Armchair Environmentalist Blog » Eating well

Food for body and soul

Karen Christensen — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:51:54 +0000

I was doing a little weeding today and under the cauliflowers found a lot of reddish plants that I realized were young amaranth plants, small because they’re shaded by the cauli leaves. I count on the amaranth to reseed itself every year. It grows to six feet and has strange dangling furry red flowers and looks quite weird and wonderful with the sunflowers (which also seed themselves). But when I saw all those small plants massed in the shade it struck me how much like Swiss chard they look. I checked quickly in my gardening encyclopedia. No relationship to chard, but indeed amaranth greens are edible and nutritious, just like chard or spinach.

This is one example of the kind of plant we need on this crowded planet: producing greens, grain, and flowers that the Victorians called “Love Lies Bleeding.” Here’s an article about amaranth’s value in developing countries.

Buffalo’s coming!

Karen Christensen — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 22:00:36 +0000

It’s a rare thing to be able to recommend a book for its message, wit, and literary style. I was once a judge for the second U.K. Green Book Fortnight, a big book promotion sponsored by a major London paper (being selected for the first of these national promotions sent my very first book into orbit–two reprintings before the publication date), and most of the submissions were either not on subject or were terribly written–or both. But I’ve just read a fabulous book, Buffalo for the Broken Heart, that you should run (or cycle) out to buy immediately. It’s an engaging memoir of ranching in South Dakota, beautiful and poignant, and a manifesto for sustainable agriculture and real food.

The author, Dan O’Brien, ends the story with the launch of Wild Idea Buffalo, a company selling grass-fed free-range buffalo meat by mail order. Our first package arrives today, and we’ll be eating it with our first peas.