From GENE LOGSDON
Upper Sandusky, Ohio

I have been cuddling up lately to the woodstove and giving thanks for my good fortune in being able to do so. When we could finally afford to buy our own land, my wife and I were determined to get a tract that had a woodlot on it and fortunately we were able to do that. My thinking, even in the early seventies was that I wanted my own source of fuel and in my mind, that meant some established woodland so I could commence staying warm immediately. But thinking about that while sitting by the fire, I was overcome by what I believe everyone refers to today as an epiphany. I realized that practical considerations about staying warm were probably not the real reason I wanted to live in the woods. It was suddenly apparent to me that I had spent almost all my life in or next to groves of trees. Even when I went to work in Philadelphia, we found, in the suburbs, a house that had a wild tree grove at the back end of it. And most mornings, by choice, I walked through woodland to get to the train that took me into the city. Even out my office window, there was Washington Square, a grove of trees for sure, smack dab in the middle of the city.

Before that we lived in an enchanting grove in a log cabin in the countryside near Indiana University. Before that, the seminary schools in Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota were all located in or next to woodland. And before that, I haunted the woodlots on and contiguous to our home farm. I wasn’t intentionally picking out these places. I was not captain of my ship but just drifting along trying to stay sane in what was for me a rather insane world. Unwittingly, I think, I gravitated toward woodland because it was always my sanctuary, my retreat from human turmoil. More Gene Logsdon…

From BONNIE AZAB POWELL
Grist

Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez turn coffee grounds into fun fungi kits

Psst! Wanna buy some mushrooms?: Nikhil Arora in the alley outside Back to the Roots’ warehouse. Photo: Bart NagelWhen two good-looking 23-year-olds give up careers in investment banking to grow mushrooms, oysters and shiitakes aren’t the first fungi one imagines.

But Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez are on a different trip. Their business, Back to the Roots, turns coffee grounds into food, first as mushrooms they sold wholesale and now as grow-your-own gourmet mushroom kits.

It all started with a “random fact” tossed out by their business ethics professor in February 2009, in the last semester of their senior year as UC Berkeley business majors — that gourmet mushrooms could be grown in coffee grounds. That seed of an idea landed in the brains independently of both Arora and Velez, who didn’t even know each other at the time.

Fun guy: Alex Velez Photo: Back to the Roots”We both understood the potential scope for it,” Arora says. “This country is addicted to drinking coffee day in and day out. We knew if we could turn this waste into something of value, it could make a huge impact.”

Take mycelium and add chutzpah

Separately, they contacted their professor, Alan Ross, to learn more; he put them in touch with each other and when they decided to team up, referred them to the famous mycologist Paul Stamets. With his advice, they ordered spores, scrounged used grounds, and inoculated them with mycelium, turning Velez’s room in his fraternity house into a mini-science lab.

Soon, after some trial and error, they had their first crop. But were they tasty? they wondered. They decided to drop by Chez Panisse, the epicenter of the locavore/Slow Food movements and perhaps the most famous restaurant on the West Coast, and just ask the chef. He sautéed some right then and there — because really, why wouldn’t you want to eat mushrooms in a plastic bucket brought in by some strange kids in Cal T-shirts? — and pronounced them not bad. Pretty good, even…

Full story here
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From GENE LOGSDON

Remember last week when I said that everywhere I turn these days I seem to run into manure?  It keeps on happening. The latest example comes from  www.minyanville.com, which is a serious financial and business website, no gaming around here with male bovine excretory droppings. A story by Justin Rohrlick on Dec. 29 reports that Kim Young-soo at Seoul’s Sogang University in South Korea has been interviewing recent defectors from North Korea. One of the questions he asks them is about the hottest new consumer products in their country. Among several commodities at the top of the North Korean want list is human excrement, available at “human manure shops.”  Now this is not April 1, even in Korea, and that is just too far out to be made up. Human manure shops (I can imagine what I call them) are in fact quite logical. Fertilizer is in short supply in North Korea where people are starving in alarming numbers, and survival means saving every scrap of crap possible to make food plants grow better and faster. Entrepreneurs (rhymes with manures) have turned the human excretory process into what amounts to cash and carry public toilets. The story is not clear as to  just how the transactions are made— too delicate for polite conversation, I presume— but I suppose that for a fee you can take home your latest contribution to the environment and for maybe a little bit more, take home the contributions of other people not into farming or gardening.

As I said in my book on this topic, this would all have made perfect sense to F.H. King, whose remarkable 1911 book, Farmers of Forty Centuries, goes into great detail about how Asians at that time produced more food per acre than we do now with all our modern and very expensive fertilizers except maybe on our best raised beds. Manure, animal and human, was their main fertilizer. Chinese farmers had to lock and guard their vats of manure to keep it from being stolen. The polite thing to do after dining at a friend’s house was to go to the bathroom before you left. Manure was money in the bank. Actually a lot better than money in the bank. If you composted all the paper money that the Bank of America generates in a year it would not make as much good compost as what comes from my chicken coop in that amount of time. More Gene Logsdon…

From MARK BITTMAN
NYT

Far be it from me to attack an icon (and anyway, I’ve eaten my share), but the common pancake is little more than a vehicle for maple syrup. Without that and careful browning in butter, it’s a total bore.

Well-made whole-grain pancakes are anything but.

I recognize that the term “whole grain” can be intimidating, conjuring up dense breads and bowls of gruel — not that there’s anything wrong with either of those. But handled correctly, whole grains can also be used to create super-light pastries, the fastest and easiest of which are pancakes.

In bread, it’s difficult to use whole grains exclusively because you usually want the glutens in white flour for stretchiness and toughness. But in pancakes, you’re looking for tenderness. And whole grains, as long as they’re ground, offer not only tenderness but also flavor.

I first learned that in a pancake article in these pages by Craig Claiborne, who made what was essentially polenta, then used it as a basis for cornmeal pancakes. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that you need not fully cook cornmeal before using it in pancakes. A quick steeping softens it enough. After that initial process, it doesn’t take much to turn the cornmeal into little cakes that are naturally sweet and slightly crunchy (I add pine nuts to enhance that). Make these, and you’ll understand why pancakes made from whole grains have a head start compared with those using white flour: they taste good from the start. Ever eat a white-flour pancake plain? You can do that with these…

Full article here
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From CULINATE

Posole (or pozole) is nothing more than lime-treated dried corn; when ground, it’s the basis for corn tortillas. In its whole-kernel form, it’s a deliciously chewy side dish or soup or chili ingredient. You may know it better by its English name, hominy.

Posole also refers to a popular stew that typically features whole-kernel hominy, chiles, and pork. At my local taqueria, however, the house posole is an intense chicken soup that’s perfect on a cold, rainy day. This is my quick version of that dish, made with leftover shredded chicken, canned hominy, and premade chicken stock.

Recipe here
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