Almonds on a baking sheet.

Almond Butter to Get You Through the Apocalypse

The lights are out. It’s dark in my apartment. But darkness is expected at two in the morning; it’s the silence that awakens me, the jarring absence of modern life’s electronic hum, that jolts me from my sleep. It’s eerie, but I pound my pillow a couple of beats and go back to sleep. Electricity goes out occasionally–a strong wind, a blown fuse. By the time my alarm chases me out of bed in the morning, and I stumble towards the kitchen, rubbing sleep from my eyes, the power is back, and the lightbulbs shine their yellow light at the flick of a switch.

But what if they didn’t? What if the lights stayed out, and the refrigerator didn’t cool, and double-clicking Chrome connected you to nothing (a tale of horror I assume will be added to the next Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark anthology)? That’s the premise of Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest. Eva and Nell are two sisters ensconced in their remote forest cabin as society crumbles. Eva, a pre-professional ballerina, misses the musical accompaniment to her dancing, but Nell is a modern girl: her longings are for internet and food. Continue reading

If You Give a Health Nut a Fruit Chip

 

“Industrial technologies, particularly synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, has fed the swelling human population during the last century. Can organic agriculture feed a world of nine billion people?” David Biello, “Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?”

David Biello’s “Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?” examines an issue that “has too often been an emotional debate”: organic vs. non-organic farming methods.

Biello begins by drawing attention to how much civilization truly relies on food: we need it to feed ourselves, to feed the animals we use to feed ourselves, to strengthen our clothing with fiber, and even to fuel our cars. Because we rely so heavily on food, agriculture has wiped out massive amounts of the biosphere: 70% of grasslands and 45% of temperate forests have been converted to farmland. Additionally, farming is not only the leading cause of deforestation in the tropics, but also “one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.” Continue reading

What’s in Charge of Your Gut?

USDA_Food_Pyramid           MyPlate

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture established the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion in 1994 to promote the nutrition and well-being of Americans.”

– The United States Department of Agriculture

Bad things go at the top, right? Candy, soda, cookies – that sort of thing. And at the bottom is, uh, wheat? Bread and stuff. Look, the last time I really saw the Food Pyramid was in 4th grade. Some group came to our school and talked about eating vegetables and that Mr. T pities the fool who does drugs. There were T-shirts and stickers, and some kid got in trouble for poking teachers with the metal pin buttons.

On second thought, I may be thinking of D.A.R.E. The point is, I didn’t pay much attention to the Food Pyramid, and I doubt anyone else did either. I had a general sense that I should eat more greens and less sweets, but my family wasn’t basing our eating habits on anything specific. The pyramid was just something there – everyone knew about it, of course, but that was it. Continue reading

Into the Orchard: Apple-Carrot Leather

“Tomorrow we will can plums, and the next day we’ll start on the peaches. We’ve only got eighty-three lids left, so all too soon this sweltering work will be over, and everything we can’t cram under a lid will be left to rot in the summer sun.”

–Jean Hegland, Into the Forest

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Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest, a book about survival and family and youth, is also at times a book about food. In the midst of an indefinitely long power outage and miles from even the nearest neighbor, sisters Nell and Eva must struggle to live. At first, they merely ration the food they have in the house, assuming the power will return. Their diet is limited: beans, rice, flour, eggs retrieved from the family chickens, and vegetables canned by their father. Protagonist Nell savors cups of tea made from a fraction of a teabag and craves hot dogs, waiting for the lifestyle she knows to return.

It doesn’t. Continue reading