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.