Fava beans

Fava beans are fairly new for us; we've been growing them off and on, but never really processed many for cooking.  After trying once to peel the fussy little beans and getting a tiny bit of bean puree, it just seemed like too much work.  

But this year we grew Broad Windsor (from Territitorial seed), which produces really enormous beans, cutting down the work signficantly.  They say "quarter sized" and while I'm not sure if that's quite true, the beans are much thicker than a quarter.

The were very easy to grow; just stuck seeds in the ground in fall, and weeded a couple of times.  Only planted a small patch, less than 3' by 5'.

A hailstorm in May caused them to lie down, but didn't bother them particularly, though it did cause the patch up to take up quite a lot more
space. I had to tie them up so I could reach the back of the bed; the main path is overgrown with borage, which I'm leaving for the bees.

After the tomatoes and peppers are planted, I'm not as busy, so I've had time to pick favas.  So far we've got 15 pounds of pods but there's at least 10 pounds more left. 


To prepare fava beans, you shell them like peas. 


Then blanch briefly - I blanching in boiling water for 1 minute, then put in cold water to stop the cooking.  Then peel the skins from each and every bean - but after blanching, the skins just pop off.

My favas may be older and/or have thicker skins, but I've been piercing the skin with my thumbnail before squeezing out the bean. It's a lot of repetive work, but not unpleasant; it's rather like knitting.


The peeled beans are beautiful, bright green, and tender; they have a fresh flavor, a little pea-like but more savory than sweet. You can see in the picture the big container of discarded empty peels and the smaller container of vivid green favas, ready to cook.

By my calculations - which don't entirely agree with the internets - 10 pounds of fava bean pods would yield about 4 pounds of shelled beans and about 2.5 founds of peeled and ready to eat beans, maybe 7 cups.

I've been looking around the web for fava recipes, but it doesn't seem to be that challenging to cook with them.

There's the Alice Water's puree where you simmer the favas with garlic, rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper, then puree; it is delicious.  But a regular hummus is also delicious. 

We added them into a sauted with vegetables and served with pasta. 

I really think you could just put them in anything and they would be pretty and tasty and nutritious.  And from what I understand they freeze well.  We've had so much that I've been freezing the peeled beans.

It's so much fun to find a new vegetable that's tasty, easy to grow, and doesn't ripens when we have no time to care! Not that there isn't food out there - there are snow peas, a little broccoli, and lettuce, the cabbages are heading and the beets are nearly eating size.

Happy Earth Day!

We observe Earth Day by planting trees. This year: a standard apple and american persimmon, a gingko, elderberry, oregon grape, and willow down by the stream, and the Mirabelle plum in the flowering border. Also planted the mystery tree up by the street, where the fig didn't make it. The mystery tree came north with us but I have NO idea what it is... though the buds do look like those on the linden.

Today was very warm and sunny (and humid... after weeks of rain) so planting trees was mostly endurance. Especially the ones in the far pasture, since we have to ford the stream and cross soggy pasture with the wheelbarrows of dirt.

But when not planting trees in the hot sun, what a beautiful day! The bees are buzzing in the cherry tree,s maples, and kale (two of the three hives made it through the winter), birds are chirping and carrying on, everything is budding or blooming or growing.

The garden paths are built or cleared, and all are mulched. Planted potatoes, and mulched onions and other early plantings... the broccoli/cabbage was looking droopy but responded well to watering. Jay's working on a second door to the duck room, which will be used for the meat chickens that are now in the brooder (after the ducks move into the old coop). He's also working on fencing for the north-side pasture, but the grass is over knee-high so we'll have to get it mowed before sheep can deal with it. They will move out there sometime after the other two sheep give birth, which could be any day now.

Lost crops of the Incas

Consider the yacon.

I've been growing this for some years now.  It's easy to grow, fairly attractive plant, at the end of the season you get these large brown tubers to eat and small nobby red parts that easily keep inside overwinter to start next year's plants.

But we don't eat them.  They are kind of like a water-chestnut but more juicy, slightly sweet.  What to do with them?  Me, I put them in bags or buckets and they sit around until they go bad.

So again this year I'm following this system, and we got to the stage last weekend where one of the buckets of yacon that's been sitting in the garage since October got tossed into the compost pile Then yesterday, I ran through the pouring rain to harvest some kale to put in a salad, and I notice that the rain had washed clean the blackened, gnarly skins and they actually looked pretty good.  So I went to the not-yet-composted bag of yacon that was sitting in the den, and pulled one out and scrubbed and peeled it.  Wow... still good!  And the 5 months storage had made it much sweeter.  We sliced it and added it to the salad, where the texture was tender but juicy and a little crisp and the sweetness really came though.  It discolored a little even from kitchen to eating... but not badly enough to be a problem. This is my very first time eating yacon as part of a meal... or for that matter eating it while sitting down.

Yacon is one of the lost crops of the Incas, it's a sunflower relative that produced tubers.  In Ashland, I had tried - and failed both times - to grow Oca, a tuberous oxalis.  I have some tubers and will try again this year.  Since last year, I've had mashua growing, with mixed success; mashua is a tuber-forming type of nasturtium.  And I just purchased Ulluco, which is related to Malabar spinach; you can also eat the leaves so I feel happier about the possibilities, although Malabar spinach is, well, mucilaginous. 

These four tubers are among the Lost Crops of the Incas, a set of edible plants domesticated in the highlands of South America and described in a book of that name.  These plants would include the potato except that the potato is definitely not lost.  Besides many tubers, this includes Quinoa, Amaranth, Chilean Guava, Pepino and others.  The problem of growing many of them is that they are from high elevation tropics - the equator runs through Ecuador, after all - so while they are adapted to coolish temperatures, usually they don't take frost, and day length issues can cause problems.  For example, Oca just starts to form tubers when the days get shorter in fall, and may not form anything if the frosts come before they have time to do their thing.

The Ulluco came from Fry Road nursery in Albany, who produce a lot of greenhouse tropicals.  They have a number of other interesting tubers, like taro and canna root as well as coffee plants.  But given that it's taken me more than 5 years to go from growing to eating the yacon, and my list of as-yet-untasted lost crops; it's better not to try to push things too much....

The project that ate winter

I've been working on a Garden Resource Guide for East Linn County.  This is stuff I love - collecting information and spreading it around - but boy, I didn't realize how much time it would take.  But I'm very happy with the results.  I just hope that this information will be helpful for people!

We haven't started looking for a permanent online home for this - since it's done under TRFW, presumably their site, but since their website is kind of a blog I don't know how I'd integrate it.  But I put in on the farm site to stake a place.
http://www.fwfarm.com/trifolds/GRG-Linn-Spring2012.pdf

Meanwhile, while working with the rest of the TRFWEL group to get the information collecting, fact-checking and reviewing done, I've been using dropbox.  I don't get a kickback from them, but I really, really like it - such an easy way to share large files on the internet and between computers.

Now, back to the sadly-neglected spring garden work!  Over the last months or so we did get a bunch of trees, shrubs and groundcovers planted - probably two dozen; prepped and/or dug two garden beds, topped off with dirt and planted about 3/4 bed's worth (seeded roots and a few starts), and started 2 trays of cabbage family and lettuces.  But we are behind in garden prep and orchard attention, and the tomato and peppers will begin starting this week, eek!

Is it spring?

We've had some warmer weather the last couple of days, the frogs are making a lot of noise and the grass is starting to grow.  This afternoon I checked on the beehives, and all three hives had bees coming in and out, enjoying some sunshine.  Then this evening when I went out after dark to pick some kale for dinner.... the garden is full of... slugs!  And cutworms and even a few earwigs.  So I did the first slug pick of the year, into a jar to dispose of by duck in the morning.  Not many huge brown slugs, it was mostly the striped ones that don't get as big, but they were full size, many an inch and some two-inchers. The cutworms were fat and healthy looking.  In Portland the cutworms were a problem, but I saw more cutworms tonight than I've seen in the last decade.  But it really seems to early to have to deal with this, it's January.

For dinner: meatballs made of lamb heart, cooked with onions and garlic and kale and served over spaghetti squash.  That's the last of our "offal" from the sheep butchering, we ate liver and kidneys over the weekend, I think I've figured out how to cook these parts so they are pleasant in texture and flavor. The squashes are starting to go, at least the large ones have some spots, so we have to cut out bits before cooking.  The delicatas in the garage seem to keep better, maybe it's too cold in the "root cellar"  The onions are keeping well, but the garlic is getting dry, and the kale is at an awkward stage (as well having to inspect for slugs).  The onion and lettuce starts are spending their first night in the greenhouse tonight.  It does seem to be rolling along for spring.

What, exactly, do I do with a lot of turmeric? Or, I love the greenhouse

So our greenhouse is wonderful, but it's not heated.  The "tropicals" I've been growing are mostly happy, but not all of them.

Both basil are dead, as is the tomato.

There are 5 citrus which are all doing very well, insofar as I have been able to keep the scale and aphids under control.

Of the 10 peppers that started into fall, 6 are alive.  There were 5 jalapenos, of which only one died (two of these jalapenos overwintered last winter too), and at least one is making baby peppers.  The anaheims are both dead, but the Yankee Bell, while fruitless and ratty looking, is alive, and the Nardello keeps ripening but not making more peppers.  Since we have lots of hot sauce, I'm not sure what to do with all the jalapenos.

The coffee tree is very unhappy; I brought it into the house but I think it's too late to save it. Too bad, it was looking really good and probably 4 years old.  It did fine in the garage the last two winters.

The turmeric - well, I'm impressed.  The leaves all died down so I harvested the tubers, and there's almost two pounds of pretty good looking roots!  That's from a 2-3 gallon pot, after repotting 3 smaller plants, although it was 2 years in the pot since I thought it was all dead last winter. I don't know what to do with it all!  I can see that it should have been harvested earlier, there's some browning.   Tumeric is a beautiful plant, with big, tropical banana leaves.  I put the pot inside a larger pot with no holes, elevated on some rocks.  So it usually had water under the roots, which helped when the greenhouse gets so warm in the summer.

The aloe and scented geranium are doing fine with this degree of chill.  The vietnamese coriander is okay (better than the spearming and peppermint, actually).  The unknown variety of banana plant that Don gave me seems unphased by the cold, although it's not actually growing.

After a week of cold but sunny weather, today was a mix of snow with cold and some sun and some gray.  Winter in Oregon...  I've got most of my seeds orders done, started onion seeds already, and some arugula and lettuce... but it's time to work on the greenhouse floor, rather than play with seeds.  We worked on the duckhouse floor and foundation yesterday, so we've got the really heavy work done for that.

Diet and Forks over Knives

I was recently annoyed by a video called Forks over Knives. I've been reading off and on about nutrition over the past few years, and so I did come into the movie with some existing beliefs (I tried to keep an open mind, but I am not sure it was successful). But the movie didn't give much information, it was dramatic and entertaining with lots of graphics, but not much convincing argument. Over and over, it set up a comparison between "industrial food including animal products" and "natural foods with no animal products". The message seems to be that the problem is the animal products, not the industrial food!

I didn't realize it at the time, but Forks over Knives is by a Dr. Campbell, who did write a book with the same material called the China Study, and that book caused some uproar and discussion in the paleo-nutrition blogosphere that I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to at the time. Here's the article: China Study Response (pdf).

When I was looking for that article, I found a critique of the science in Forks over Knives, written by the same writer: forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique
It's great; it expands and goes into excruciating detail on many of the points that bothered me, so I don't have to even start trying to figure out the problems. Warning, though, it's very, very long and full of data.

Myself, I'm kind of with the Dr. Weston Pricers, and believe that animal meat and fat are healthy. Dr. Cate Shanahan wrote a book called "Deep Nutrition" that is by far my favorite; it's against sugar (including starches) and seed oils, and in favor of meat especially bone broth and organ meats. While I see her points (and some of the data from the Paleo people) about the problems with starches and especially wheat, I'm just not sure - I don't do well without some starches.

The bottom line for us, though, is that any sort of diet philosophy has to work with the foods we can grow for ourselves at different times of the year. Since we do grow so much, it's a reality test that makes more sense for us than for almost everyone else (at least in the industrial world) who just buys food at the store. I was reading another book that said to avoid root vegetables since they were too startchy. Well, that's what we have right now, and no one's going to take away my carrots!

And don't forget to get plenty of sleep and exercise regularly.

Sugar

So I watched this video, Forks over Knives. More on that later, but I did start wondering about sugar alternatives like honey, since I've never been entirely clear on the whole business. Sugar's not good for us, but is honey much better?

• glucose and fructose are the basic sugars.
• sucrose (table sugar) is disaccharide made up of 50% glucose and 50% fructose; it's broken down into glucose and fructose in the digestive tract.
• There are also maltose, lactose and other sugars that I'm not consdering here.

Fruit and vegetables contain both sucrose, and free glucose and fructose; the proportions vary.

• Apples and Pear have a much higher percent of fructose (total).
• Apricots, plums, and sweetcorn have a somewhat lower percent of fructose (total).

Considering sucrose separately:

• relively more sucrose in apricots, peaches, pineapple, beets, carrots and sweet potatoes
• relatively less sucrose in figs, grapes, pears, sweetcorn, sweet peppers, and sweet onion

Other sweeteners are made of of some combination of sucrose, fructose and glucose, plus water (for liquids) and traces of this and that:

• Honey - varies, for example: 38% fructose, 31% glucose, 7% maltose, 1% sucrose
• Maple syrup - mostly sucrose with variable amounts of fructose and glucose
• Agave - variable and not regulated, some sources give 92% fructose and 8% glucose; another gives 56% fructose and 20% glucose.   Agave nectar is hydrolized from agave juice by heating or using enzymes.
• Corn sugar/dextrose - entirely glucose.  Derived from corn (via a chemical process)
• HFCS - the one in soft drinks is 55% fructose and 42% glucose.  Derived from corn syrup via further chemical process.

Fructose is much sweeter than glucose (so less can be used) and has a lower glyemic index, but has equivalent impact on diabetes. Unlike glucose, fructose must be metabolized by the liver and excessive amounts may cause liver problems (such as fatty liver)

It's not clear why HFCS would be worse than sugar, but rats did gain more weight and get more unhealthy on HFCS than on plain sugar. See Princeton study on rats. They hypothesize that glucose and fructose bound together into sucrose metabolizes differently than as free glucose and fructose.

There's a number of studies that are particularly focused on HFCS, and of course the usual it's-all-just-sugar, but I don't find the results conclusive; everyone has an agenda. Here's one analysis and an article on liver issues.

Given my personal opinions about nutrition, and this is fairly well supported by all the information out there; the right answer is certainly "none of the above". Honey is not that different in proportion from HFCS but is the least processed, the most local, and has minerals, enzymes, and antioxidants.