supported agriculture) delivery program for farm-fresh food. Powered entirely by sailboat and bicycle, these folks bring fresh food from the Kitsap Peninsula to a few different drop-off places, including one in Ballard. More information is here and a Seattle Times article is here.

The other is City Fruit, a community group encouraging fruit tree owners and fruit picking enthusiasts to harvest extra fruit for local residents in need of fresh food and who have limited money to buy it. The group is also working on a fruit mapping project, which is still in its infancy; they need you to help map public fruit trees in the Seattle area.

Speaking of public fruit, I was traveling back from a swim in Lake Washington with friends yesterday when we decided to stop and pick some blackberries at my old favorite blackberry patch in an alley in Madison Valley. My friend noticed, however, that the leaves were looking suspiciously yellow. A keen observation; a few minutes later a guy who had noticed us from his backyard ran over to say that his neighbor, too lazy to trim the bushes and annoyed by their presence, had gone and sprayed all the blackberries with Roundup, a really toxic herbicide (produced by Monsanto).

It makes me feel a little better about having moved out of that block; the berry patch was one thing I was unhappy about leaving. But, although blackberries are invasive, Roundup is a poor solution. It hits other plants in the area and, needless to say, coats berries that unsuspecting fruit-lovers gather for their pies.

So choose your fallen fruit carefully! And, if you can help out the City Fruit folks linked above, please share what you find.


Farm background image from hockadilly - fruit/veggie mobile addition is a Photoshop mashup I made.

If you’re in Seattle, don’t miss tonight’s Strengthening Local Economies Everywhere Dinner & Fair, put on by Community Alliance for Global Justice! The event is a fundraiser for CAGJ.

It’s at St. Demetrios Church, 2100 Boyer Avenue E, in the Montlake neighborhood of Seattle. There’s a free fair from 3-6, dinner of delicious local foods from 6-9, and dancing to live music from Portage Bay Big Band from 9-11. Admission is $35, or $12 for students/low-income/seniors, and $65 if you want to sponsor a farmer or food worker as an honored guest. There is also a silent auction at the event.

The event highlights local food and local economy. Workshops include bee keeping, meal planning, and understanding coffee certification. Keynote speaker is Steve Williamson from United Food and Commercial Workers Local 21 on food workers’ rights in the global food economy.

I’ll be volunteering for part of the night. Come say hi and, if you’re a dancer, grab me for a dance! Hope to see you there.

I seem to be in a desserts-with-berries mood lately, arguably a side effect of berry season, or of being on vacation with friends who like food. I’m not going to complain.

My friends Ted and Matthew have been talking up the merits of strawberry shortcake with cream biscuits. I wondered how the recipe would be in a gluten-free rendition. Armed with a bag of gluten-free flour, Ted and I decided to test this. We were pretty impressed with the results, especially given that the batter tasted pretty terrible before it was baked. These came out golden and crumbly, with a not-sweet tang that balanced nicely the vanilla whipped cream and ripe berries.

While there are still ripe strawberries in the farmers’ markets, it’s the perfect time to make this treat. Here is Ted’s recipe.

Cream Biscuit Strawberry Shortcake (Gluten-Free) - Ted’s recipe

For the biscuits:
2 cups gluten free flour (I used the Bob’s Red Mill general baking flour)
2.5 tsp. baking powder
1/2 to 3/4 tsp. salt
1.5-2c heavy cream (depending on the flour, should drip off the spoon in big globs when consistency is right)

For the topping
About 1 cup cream
vanilla to taste
sweetener to taste (I like maple syrup)
2+ pints strawberries, sliced

Preheat oven to 450.

1. In a bowl, fluff together flour, baking powder and salt. Mix in cream until it’s the consistency of biscuit or cookie dough.

2. Drop spoonfuls on a buttered tray. Size varies depending what size you want; anywhere from walnut size to ladle size can work, although cooking time will vary. Bumpy is fine; it’s nice to have bits sticking up to get golden-brown.

3. Bake 10-12 minutes, then watch if not done. They should be golden all around and baked through when broken open to test.

4. While they’re baking, whip your cream and add vanilla and any sweetener.

Serve biscuits warm with whipped cream and strawberries.

It’s hard to resist simply eating all the berries you pick in the wild at the moment you pull them off the bush. Sometimes I don’t resist, and just revel in finger-staining, tongue-dying berry feasting, while at other times I delight in the pile accumulating in my carefully-balanced container. There’s a primal tug-of-war at work. On one side, my evolutionary gatherer instincts are telling me to collect and preserve berries for future needs (and in my own personal evolutionary template “future needs” typically means “pie tonight”). On the other side, my animalistic instincts want berries now.

The prospect of creating delicious baked goods or sauces for savory dinners often helps keep the desire to eat all the berries now at bay, especially if there’s a chance to share the tasty items with people I care about. I do less baking now than I used to, because I avoid gluten and limit my sugar intake. But I’ve experimented more and more lately with gluten-free baking, also limiting the amount of sweetener I use, and have come up with some delicious items.

This recipe is a pretty good example. It’s a simple vanilla cake with berries baked into it. If you only have a handful of berries, as I did, the berries are nice surprises in a simple cake. If you have several cups of berries, they form a delicious fruity layer within the cake.

I used saskatoon berries, but you can also make this recipe with huckleberries, blueberries, raspberries, salal, black raspberries or thimbleberries. You can combine berries as well. I don’t think it would taste quite as good baked with strawberries or blackberries (milder flavor, higher water content) but you can try. A few tiny wild strawberries would be nice mixed with other berries.

By the way, the saskatoon berries sank to the bottom when I made this. Other berries, like raspberries or thimbleberries, are less prone to sinking, or sinking fully.


Saskatoon Berry Vanilla Cake (Gluten-Free)

This makes one 8-inch square pan. Recipe can be doubled for a large baking pan.

1 1/3 cup gluten-free flour (I used the Bob’s Red Mill general baking flour)
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup milk
1 stick butter (1/2 cup)
1/3 cup sweetener (If you’re using sugar, you may want to add a little more milk if the batter is too thick. I combined sugar and honey, because the crystal structure of sugar is useful for cakes, but I don’t like to use a lot of it.)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
zest of 1 lemon or orange
2 eggs, separated
Berries - saskatoon, blueberry, raspberry, thimbleberry or black raspberry; minimum 1/2 cup, or up to 1.5 or 2 cups.
Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter an 8x8 baking pan, or a larger one if you’re doubling the recipe. Consider using parchment paper on the bottom, since fruit may sink and cause stickiness even if you’ve buttered.

Beat butter. When soft, add sweetener and continue to beat until creamed. If you’re combining sugar and honey or sugar and maple syrup, start with the sugar and let that become fully mixed with the butter before adding the other sweeteners.
Add vanilla, zest, and egg yolks (one at a time) while beating.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and stir by hand until just barely incorporated.
Add cream and milk and stir gently.
Beat egg whites until they form peaks. Gently fold the whites into the rest of the batter.
Pour batter into pan and sprinkle berries on top (they will sink a little bit or to the bottom). Sprinkle on some cinnamon.
Bake at 350 F for about 40 minutes or until golden


Here are a few more pictures...

It’s summertime, when a young food enthusiast’s fancy turns to.... berries. We’ve discussed berries before in detail, but each variety of berry deserves special attention, particularly ones you can find close to home.

I admit, I didn’t find these in the city. They were spotted among the native plantings in a complex where my friend was renting a condo in Montana. But saskatoon berries can be found in some urban parks, such as Discovery Park in Seattle.

Saskatoon berries look and taste like they might be a relative of blueberry, but they’re not. The leaves are similarly shaped to those of blueberry species, and the flavor of a ripe saskatoon berry is a little reminiscent of salal, which is in the same family (Ericacae) as blueberries. However, saskatoon berries, like raspberries and blackberries, are actually in the Rosacae, the rose family. They’re found all over the west, both in coastal and inland areas, and at lowland and mountain elevations. They’re also known as Juneberries because they ripen in June in warmer regions.

Saskatoon berries are versatile, delicious raw or cooked. Like blueberries, they are reported to work well in jams and pies, sauces, vinegars and wines. Of course, to make such items, you need to find a fairly significant haul of berries. (Edited to add: Thanks to reader Noah for finding this wonderful-looking tart recipe over at Chocolate & Zucchini!) If you don’t find so many, my next post contains a recipe that works well whether you just have a handful left after devouring them raw, or if you have several cups -- not quite enough for a pie, but enough that you want to make something.

The Portland farmers’ market is one of my favorites, and I try my best to make sure visits to Portland include a Saturday morning so I can stop in. I drove down this past weekend for the annual Waterfront Blues Festival and stopped in at the market.

There was much deliciousness to behold. As usual, the market had a large array of produce, dairy, meats, baked goods and ready-to-eat items. But what set me over the edge of my market-willpower threshold was the fact that a lot of produce in Oregon ripens earlier than it does in Washington, and there were somethings I’ve been missing since last summer. This is a benefit of traveling to markets; you get surprised by early treats or different treats than yo find at home. I found favorites like romano beans, artichokes, and pickling cucumbers that, as of last week, we hadn’t yet seen at Seattle markets. There are sour pickles in my future, as well as Provonçal-style romano beans with tomatoes.

My happiest find was the cheese labeled Buche in the picture above. From Juniper Grove Farm, it’s a soft-ripened goat cheese in a log shape with a straw or piece of wheat sticking through from end to end. I’ve been craving this cheese for something like two years, when someone I knew found it at Beecher’s in Seattle. Since then, Beecher’s stopped carrying it and the staff have generally looked at me like I’m nuts when I try to describe it.

I also found gluten-free bread that actually tastes like bread and has a good crust, from New Cascadia Traditional. I was impressed.

The market also overflowed with delicacies like blueberries, black raspberries, and smoked fish of various sorts. All of the above were delicious, although I was disappointed with the red raspberries compared to Washington ones. The raspberries I’ve found in Washington, particularly the high-season ones from the north (Ernie’s Berries in Lynden are my favorite) or Puyallup are incomparable; deeply flavorful and so soft they fall apart on the tongue.

This coming week I’ll be in Montana and, if hiking and market schedules align, will check out a few markets in the area and report back. Meanwhile, here are a few more pictures from the Portland market.

What a good idea!


This honey was dark and delicious:


“~YAK IS BACK!~” How could you resist? There was a lot of pasture-raised meat and poultry to be had. Aside from this vendor’s yak, elk, and chicken, I saw lots of beef and lamb.


First romano beans I’ve seen this season:


Beautiful baby squash with blossoms, ten cents a piece:


Rainbow of carrots:


Artichokes! And pretty flowers.


Mmm, berries...


Gluten-free sourdough bread!


And this bakery had one gluten-free cookie, a chocolate-almond macaroon.


People strolling by the prepared-food booths:


Fermented pickles!


Good price for nice-looking wild, local smoked salmon!


If you like East Coast style/appetizing smoked fish, these guys have an amazing sable:


Pastured lamb prices aren’t bad compared to Seattle’s:


Oregon hazelnuts:


The picture came out a bit dark, but I liked how she was walking around with lavender sticking out of her backpack and a tray of delicious berries in her hands:

One of the things that’s been keeping me busy lately, aside from finishing up a remarkably busy quarter of grad school (first year now done!), is the process of finding a new place to live and beginning the move.

After my roommate and I had planted an extensive garden this year, which involved building a large raised bed and buying lots of bulk soil, seeds, and vegetable starts, our landlord announced that he was moving back to Seattle and... into our house. It turned out he’d known for a while, even, but hadn’t bothered to tell us, so he could get extra rent money. Argh.

After much exhaustive and exhausting searching, we found a little brick house in Ballard, a lovely Seattle neighborhood with a fantastic farmers’ market and other fine features. The house has a large, well-lit yard.

So, a few days ago, we began moving the garden. We gently extracted the plants, potted them, hauled the soil, hauled the raised bed, and reassembled all of it. We’re still in the process of placing another bed, buying a little more soil, and moving some of the last plants.

Some of our friends thought we were, well, insane for attempting this. But we’d already spent a lot of time and money on the garden and we didn’t want to leave anything for a landlord about whom we weren’t feeling particularly fond. Besides, we like having a garden and wanted to keep it, even if it meant a logistical nightmare involving a hatchback full of garden soil and a sedan packed to the gills with wobbly plants, driving through Seattle.

The vegetables seem to be doing okay, at last check (we have a watering system on a timer during the move). I’m holding my breath a little bit, but the experiment may have worked. And yes, maybe we were insane, but how could we have done anything else?

Going to extremes for gardening isn’t anything new. There are people who build gardens on rooftops and balconies, in abandoned plots and traffic circles. We have a yen to make things grow, to work with our hands, to connect with soil and plants and life and food, and we make do with what we have.

What’s the most extreme thing you’ve done for the sake of gardening? And, in our shoes, would you have done the same thing?

My roommate Liz and I took a break two weekends ago to go hunt for morels. I’d never successfully found one, although I’d gone morel hunting with someone who found three little dried up ones.

Liz and I lucked out. We hit I-90 out of Seattle, spontaneously pulled off at an exit for a state park, and picked a camp site in the campground at random. While no other camp site there had morels, this one yielded about a pound and a half or two pounds of fresh, large, perfect ones.

Morels are my favorite wild mushroom. The flavor is somehow both complex and subtle, meaty and earthy. It’s not exactly like truffles, but it’s not exactly unlike truffles either. That’s Perhaps because the cap has so much surface area in all those wrinkles, the flavor keeps coming through.

We brought them home and had a spontaneous feast: barbecued fish and chicken, salad, sautéed morels, and rhubarb crisp. Sautéed morels go wonderfully with springtime food: in salads, tossed with pasta, next to salmon, or just eaten, simply, on their own.

Sautéed morels with cream, spring onions, and thyme

Morels (however many you get get your hands on)
A handful of small spring onions, including green parts
Butter
White wine or sake
Fresh thyme
Cream to taste
Salt to taste
A few good friends

Brush morels clean or wipe with damp rag. Chop spring onions. Sautée in butter and add morels and a lot more butter. Cook, stirring occasionally and covering for a few moments if the morels are thick. Add white wine and let it simmer. Add salt to taste, cream, and thyme, and turn off heat. Serve.

Photos from our morel hunting (click here if you’re viewing it in an RSS feed):

I’ve been experimenting with sourdough starter. A few months ago (as I wrote about here and here) I looked at some research that suggests sourdough fermentation, coupled with enzyme activity, has the potential to break down gluten pretty significant. In controlled experiments, using specific, strong strains of lactobacillus and specific enzymes enabled scientists to reduce gluten from 100% wheat bread to a level where even someone with celiac disease could handle it (12 ppm).

I don’t have celiac disease, but I seem to be somewhat gluten intolerant. I also subscribe to the idea that unfermented wheat, coupled with other staples of the modern diet (sugar, high omega-6 vegetable oil, corn syrup) is detrimental for most people, gluten intolerant or otherwise.

Sourdough is also delicious. Fermentation gives foods a complex, tangy, interesting flavor.

There are all sorts of ways to use sourdough starter beyond baking sourdough bread. Pancakes, waffles, pizzas, pie dough... anywhere you might ordinarily just use white flour.

This week’s experiment: waffles. I looked at the basic buttermilk waffle recipe in Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything for some general proportions (I wasn’t using buttermilk) and improvised from there. I used half sourdough starter and half rice flour. The rice flour gave the waffles a crispness. They were light, golden and airy. I’d like them to be a little tangier, so I may change the proportions next time. I’ll keep experimenting with this recipe and let you know if I land on anything new and exciting in this or other sourdough recipes.

Sourdough Waffles (first attempt)

1 cup rice flour (or other gluten free flour)
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 tsp salt
1 T honey
1/4 cup milk or buttermilk
1/4 cup sour cream or yogurt
2 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla extract
high oleic sunflower oil or other neutral, low-polyunsaturate oil (see cooking oil 101 for more info)

Lightly apply oil to waffle iron and heat it up
Mix rice flour, salt, and sourdough starter. Set aside.
Mix honey, milk or buttermilk, sour cream or yogurt, vanilla and egg yolks, reserving egg whites in another bowl.
Fold the wet ingredients into dough
Beat egg whites until they hold soft peaks.
Gently fold the egg whites in
Make waffles one at a time, taking care not to let the batter overflow. Keep waffles warm in the oven while you’re preparing them.

Passover starts tonight. It’s the holiday where Jews and their families and friends share food to celebrate being rescued from oppression. While that description pretty much fits the majority of Jewish holidays, Passover is special. We read the story of the Exodus from Egypt, eat foods representative of the Exodus, share an enormous dinner, and drink a little too much wine.

The ceremonial foods are deeply symbolic. There are fresh spring greens -- I use watercress -- to represent renewal, freedom, and the arrival of spring and the new chances it brings. There is salt water in which to dip those greens, representative of the tears our ancestors shed when they were slaves. There is the charoset, which I make as a mixture of grated apples, cinnamon, ground walnuts, wine, and golden raisins, allowed to marinate together overnight. It represents the morter we used in slavery while building the temples and cities of Egypt, but it is sweet to remind us that even in miserable times, there is sweetness. There is the afikomen, the hidden piece of matzah the children must look for, so they always remember to look for hidden and unresolved solutions. There are the scallions with which we beat each other senseless (it’s a Sephardic tradition! Fun!) There is an egg for renewal (we’re big on that), horseradish for bitterness (we’re into that too), wine drops to represent the Egyptians’ suffering during the Ten Plagues... Everything means something.

Celebrating Passover is about the imperative that we remember and never forget the slavery and subsequent freedom, and that we learn to apply it to modern contexts, to challenge oppression wherever we see it and to celebrate freedom.

But there’s another message to take away from the idea of foods as symbols, beyond the specific meaning of each food itself. The message is simply that food can be symbolic, that there is meaning in what you eat, and in how you choose it and when you eat it. A leaf of watercress holds a lesson. Eggs eaten in springtime are significant. An apple mixture is not always what it seems. Food should be eaten with mindfulness.

This message can be applied to the idea of sustainable eating. When we choose foods mindfully, it means considering what will be good for our bodies, for our friends and families, for the soil in the region we live, for the air. What will sustain us. What is the right thing to eat at this time of year, the butter or meat benefiting from a spring flush of grass, the new plants emerging, the root vegetables saved over the winter. When we eat with intention, we respect food and one another, and we shun the modern notion that food is something to eat without conscience, or consciousness, the fast food meal to grab at the drive-through window on our way somewhere else.

This isn’t to say that a Zen-style awareness of the food, or political awareness of how many miles it came from or whether it was raised sustainably, are the only important parts of food awareness. Food awareness is also about sharing with other people, commenting on food together, making each other well through delicious food and good company. A Passover seder would be useless with one person; with one there can be no shared awareness. It is only through discussion and acknowledgment of meaning, through communal eating, and through the subconscious, unspoken warmth of sharing food together do we complete the cycle and understand the full meaning of our food and its many layers of symbolism. Only then does a seder meal, or any meal, become participatory, fully engaged, and delicious.


Happy Passover to all who celebrate! I’m busy preparing a seder for 25, with plenty of local, healthy foods and a few that, I admit, fit neither category perfectly (almond macaroons with, gasp, sugar). More posts to come in the days ahead -- recipes, local foods, more science about fat soluble vitamins...

thanks to Paurian for the Flickr CC photo

NOTE: As it is now after April 1st, I can gently point out that this was actually an April Fool’s post (note the date, the link at the bottom, and some other aspects of silliness). Sorry to those in the comments section who didn’t realize...

News reports released today indicate a that we’re facing another significant setback in the uphill battle to ensure Americans, particularly children, are getting enough fat-soluble vitamins from natural animal fats.

The new challenge comes in the form of Bos anorexus, the so-called “low-fat cow.” Bred by scientists at Monsanto, this animal stores natural fat only in its nose, brain, and ears.

It eats a diet of specially-patented grains. However, according to Monsanto spokeswoman Dr. Sue T. Tallow, if a low-fat cow is fed a diet of corn or soybean oil, a high-linoleic fat may be skimmed from the animal’s milk and churned directly into margarine. Future studies will explore whether cows fed fermented foods will produce non-fat yogurt, or those fed marbles will produce marbled beef.

Because the animals are too skinny to breed, new calves will have to be bought each year from Monsanto, raising objections from many farmers.

However, low-fat diet enthusiasts have already hailed the technology. New York Times health reporter Tara Parker-Pope said, “This is a great and easy new way to get low-fat milk and lean meat into schools. Now, there’s no risk that kids will accidentally drink whole milk with their cookies. That’s great news, since we know whole milk makes them fat.”

Indeed, the cow is being explored as a messaging tool by some in the movement to combat obesity with low-fat foods. With a grant from the Department of Health, Monsanto is working with local public health departments around the country to hang posters of the skinny cows with the caption “Be Skinny -- Like Me!” in classrooms, in the hopes that this will convince children not to be obese. An unnamed official said that attempts to encourage Alice Waters to bring low-fat cows into school gardens had not yet been successful.

There are, of course, critics. One strong objection comes from the raw milk movement. Milk from low-fat cows actually comes out of the cow already pasteurized. Because the animals are so svelte, the cows must be kept extremely warm, lest they become hypothermic. Kept at an optimal body temperature of 145 degrees F (63 C), much higher than that of a regular cow, the cows’ bodies pasteurize the milk in vivo.

Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation decried the move. “This is unnatural. Not a single culture Dr. Price studied raised low-fat cows. Just look at that poor creature; would someone please give it something to eat?”

Organic farmers and their allies are also raising strong concerns. “This is just another attempt by Monsanto to control what we do. You can’t put those low-fat cows on pasture, so this would be the death of the grass-fed movement. What’s next, chickens that lay eggs without yolks?” Indeed, Monsanto officials confirmed that the yolk-free egg project is underway.

While it’s likely too late to stop the introduction of the low-fat cow into American farmland, the USDA agreed to a one-day-only comment period. If you’re concerned that this will simply add to the loss of important, natural fats and fat-soluble vitamins in the American diet, please contact the USDA, as well as your senators and representatives, today, April 1, 2009 only. Tell them you say NO to the idea of the low-fat cow.

For more information on this subject, please see this article.


Other headlines in the news today:

Researchers Tie Increase in Obesity Epidemic to Internet Cookies
Graphs show strong correlation between rise of Internet and prevalence of obesity

Farmed Salmon Being Added to Endangered Species List
Consumer distaste for farmed fish leads to declining populations of Salmo confinus.

And last year on this date:
Mystery of Colony Collapse Disorder Solved


Thanks to kandyjaxx for the flickr CC photo

Mâche, also known as corn salad or lamb’s lettuce, is a wild green native to Europe. You may have seen it; it’s grown increasingly popular among salad enthusiasts in the U.S. in the last few years. In the Seattle area, it’s been available at farmers’ markets from Willie Green’s Organic Farm all winter. Mâche is an ideal salad green. With mild, delicate flavor, small leaves, and a smooth texture, it’s a taste of spring even before spring weather arrives. It’s also full of vitamins and nutrients.

I’ll use mâche in anything that requires a delicate green, like dishes calling for spinach, but salad is where it truly shines. Mâche holds up equally well in a complex salad as a simple one. For a simple salad, just add your favorite mild homemade dressing and maybe crumble in a bit of fresh goat cheese. I can easily eat a large bowl of mâche with a simple dressing and not be tired of it.

This salad recipe (if you can really call a salad description a “recipe”) falls somewhere in between complex and simple. I wanted just a few complementary flavors that would let the fresh, local ingredients shine. I also wanted a variety of textures and some good proteins and fats. I combined the mâche with cold mutton, some walnuts from the Ballad farmers’ market I’ve been slowly savoring since late fall, some shaved parmesan, and a simple lemon-butter dressing. This salad was worth savoring slowly, but I admit “inhaled” might be a more fitting verb to describe how I ate it. It was satisfying.

I used cold, grass-fed mutton, leftover from a small Sea Breeze Farm cut I’d cooked and stretched for many, many meals (it was roasted in the oven with thyme, garlic, pepper, salt and olive oil). But you could use any good quality red meat (or leave it out, if you’re vegetarian). Leftover lamb or beef would be delicious. So would quick-sautéed beef stir-fry meat (Skagit River Ranch sells this cut) cut into small pieces and left rare on the inside -- add it to the salad hot or cold. A salad of mâche would also work well with bits of smoked salmon or gravlax. Experiment, and let us know how you like to use mâche best.


Mâche Salad with Mutton, Walnuts and Parmesan

Mâche
Leftover mutton or other meat (see note above)
Walnuts, raw or toasted
Parmesan, shaved (other mild/nutty or fresh/springy cheese would work nicely as well)
Homemade buttery lemon-herb dressing (#2 in this post)
Fresh black pepper

I’m not giving you measurements, because the idea of measuring anything with salad is ridiculous. Put in as much of each ingredient as you’d like. Start with the mâche. Fold in the dressing shortly before serving. With the dressing weighing the leaves down slightly, you’ll have a better idea of how much you really have in the bowl, and can adjust quantity accordingly. Add in small pieces of meat, walnuts, and shaved parmesan in the ratio you’d like best. Add a little fresh black pepper and serve.

There are some fantastic events happening this weekend! First, there’s Seattle’s Green Festival, an event full of workshops, information, innovation, and demonstrations, related too many aspects of sustainable community. I’m less interested in the “green products” side of it, and more interested in all the really interesting speakers and workshops on sustainability, including Alice Waters! I’ll be attending the event and will be volunteering for a shift at the table for CAGJ, the Community Alliance for Global Justice.

Also, Saturday night, Alice Waters will be at a reception before a showing of the film Food Fight, a really interesting sounding documentary about the history of food policy and agribusiness, and the movement against some of the changes that grew in the twentieth century. The film is FREE with an RSVP. Here’s the skinny:

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The Emerald City's Eco-Community Film Festival
Celebrating Local Organic!
FEATURING RECEPTION AND INTRODUCTION BY ALICE WATERS

Date: Saturday, March 28, 7:00PM
DOORS OPEN 6 PM FOR RECEPTION WITH ALICE WATERS AND FILMMAKERS 

Location: Town Hall Seattle (1119 Eighth Ave, Seattle), First Hill
Event is FREE with an RSVP by phone at 310.204.2140 or by email at EmeraldCityFilmFest@gmail.com

Food Fight is a fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century and how the California food movement rebelled against big agribusiness to launch the local, organic food movement.
The journey continues with present day AS WE MOVE TOWARDS EDIBLE EDUCATION FOR ALL!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Hope to see you out this weekend!


Thanks to Milliron Photography for the flickr CC photo.

It’s such comfort food. Rice and chicken allowed to cook together with broth and spices and flavors until everything seeps into everything else. Many cultures have a version of this, or even multiple versions. It’s hearty and filling, and it’s delicious hot or cold.

This is my mother’s version of Craig Claibourne’s take (New York Times Cookbook) on arroz con pollo. This recipe’s strongest flavors come from tomatoes, paprika (I used pimenton, smoked paprika), saffron, a lot of basil, and flavorful pasture-raised chicken.

Most of my childhood, my mother alternated this with her roast chicken recipe on Sundays. In the way families name things, it became Chicken Deborah’s Favorite Way, long after I’d decided I might be slightly more partial to the roast chicken. Although my attraction to this dish was really all about the rice -- flavored with basil, tomatoes and saffron, some of my favorite flavors to this day. I also liked swiping chopped tomatoes from the cutting board, where they’d absorbed the flavor of the raw garlic chopped just before. My mother would pretend not to notice.

Last night I had two family friends over for dinner and made a comfort food meal including this dish. For dessert, I took peach slices I’d frozen this summer and baked them with a simple wheat-free crumble topping (oats, cinnamon, local walnuts, maple syrup, butter). There was a lot of food. I still have plenty of leftovers for a few meals. Make this dish for a dinner party, or for when you want to have something to eat all week.

With a little advance planning, this dish was easy to make out of primarily local ingredients. In addition to those peaches, I still had frozen tomatoes from the summer stored away, as well as a frozen local chicken and some broth I’d made and saved. You can get frozen local peas at Madison Market. There isn’t local basil this time of year, sadly.


Esther’s Arroz con Pollo (adapted from New York Times Cookbook)

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 small to medium sized chicken cut up (or your favorite chicken parts)
3-6 peeled* ripe plum tomatoes or 2-3 regular tomatoes
1 medium onion
3-5 cloves garlic
basil (lots, usually ½ bunch)
Italian parsley (generous handful)
Olives, preferably Nicoise (optional)
Chicken broth or mushroom broth, about 1 quart
Paprika or pimentón
Black pepper
Salt
1-2 pinches of Saffron, crushed just before use
Fresh peas, shelled (Frozen are OK too)
1-3 cups of rice, depending on how much you’d like for leftovers. (I’ve used arborio and bombé so far. My mother uses white rice. I’d be interested to try it with brown, although I’m concerned it wouldn’t soak up the broth as nicely.)
1 skillet for sautéing ingredients
1 large Dutch oven or casserole with a lid

Soak your rice in advance, if you think of it, and rinse it well if you don’t.

Preheat oven to 375° F.

1.Rinse and pat dry chicken pieces. Sprinkle with paprika or pimentón, freshly ground black pepper, and a little salt (optional) on both sides.

2.Dice onion and (peeled) tomato. Chop garlic. Chop together basil and parsley and set aside; there is no such thing as too much basil. The ratio of basil leaves to parsley is about 3:1.

3.Add a thin coat of olive oil to the skillet and heat until an onion piece sizzles when used to test. Brown the chicken pieces on both sides. You can add them in the order legs, breasts, thighs, wings (the thickest first). Remove pieces when nicely browned and place in the Dutch oven.

4. Add olive oil to skillet. Sauté onion in the skillet used for the chicken over moderate heat until translucent. Add garlic, and continue cooking until onion and garlic start to brown.

5. Add tomatoes, and using a wooden spoon or spatula, scrape up any brown particles from the chicken sauté and mash the tomatoes to blend with onions/garlic. Let it cook and thicken a little, especially if you’re using more watery tomatoes rather than plum tomatoes. Add about 2/3 of the chopped basil and parsley; the remainder is reserved for sprinkling on the chicken and rice when serving.

6. Add rice to the mixture, stir until the rice is nicely coated with oil. If you are using olives put them in now.

7. Add approximately an equal volume of chicken broth as rice plus ½ cup of broth. The broth should be added slowly, starting with about ½ cup of broth to liquefy the ingredients. Dilute the saffron in some broth and pour into the skillet. Use additional broth to rinse the cup where the saffron was mixed and pour into the skillet; this way every bit of saffron is used. Bring to the boil, stirring the ingredients.

8. Pour the liquid with rice, alliums, tomatoes etc. over the chicken in the Dutch oven, cover and place in the 375° F preheated oven for 25-30 minutes depending on how large the chicken is and whether you will be using fresh or frozen peas.

9. Remove the casserole from the oven, stir in peas and turn over the chicken pieces. The rice on top tends to be drier than the rice further down. If all of the liquid is absorbed, add some additional broth (probably no more than ½ cup of broth as the chicken exudes some liquid as it cooks). If using frozen peas break them apart but do not defrost (they are already partially cooked).

10. Return the pot to the oven for another 5-10 minutes; total cooking time approximately 35 minutes. If there remains some liquid in the bottom of the pan, stir the rice around to help it absorb. You can put it back in the oven for another 2-3 minutes if there is too much liquid, but do not overcook it.

Serve with reserved leaves of basil and parsley, plus plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

The dish goes well with strong red wine and with simple salads of slightly bitter greens.


* TIP: Want an easy way to peel tomatoes? Boil a small pot of water. Dunk the tomato in for about 20 seconds, using a pair of tongs or slotted spoon. Take it out, and the peel will come right off. Works great for peaches too. But not, you know, for bananas or anything. Or vipers.

I used to think I was a fairly adventurous cook. I’m willing to try new things, especially if they’re nutritious and wholesome... you know, the kinds of things people used to eat. But I’ve found a recipe I really couldn’t do.

The above text is real. It’s from a cookbook published in London in 1732 called The Country Houſewife and LADY’S DIRECTOR in the Management of a HOUSE and the Delights and Profits of a FARM. I found it while writing a research paper on how language in cookbooks mirrors development of the English language. The book has a lot of simple, wholesome and basic recipes. And then there are a few like this that made me do a double-take.

Sure, it’s a wholesome recipe. I bet wild snake meat’s good for you, and the rest is just vegetables. If you live in, er, viper territory, you could make this a foraged and local meal. What’s not to like? (she asked, as she backed carefully out of the kitchen.)

But somehow --- and maybe this is just me --- the idea of eight live hissing vipers staring up at me from the cutting board just doesn’t appeal. Nor does the idea of skinning a snake alive; I actually like snakes. I also really don’t like giving them motivation to bite me, and if I were a viper in this situation, I’d feel pretty motivated. Plus, as Wikipedia helpfully tells us about vipers, “All have relatively long hinged fangs that permit deep penetration and injection of venom.”

I think I’ll pass.

So... what’s the oddest recipe you’ve ever seen? And would you make it at home?


And here, for the curious, is the full recipe. The letter ſ (not an f) is actually an early version of s. I love the line about “if they are pretty large.” I would have started that sentence with “Rethink your decision to make this soup...”


Viper-Soup, 1732
TAKE Vipers, alive, and skin them, and cut off their Heads ; then cut them in pieces, about two Inches in length, and boil them, with their Hearts, in about a Gallon of Water to eight Vipers, if they are pretty large. Put into the Liquor a little Pepper and Salt, and a Quart of White Wine to a Gallon of Liquor ; then put in ſome Spice, to your mind, and chop the following Herbs, and put into it: Take ſome Chervill, ſome white Beet-Cards or Leaves, ſome Hearts of Cabbage-Lettuce, a Shallot, ſome Spinach-Leaves, and ſome Succory. Boil theſe, and let them be tender ; then ſerve it up hot, with a French Roll in the middle, and garniſh with the raſpings of Bread ſifted, and ſlices of Lemon.

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