Hard-to-kill Greens: Chickweed & Malabar Spinach

Yesterday I heard about 2 separate plants that are both edible and grow easily in my regional climate - Chickweed & Malabar Spinach. You don't need a green thumb to get these plants going or keep them producing. Having no doubt I could grow these weeds - I have extensive experience with successful weeds growing in my yard :) - I was curious about how to use these plants before trying out some as ground cover in an empty bed on the side of my house. So in a quick search, here's what I found that makes me want this stuff tonight:

Malabar Spinach - Here's a video (makes me H-U-N-G-R-Y) about malabar followed by a couple of recipes.

• Indonesian Style Malabar Spinach - Food.com
  
• Mok Toi & Mushroom Stir Fry - MeltingWok.com
  
• Salads from Rose Creek Farms
  
• Bachali Kura Pappu ~ Malabar Spinach Dal - Sailu's Kitchen
  
• Pui Charchari or Malabar Spinach from Rice-n-curry.com
  
• Tomato-Malabar Quiche - Charlotte Fresh

Chickweed - I was going to post a cool video of this stuff being used, but the really interesting videos were all hosted by folks who appeared to have accidentally used a different, less legal weed and I couldn't put them up here without laughing (nor could they stop laughing). Just do a google or youtube video search for chickweed recipes. But here is the PBS-style public service announcement version, which actually shows you what it looks like on the ground and explains how to use it.

• Chickweed Pate - Eatweeds UK
  
• Pakora & Hot Dressed Salad (+ a few more) - Carl Legge
  
• Chickweed Pesto - LearningHerbs.com
  
• Chickweed Salad - Food & Wine
  
• Chickweed Chimichurri & Tuna Poke - Fat of the Land

The last one makes my eat crazy stuff bell ring. I LOVE poke. When my little brother was stationed in Hawaii and I stayed with him during my two week Naval Reserve duty at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, we ate almost nothing else. Adding something local, prevalent, and free to something that is a lot more pricey in Mississippi (due to the large amount of saltwater fish) is a great idea to stretch it. Anyway, I'm stoked to try out the malabar this year.

OH NO! BVO?

I love Mountain Dew, well Diet Mountain Dew (DMD) to be more precise. I drink enough of it that I keep about 2 gallons (8 liters) in my pantry rotation to make sure that critical resource never runs dry and as an accumulator tank so I can catch sales on it. On top of that, I drink a knock off of DMD from Kroger - "Big K Diet Citrus Drop Soda" out of cans. I drink 1/day as part of my lunch at work. Here is an article comparing the Citrus Drop to Mountain Dew. The prices aren't up to date, but the relative comparison between the 2 options is still accurate, thus my choice. But I stick with the original for the 2 liters.

I heard a short discussion as part of The Survival Podcast feedback show yesterday regarding the use of a chemical called brominated vegetable oil in MD, DMD, and other citrus sodas. This chemical is pretty much like it sounds, vegetable oil bound with bromine/bromide salts. What is this chemical used as outside my DMD... a fire retardant. That is not enough in and of itself to make me shy away. After all, I regularly intake chemicals that are standard fire retardants/extinguishers (water, carbon dioxide). But a quick google search for "BVO" or "brominated vegetable oil" leads you to sites like:

• Scientific American
  
• Food Democracy
  
• Bon Appetit
  
• Environmental Health News
  
• RD411
  

Not a single one of these sources, or any other source I could find, has anything positive to say about BVO and everything I read says this stuff could be pretty nasty. In fact, it is banned for use in sodas in many countries (~100). Now I recognize that many of these sites are a bit on the alternative side of the media spectrum. But Scientific American is certainly mainstream scientific media. I have to do some digging into the actual impact and the data behind it and I think I may have to go to offshore data for impacts specifically in food/soda. But I sense that for my DMD habit there may be a quiet death knell looming in the distance.

Chef Georgia Pellegrini

I'm completely intrigued by Georgia Pellegrini. She's gone way beyond where I would expect most girls to go in terms of "back to nature", hunting, gathering, etc. But she seems to have proven that you can do that stuff and still stay what would be conventionally described as "girly". Not to mention having some ideas that the guys can learn from. Here's a link to Chef Pellegrini's recipes. You can navigate to the rest of her site from there. Some of the recipes are pretty adventurous - but I will try just about anything once and have found many interesting foods that way over the course of my life and travels. I certainly want to do a couple of the weirder ones on my own before I try to convince my kids that it's even in the realm of possibility to try.

The Girl Hunter - Facebook Fan Page

Finally, here's a link to her book. It looks pretty interesting, but I haven't read it yet and therefore can't endorse it. But I have added it to my wishlist.

Opportunity for Hypocricy: Winegate

On the following issue, I intend to be almost 100% hypocritical. Dr. Dipak Das, a UCONN researcher apparently falsified data that showed health benefits of red wine. In discussions on scientific endeavors, I insist that the data be legitimate and the conclusions made from them are based on reasonable assumptions. Aside from no obvious physical evidence confronting me each day, that is the primary reason that I don't buy into all of the global warming (aka global climate change, global weirding, other aliases that fit this year's data). The basic underlying data isn't even easily available and we depend on a couple of clearly motivated (regardless of HOW/WHY they are motivated) nerds that think they are too smart to need to explain themselves to the rest of the world. When their methods of hiding things and making adjustments to UNDERLYING DATA to make it "fit" were exposed, that did it for me. Those guys were doing something for which a 6th grade science teacher would flunk a kid.

Back to the point... Dr. Das MAY, ALLEGEDLY, POTENTIALLY have messed with the data. However, as a true believer and practician of the "Glass of Red Wine a Day" religion (when I can), I refuse to believe that one of he apostles hadn't been preaching the truth. Unfortunately, there appear to be sufficient sources to prove the legitimacy of this damaging peice of information that I will now resume ignoring. Wine-gate Information Sources:

• Winegate: Red wine health researcher falsified data - Watts Up With That
  
• University Suspects Fraud by a Researcher Who Studied Red Wine - New York Times
  
• Red-Wine Researcher Charged With 'Photoshop' Fraud - Medscape News Today
  
• Red wine researcher said to falsify data - CNN
  
• Red Wine’s Health Benefits May Have Resulted from Falsified Research Data - DietsInReview.com
  

Cheers!

Local Farmers & Produce

My search for locally grown food just became much easier. Since my wife & I returned from a trip to east Tennessee on a visit to some friends that live outside the rural town of Maryville, we have been looking for farms that raise meat and vegetables to reduce the amount of mass-produced food we eat. We are primarily looking for a source of poultry, eggs, and vegetables.

While searching for something to watch between football Saturday, I ran across Farmweek and didn't blow past it. They ran a piece about a web-based engine to help you find agriculture providers as well as the providers finding customers. It's called Market Maker. Pretty straight forward concept, but it is eeking its way into a market that is not well-known for being super techie - namely small ag. I'm glad to have found it. I looks like it takes proactive effort from the grower, which was the point Farmweek was trying to get across. Here's the list I got within 50 miles of my location:

• Barr Farms - Mendenhall, Mississippi
  
• Cedar Hill Gardens - Brandon, Mississippi
  
• Dancing Hooves Stable - Jackson, Mississippi
  
• Flying M Farm - Vaughan, Mississippi
  
• Le Petite Poulet Farm LLC - Jackson, Mississippi
  
• Livingston Springs Farm - Flora, Mississippi
  

I'm pretty sure Dancing Hooves is live horse sales even though they categorized themselves as meat & poultry. Who knows? Either way, not really my market. But I plan to visit the others over the course of the spring and summer to source some of my food. I'm curious to compare & contrast this clearly government funded effort with the more "organic" AgriTrue effort that Jack Spirko is starting up.

LP's First Bite

While the family was off work, in-laws in town from DC and Charlotte, and basically enjoying being together with no commitments, LP (my baby girl) passed a few pretty major milestones. Pictured above is her first bite of solid food. We had worked on rice "cereal" a bit. Sidenote: for those of you who don't have kids, before they get to the stuff you may think of as baby food they move from milk to a goopy concoction of ground rice and water that they call "cereal" but it's basically watery goop. LP took the peas and ate them like it was her job. I think it was one of the least messy feedings I've ever seen for a new food eater. She was all decked out with the massive cloth/plastic hybrid bib (think dressed out as a radiation worker) and I fully expected her to take a spoonful or two into her mouth and then redecorate the kitchen with it. But to our surprise and joy, she ate like a super big girl and managed to stay cleaner than our oldest son (7) does during a typical meal.

So CONGRATS LP!!!

Siberian Sea Berry - An Experiment

In the vein of gardening, preparedness, and potential small businesses I decided to perform an experiment with a plant species that for sure will handle the cold winters here in Mississippi, the Siberian Sea Berry, Hippophae rhamnoides. We decided to order them from One Green World and the customer service was great. Now they are in the ground and we will have to play wait and see for a while. They are said to be very healthy and I expect I can ferment any extra for use in the distillation column I'm building. -- did I mention I'm a real nerd?--

According to the Mississippi State University Extension Service, central Mississippi is in the range of acceptable chill hours for this species at 600-800, though on the lower side. I like to be different. If this plant can handle our heat (it's said to be VERY hardy) and produce fruit, we will be the southernmost grower that I can find. There are people out there growing these things in the northeast, like Tom, who is WAY into this species. But I haven't found any evidence of folks growing these as far south as we are. Anyone who has information on growing them or proving me wrong would be welcomed. I'd love to borrow some knowledge from a trail blazer.

Weight loss, my diet and lifestyle

In 2002 I was 250 pounds with a BMI of >25. I got that way by transitioning from a 210-pound, muscular college athlete in May 2000 (a cheerleader at Mississippi State) to a sedentary tub-o-lard following a knee injury in the Navy. I continued eating like I was burning 3000 calories a day but relied on the knee-injury crutch to explain why I wasn't exercising at any level. My biochemistry didn't particularly care about my excuse as it prepared for hibernation accordingly.

In October of 2001, I finally failed the "rope-and-choke" measurement the Navy performs if you're above the height/weight standards (see Navy PRT). The standards are generous to say the least. The secondary "rope-and-choke" measurement gives you a better result if you have a fat neck. So as I became tubby, I stayed in standards for a while because my neck was matching my gut growth and I put a lot of the weight on in my legs/chest. As part of my continued denial that I WAS THE PROBLEM, I argued that the test was stupid and didn't give a good measure of body fat like hydrostatic weighing or other more accurate measures. In the end, I realized that Uncle Sam's method was more favorable to the fatty (that was ME for those who think I'm insensitive), but that realization came later.

So after failing to live up to the lowest common denominator in the service, Uncle Sam strongly encouraged me to get within standards - I had a year to reestablish myself to the standard or it was sayonara jobby-job. My wife & I both took this opportunity to make some lifestyle changes and I ended up at 175 pounds after approximately 6 months of dedicated effort and I'm sitting at 180lbs 10 years later. Many people have two reactions when they hear this factoid about me:
1. I don't believe you were EVER 250lb - it's true, unfortunately
2. PLEASE tell me HOW you did it. - let's see how to put this gently... DIET & EXCERCISE

We started out with the little book and a slider that you got in that time frame from Weight Watchers. That was all it took. We created and printed out a week-long journal in Excel to count points and keep up with what we were eating. While my wife said I was crazy, I always rounded up if it was a "half-point" situation. The 2-3 points I counted but didn't eat each day helped me cut another couple hundred calories just by mentally tricking myself. I also exercised 3-4 days per week for no more than an hour. Once we reached my goal weight and my wife's corresponding 10-15 pounds (she was already only 120 pounds and "smoking hot", so didn't have as far to go), we started to gradually increase the points to level out and eventually stopped formally counting/journaling. This way of life had become just that... second nature. With all of that weight loss, I gained some additional benefits that are sometimes strange to think about:

- Blood pressure improved to below 120 / 75-80 (<100 with a bit of relaxed breathing)

- Clothes fit right off the rack and I often find my size on sale since everyone else is buying the bigger stuff

- No more ingrown hairs, boils, and associated skin complications on fat inner thighs that never saw any space between them. This was a little-known complication of me becoming a fat polar bear.

- Improved ability to, ummm, perform.

Since 2002, my wife & I have continuously searched for healthy ways to feed ourselves. With the addition of 2 kids (recently a 3rd), our habits devolved a bit with an increase in nights where we would clean up the mac & cheese or chicken nuggets by eating their leftovers. Over the last 7 years I ended up gaining 20 pounds of the 75 pounds lost. Once we had our daughter, we both centered ourselves and recommitted to live a healthy lifestyle. We don't do "diets" and have continually warned my seriously overweight dad & stepmom that fill in the blank fad diet won't work and isn't meant to be a long-term lifestyle. They have tried Atkins, Glycemic Index, et cetera ad infinitum. I started hearing about the "paleo diet" and I was immediately skeptical. However, a little more research and hearing other people who I am beginning to trust explain it uncovered the point that the paleo "diet" is diet in the traditional sense - the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group. At it's core: eat simple food that was common in a paleolithic diet (meat, vegetables, leafy greens, et al) and avoid food that our evolved biochemistry may not be properly designed to deal with (grains). Various people have their on take on this diet and one who continues to be very popular is Robb Wolf. At our house we have started using leafy greens to deliver meats conveniently (think lettuce wrap). I also increased my egg intake to replace cereal in the morning. I plan to continue with dairy, though I have significantly decreased my intake just because I don't eat cereal every morning anymore (my family has dropped our milk intake by 75%). We have made very few changes from our already veggie/meat intensive diet, but dropping out the 2 slices of bread, cereal, and most milk have made about 15 pounds disappear over about 9 weeks.

This post is getting a bit wordy and I feel like I might be rambling. So I'm throwing it out there. I can always post a follow up. I hope this helps someone.