Green Deane and Mom

My mother was a horrible cook.

I used to joke she thought I was a Greek god: Every meal was either a burnt offering or a sacrifice.

I learned to cook in self-defense. So I have only two or three favorite flavor memories from childhood: Wood-fired baked beans in the winter with homemade baked bread; my mother’s own concoction of Christmas pudding, her over-baked dry pumpkin pie, and something she had little to do with, hard cider. As I’ve mention in the write up about hard cider, what I remember most, besides the taste, was it was a simple, unadorned creation.  Don’t misunderstand me, I like pub cider but it loses something from the tree to the pub.

I will freely admit to being a critic of today’s sterile, packaged, commercialized society. No, I am not against capitalism or technology and I am green within reason, but when it comes to food and nutrition I think our ancestors got along better without nutritionists and doctors than we do with them. And the cider somewhat typifies that.

You can make basic cider two ways, put it in a warm container in the corner and wait a while, or sterilize it, pamper it, chemical it, boil it and pump it up with artificial carbonation. That strikes me as too elaborate. I am not a Luddite, if I were I would be using a quill on parchment not a blog. But less is more, simpler is usually better. When the fall apples used to come in, that is ripen, the natural course for them was to ferment. No I am not alluding to a grand scheme of things or the Doctrine of Signatures. But what I am saying is I think nature got along fairly well without human sophistication. Cider, like wine, can be an elaborate affair, but it is not necessary. My simple cider is unadorned. It’s not complex. It’s natural and good. I find that not only appealing but comforting and delicious.

On the shortest day of the year one should take a long look around. It’s the inventory time of year, a bit of soul searching. That requires a little looking back and some looking forward, which is why January is named after the Roman god Janus, the god of gates, which open both ways.

Why the beginning of the year, or the end of the year, is not on the shortest day of the year eludes me. It would make some tidy annual sense. For six months more daylight is added to each day then for six months substracted. We may celebrate the beginning of the year on January first, but nature does it Dec 21, 22 or 23. If I were dictator of the world I would have the year start on the shortest day, and I would totally eliminate Daylight Saving Time. Actually Pop Gregory XIII tried to do that but was several days off whch is why we are several days off.

As I look back it was quite a solar year. I manage to add more edible plants to my website and several videos. I now have a total of a full day’s worth of viewing, the largest resource of foraging videos on the internet. Indeed, this site and related videos are the most views site and videos on the internet about foraging well exceeding 1.5 million hits. That’s not a bad accomplishment. Many of my inovations have been copied which tells me I’m doing some things right. One huge change recently was creation of this new website.

Looking back there are also many things I would have done differently. Some of those early videos are amateur. Little mistakes do creep in. Too often I talked too fast, or could have done better camera work. And I’m still finding typos on the website. Some day there will be none.

As for the year ahead: The website will be expanded dramatically. Speaking engagements will go up and I’d like to get the DVDs made. And of course, I have a long list of plants to add to the site — hundreds in fact — and people are always asking for more videos. It keeps one busy.  But mostly I’d just like to enjoy the work, and I hope you do to. This past year has been quite challenge, but then, again the measure of a captain is stormy seas.

So on this shortest of days the long view is good. May yours be good, too.

I am often invited to see someone’s vegetable garden, and it’s usually growing well. Then I’m asked if I see any edible weeds, and usually there are some. I point them out. Then I hear something like, “oh, is that what it is?” There is professed interest but few of these gardeners ever eat any of these weeds. Baby sow thistle in a vinaigrette is not on their menu.

At first that would seem a strange, after all a vegetable garden is all about raising food, fresh and nutritious. But on reflection perhaps a gardener’s reluctance to eat weeds is understandable. Weeds don’t need gardeners whereas cultivated crops are almost entirely dependent upon gardeners. Weeds are independent adults who go their own way, crops need protection like children and die off without constant supervision and intervention. Weeds are kind of like relatives… you can’t choose them. Cultivated crops are like friends you want to keep.

That may be stretching psychology a little, but once something is labeled a weed, or more so a noxious weed that threatens agriculture, it ceases to be a positive plant. It becomes a drain on resources; space, water, sunshine, fertilizer and time. The sow thistle we welcomed a century ago into our garden is now chemically killed.  Or looked at it another way: The sow thistle wasn’t as clever as spinach. We can believe we choose which crops to cultivate, or perhaps the crops choose us. I like to make the analogy between plants and canines.

In the United States there are some 75 million dogs, and only about 15,000 wolves. The dogs are clearly giving people something people want and the wolves are not. We recognize wolves as the superior canine but it is dogs we choose to raise. One in three of us “own” at least one dog. Weeds are the superior plant, but we raise crops. As dogs have outwitted wolves, crops have outwitted weeds.

Cultivated crops seduced man with taste, texture and energy.  Weeds offered more nutrition. They lost. There is one more aspect, ease of cultivation. Like the dog who figured out — if I act friendly they’ll feed me — some crops figured out if they are easy to grow man will do all the work of taking care of them.

Weeds fight a constant battle with their pest, and as a consequence succeed or die off. They are strong. Crops are totally depend upon man to fight off the pests. They are weak. Like dogs and wolves there are 11 million acres of potatoes planted every year but not one acre of spurge nettle or even cattails, though the latter of which produces more starch per acre than potatoes.  The potato is clearly playing the game of popularity better than the spurge nettle or the cattail. But who or what is controlling whom?

The problem is man’s seduction by crops, also know as agriculture. Like run-off nutrients into a lake crops have produced a bloom in the human population. We are under cultivation by crops and now nearly 7 billion of us on a planet that would support without crops only one million. Paying attention to crops is a major portion of all human activity. It is the fabric of civilization itself. We like to think we are the crops’ masters but it just might be the other way around. We are doing what they want. But more importantly will or can crops protect us when a human pest comes around?

Animals and plants that gain and benefit from out favor cannot survive without us. If humanity dies off cultivated crops and dogs will disappear. But, there will still be weeds and wolves.

I am often asked about herbal medicine. My answer to the inquirer is often a question: Are you a cook or a baker? Their answer is instructive.

While one person can be a good cook and a good baker they usually are not. Usually one is a very good cook and a mediocre baker or a very good baker and a mediocre cook. Why? They are two different mind sets, as can be foraging for food and herbal medicine.

Cooking tends to be more flexible than baking. If a recipe calls for a cup of water many a cook will try a cup of wine, or milk, or beer. If it calls for veal emu might work. There can be experimentation and non-directed creativity.  Bakers are more like chemists. They follow recipes and often they must do so carefully or they end up with a mess. When a baking recipe calls for a certain size pan, a certain temperature of the sugar, and a specific amount of time in the oven, it means exactly that, no taking liberties, no changing ingredients, no changing the size of the pan, follow the recipe exactly.  Dionysus and Apollo, creativity, restraint. Foraging and herbalism are so cleaved. I happen to be a genius cook but an imbecile baker. My mother was horrible at both but is still kicking at 85, I think in part because every meal she made challenged her immune system to do or die.

There is another separation between forager and herbalist. I spend a lot of time and care to make sure the plant I have eaten does not remind me that I ate it. I want to enjoy it and move on. I do not want to be reminded in an hour or two or more than I consumed it. An herbalist has a very different point of view. They want the plant to do something after its use. In fact, often they are counting on it, and quickly, too. Where I just make sure I’ve got the right plant and preparation, they have preparation, doses, and effects to consider. For the herbalist it’s like baking: Know you materials, use them in a particular way, create an effect, and measure the effect.  It’s really the difference between the chemist and the artist.

So yes, I know many herbals plants, and make it a point to. I also report about them particularly when confirmed by modern research. But I am a forager, not a herbalist. And I suspect mushroom hunters have to be even more dedicated to detail than herbalists. Then again, if they are not, it is a self-correcting problem.