Fun with White Roots!

I'm keen on root crops in fall and winter. Most root crops are meant to be cooked: taro, sweet potatoes, potatoes, yams and arrowhead all have anti-nutrients in them or enzymes and chemicals that make them toxic or pretty nasty to eat raw. I've known people who ate potatoes and yams raw, but they are both so full of starch as to be pretty slimy and vile.

I eat plenty of carrots and dark greens, so I walk around with orange-ish palms anyways, so I don't worry about how much nutrition to get in root crops. I want bulk, carbs, and that full feeling that you can't get from most veggies. I also have the taste buds of a child, so I'm not keen on strong-tasting food.

I'm enticing you with this picture of a mushroom dish on some celeriac that I colored with a dab of spirulina to show you that white roots can be fun, even for kids.




Queens of the roots are the umbel family. They've been domesticated for hundreds of years as to not look like these wild roots here. But if you are running around in the wilderness in winter and KNOW your umbels (remember hemlock is in this family) you can get a pretty good meal out of even roots like this. But umbels love the mud, the muddier, the better. I'm showing you these roots in a more natural state to show you that the grocery cleans them up (A LOT) before they put them on their neat shelves.

If you grow umbels, they want mud, well not all mud, but light, almost sandy soil that is constantly moist. Any drought, any check in the moisture and those lovely carrots will be BITTER. And umbels can get mighty bitter. They can also be pretty strong, so taste them before you go crazy with them. If you grow them, they want coddling, unlike some other roots that are more forgiving of bad climate.

Umbels with edible roots number in the hundreds. But here are the more common ones you can find in the grocery: carrots, celery, celery root (celeriac) parsley, parsley root, dill, caraway, cilantro (leaves) and coriander (seeds), anise, fennel, bulb fennel (finocchio), and parsnips.

If you have enough beta carotene and want to try a sweet variety of carrot, go with white. White carrots tend to be sweeter than orange and much sweeter than red or yellow carrots. They also seem more resistant to the bitterness of the colored carrots. When you eat raw, you really notice things like bitter carrots.

(I love this cat.) Here is a pile of white carrots courtesy of the web (I'm using some of these photos that are not mine to show you what these plants look like.) You can see that white carrots look very much like parsnips. But, big taste difference. All the roots of the umbels above are edible, some very good. Fennel root is as good as fennel stalks. People use them mostly in soups, but I just like eating them for a crunchy treat out of hand or grated up in some experiment.

Most moderns don't know that the roots of parsley are good. I like growing veggies that have multiple functions. Carrot tops are good when young, and some varieties of parsley have good roots like this small one here. The large root is a parsnip. Note that the leaves of parsnips are NOT edible. Many umbels can cause dermatitis in some people, anywhere from a mild rash to a serious case like poison oak. If you get rashy after you've been pulling carrots, use a gentle soap right after you deal with the greens and don't eat them. Parsnips greens will give many people a rash, which is why they cut the tops off in the stores. But parsnips are wonderful in raw dishes. They have a spicy, sweet taste that goes well in many dishes. Experiment!


But my favorite of the root umbels is celeriac. It's grown in muck and highly sprayed. NEVER buy and eat celery and celeriac that is chemically grown. The bugs love it and it's full of pesticides. The higher price for organic is totally worth it for carrots and celeriac. Some crops don't get bugs and the organic label is more for "show" than something that you must choose.

Grated celeriac is dry and mild. I use it in my sushi recipes, but it's equally good grated for everything. It thins the blood, which is good for some and bad for others and cleans the liver, helping with gout, arthritis and a host of auto-immune diseases. You can also eat the leaves, but they are strong.

Just as carrots come in other forms, so do beets. I do not use white, golden, or pink beets because they give me a sore throat, just as other roots in the chenopod family do. Pay attention to things like this. A golden beet might make your throat sore; a tea made with yellow dock might make your throat close up (happened to me.) Be careful when trying new foods, especially in the raw form. Try a little, then wait for a reaction. But white beets, both round like this and mangels (sugar beets) are an alternate white root crop for fun. But if you find the taste of red beets to have a strong, "beety" taste, white are even stronger! They are good mixed with other roots, and again, the leaves are as good as spinach or chard.

Many people have seen jicama roots, which look like large, brown turnips on steroids. They are delicious. Many bean crops have edible roots. I'm showing you the foliage and flowers here, because, although the roots are wonderful, the seeds are poisonous. Many bean seeds are more or less poisonous, which is why most of them are cooked. If you eat raw, there are seeds you can eat as well as green and seeds you can't, like American common beans (although green beans are okay.) Jicama, like kudzu, is a tropical crop, so the roots are coming in from Mexico. They are a juicy root and a great nibble. But if you have gas problems with beans, jicama might give you gas. They are full of indigestible starches that bother some and don't bother others.

Another "gassy" root crop are the roots of the sunflower family. This is a picture of chicory, which grows a fine root. Other familiar roots in this family are sunchokes (jerusalem artichoke), burdock and many, many wild crops like balsam root and Oregon sunflower. They are tooted as a good root for diabetics because the carbs are in the form of inulin, which is indigestible, thus they are low in sugar. Some people do fine with inulin; for others it is a nightmare of gripe and gas. Eat a little bit first. Cooking does not help, unlike with beans.

But chicory and burdock and dandelion roots are unparalleled as liver cleansers, excellent for gout and other diseases of toxic blood. Beware though, of another problem. If you have ragweed allergies, do not eat anything in this family: lettuce, chicory, sunflower seeds, are all going to aggravate it. But for most people, the roots of these crops are easy to grow, giving edible leaves and seeds, are healthy and make a crunchy root for eating out of hand or grated.

Here is the other most famous of the root crops, roots from the cruciferae family: radish, turnip and rutabaga. The hot spices are found from horseradish and wasabe which are both roots in this family. Mustard is from the seeds.

Radishes, like these daikons, practically grow themselves. They are very weather resistant. But, bugs love them, so go with organic. Daikons and other radishes come in a hundred varieties, some red and green, many with colored skins from red to green to black. Daikon radish is delicious raw and is a staple in sushi bars.

But if you have a sensitive stomach, almost everything in this family may give you gas. So go slowly at first. Most people get used to this family after some time being raw, others do not.

One of my favorite roots is a weed. And I mean a weed. If you've had problems with campanula in your yard, you know that even the tiniest piece of root will grow into a hundred monster plants. Why? Well, it's also known as rampion and rapunsel and was bred to be a plentiful, cheap root crop like radishes. People stopped eating it, why? Only Rapunsel's mother knows. She had to forfeit her baby for stealing the greens from her neighbor's yard.

Rapunsel is mild and crispy. It's relative, platycon or balloon flower is as pungent as radishes and is found dried in Korean grocery stores. But Americans don't grow it or eat it and you can't even find a picture of it, only an old drawing like this. So sad. The flowers, leaves and roots are edible, some better than others. Plants for a Future Database has a long list of the best of the campanulas to try, but you must grow them. Italian seed houses still sell the seeds of rampion, but to get seeds, you may have to go to English seed houses for wild and native plants. Or check your backyard. The campanulas have wonderful purple bellflowers or harebells--yep, same plant. But some have almost no root and others, these thick crunchy, yummy roots.

Okay, enough on roots. Time for a winter dish!

Blue roots with Mushroom Sauce

One cup grated celeriac tossed with a pinch of spirulina
(try tumeric for yellow, beet powder for red and pink)

Marinate a handful of shitake mushrooms. (Do NOT use the regular button mushrooms or criminis or portobello mushrooms which are not good for you raw.) Most mushrooms are not good raw, so stick with the ones recommended, like shitakes.
Marinate in 1 tsp raw cider vinegar and olive oil
With:
Chopped raw, oil cured olives (or sun cured)
Soaked sesame seeds (soak and wash to get rid of oxalic acid)
For an Asian dish, you can use some soy sauce. I'm allergic to it, so I've used a little bit of fennel here for a more Italian taste.

This dish is fun, filling and good!

Experiment, have fun, give your kids blue food! Hah.

Pestos and Crackers

I have a pretty intense grain allergy and a mild coconut allergy. If I eat white bread, my eyes get inflamed and I get asthma; the effects of eating whole grains are much worse--rice in particular. It is not a stomach intolerance, but a respiratory allergy, which is strange, for I don't have hay fever, although my sister, my mother and my nephew all do. One of the best things to come out of the raw foods movement is the marketing of non-grain crackers made of seeds and nuts. However, they are very pricey. All the sweet cookie type raw things are filled with coconut, so that makes me keen on doing my own thing.

Brigitte is big on flax and flax crackers. I'm not so keen on flax, but flax does make good crackers, so I'll start with the flaxseed cracker recipe.

Flaxseed, or linseed, is (yes, you guessed it) the stuff that the artists' oil is made of. It is a cheap oil when it is made for industrial uses. The flaxseed oil for edible purposes, is extremely expensive and very volatile, so it is found in health food refrigerators in brown plastic containers and hard to eat before it goes bad. It is very high in omega 3 fatty acids, as high as cod liver oil. People eat flax seeds for the same purpose, but they are very mucilaginous (slimy) and used for constipation. I'm not keen on slimy food. I found out that chia seed is higher in omega 3s and easier to eat. It forms a gel when wet and is very like tapioca, but it is not as slimy.

However, sliminess holds the crackers together.

You can see here that I've added a little water to some flax seed (golden kind is best.) Do not cover the flax seeds with water or add the same amount water, but as little as possible. Here you can see what happens after about ten minutes, you can stand a spoon in the bowl!

Now Brigitte just adds kelp to the flax and spreads it out on a dehyrator sheet. I prefer to add some pesto to the crackers, but the variations are endless. Before I go on to show you how to finish the crackers, here's one of my pesto recipes.

I take about half to a cup of walnuts and soak them in enough water to cover for about five hours. Overnight is okay.
You can see from this that I've taken the walnuts and mashed them up. You can use a blender, but it's hard to get the nuts to grind without extra water. I like a mortar and pestle for grinding nuts. I've tried to use nut grinders or grain grinders like the Bi0mühle variety, but the mortar and pestle works just fine. It takes a while, but it's kind of fun and quieter and, well just peaceful. I love these Asian mortars that are ceramic and have groves cut in the clay to rub the nuts (or leaves) against. They work very well and are surprisingly easy to clean.

Then I gather my greens. I use pestos to add in greens to my diet that are strong tasting. The basil covers up the taste of almost everything. Dill pestos are also good. When I make pesto, I don't use all basil: it's way too expensive and I find it very strong tasting, sometimes bitter. I've found that about half and half basil and parsley is a great combination in that these two strong flavored greens compliment each other and make for a better taste. When you use basil, stay away from the flower buds. They are very strong. I assemble all my leaves like this because I then:

Cut them! I've found that cutting works better than chopping and I don't have a food processor or blender. Again, it doesn't take that long, is quiet, doesn't use electricity and is easy unless you have arthritis. I've discovered that I can monitor my own arthritis in that if I cut and my hand hurts, I've got to do liver detox (more olive oil and greens, less cooked food.) Pretty soon that big bowl of greens is a quarter the size. Do this first, before you dump the greens into the walnuts.

After some mushing, which can take a long time or not, depending on how "smooth" you want your pesto, you have something edible. As I grind the leaves with the walnut mix (pine nuts, pecans, almonds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds--anything works) I add olive oil. I also add dried nettles or other dried herbs that are good for me but not so fun to eat. If you are adding pesto to crackers, keep the olive oil to a minimum. If you want it for a squash dish like a sauce, add a lot of oil. I can't eat garlic, but, by all means, bring on the garlic if you like it! To get the Parmesan taste, you have to add salt. I don't like yeast, but some people swear by it to mimic the cheese taste. If you have access to raw Parmesan, go for it.

Okay, I added about half my pesto to my flax mix and added in about 1/4 cup of kelp granules. The powder is vile--use the granules. Kelp is also mucilaginous. I also added caraway seeds to this mix.

I don't own a dehydrator. Too expensive, and again my hubbie can't stand the noise. Also, even at low temperatures, your house will smell like the seashore when you dry out seaweeds. I got this plastic roll-up tray from the hardware store for $3.00. I found out very fast that drying food in a low-heat dehydrator was a way to get the mice to be friendly. It's also cockroach heaven. Nothing like finding mice turds or cucurachas on your crackers! If you live in a very warm and humid climate, you may want to dry out your crackers in the refrigerator. If you live in a dry climate, let the air do the work for you and don't worry about getting a dehydrator for your (expensive) raw kitchen. I put this sheet of crackers before a fan and they were dry in 24 hours.

Spread the mix as thin as you can. When the mix is tacky, but not dry, go ahead and cut the crackers with a knife. A bit tricky, but not as tricky as trying to make crackers out of the gluey, sticky mess they are when wet!

Be patient. You want your crackers to be crackers, not crumbly bits of moist seedy stuff. Takes about 24-36 hours depending on the room temperature, whether you use a fan or not, or whether you live in Oregon or Colorado. Stuff in the fridge takes longer to dry. You might get creative and hook up a fan in your fridge!


Here are my crackers. I put some avocado on them and made them "artistic" with some peppers and olives. Seed or nut crackers and avocado is a very filling, high-fat, meal that is great for winter.

Bon appétit!

Squash in Nut Sauce

Eating Raw in winter is difficult. The body craves carbs. About September, I start eating very heavy food (for me.) I anticipate the season and eat for the upcoming season. Right now, in Feb., I am eating more cleansing food. In late summer/fall, I double the amount of oil I eat and start eating roots and nuts. If I put on ten pounds, I'll easily lose it by Spring. I find it very hard to put on weight and am one of the few people who Brigitte Mars recommended for a diet high in fats. But be aware: I am 6 feet tall and 130 pounds. My son is 6'6" and 160 pounds and my father was 6'4" and 180 until he got old and went down to 150. I have a BMI of about 19 and very fine bones with short muscle body. My sister who has a large frame and much more muscle mass is heavier and must eat about twice what I do, being a jock.

From my mother, I inherited early onset arthritis. Most of my diet is for one reason: pain management. The other part of it is because I have trouble eating anything, so much trouble that I seriously wanted to just give up eating about ten years ago; eating was a nightmare for me and I grew to hate most food intensely, but I still craved it--a very bad dependent relationship. This diet gives me no pain and makes eating pleasant for me. I prefer it to drugs.

I also inherited all kinds of stomach problems from my father including a serious dairy allergy. I'm also allergic to the ENTIRE grain family, even sprouted grains. They aggravate my respiratory allergies and give me eye infections and asthma. This means corn syrup, sugar and also molasses, beer and almost all prepared food. Given that I also can't eat soy, most prepared food, especially vegan food is a no-go for me. I also have a very acidic stomach, so I can't eat pineapple and much in the way of fruits. I also have a serious citrus allergy and am allergic to coconut. The most common question I am asked is: "what do you eat?"

Most nuts and seeds irritate my stomach acid. I don't find them hard to digest, but the pain after eating them is sometimes pretty intense. However, I found that eating acidic nuts in pestos or in salads tended to balance their acidic nature. I also do this with meat. Unlike most raw people, I do eat small quantities of meat, mostly fish and shellfish.

This is a delightful dish that I developed over the years in the search for filling, non-dairy pestos for pasta. I had to give up pasta, but there are many, many substitutes for pasta you can experiment with. Some people dehydrate the "noodles" a little for an al dente texture; I don't have a dehydrator or the time to mess with this.

Winter squash can be delightful raw, it can also be horrid. Again, know your families. Squash comes in four families. The most popular is Cuccurbita pepo which includes common pumpkins, zucchini, all those funky summer squash, acorn squash and delicata. Delicata is delicious cooked, but pretty boring raw. Many pumpkins are pretty vile raw except for a few bites while carving jack o' lanterns.

Most of the squash available in the markets is C. pepo and I do not recommend any of it for eating raw. But you should taste it yourself; I find the texture does not appeal and they often have a very "pumpkin" taste that seems overpowering to me. The other down side of C. pepo is that they store well for about 3-4 months, but get dry and mealy. This is a great example of a lovely vegetable that cooks well and is not as great raw. After sampling other squashes for use as summer squash, I'm not even as sold on C. pepo in the form of zucchinis or yellow squash. But they are common in the grocery stores. Squash takes up a huge amount of space in the garden and are disease prone, so often buying them is a good option.

If you have a farmers' market, getting squash can be a more adventurous experience. One of the better squash families that is more common on the East Coast and in Asia is Curcurbita maxima which has some of the better summer squashes in the form of banana squash and some of the more spicy tasting winter squashes like the Japanese form of buttercup squash known as Kabocha which looks like this photo of some buttercup squash. must be cured correctly to have the sweet, spicy taste that makes it delectable raw. These squashes can be dry, tasteless and have huge seed cavities and almost no flesh by the time they hit the market. Again, they are a fabulous baking squash, but also good raw, unlike most of C. pepo. There are hundreds of varieties of squash, far, far too many to list here or evaluate in your own garden. The best place to "window shop" is Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a new company that has more varieties of squash, melons and gourds than any other seed company out there. They are also extremely friendly and may be able to point you to good squashes to try to grow and eat raw. Kabocha is one of the best, but it is erratic in the stores. The smaller squashes tend to be dry and seedy, but if you get a good squash, it is spicy and wonderful raw, just by itself. Grated winter squash, if it is good, is also something kids will devour raw with relish.

The best family of the squashes for eating raw is Curcurbita moshata, more commonly found in the form of butternut squash. There are hundreds of varieties of this squash family. They usually have more meat than the other squashes. They vary quite a bit, but are usually darker orange in color.

Butternut is usually available in common grocery stores. Try to buy organic squash; the common crop is heavily sprayed. A good butternut squash will have a large neck and be reddish-tan without lesions on the skin. One of the great points of this squash is that it will keep until May, even June if you store it in a dry place at room temperature, not too hot.

Butternut is very sweet, too sweet to eat with honey or brown sugar. Try giving it to kids plain before grabbing the honey. It will keep for a week in the fridge, longer if you cut off any of the exposed flesh that may get moldy. It is usually very juicy and easy to grate. I grate everything by hand, so I love easy to grate. Avoid the squash that looks beautiful but has a lot of ridges--you lose too much flesh. Here is a Ukranian squash from this family, note again the smooth, red-tan skin and the bright orange flesh.

If you live in a climate hostile to squash, like where I lived in Florida (zone 10) it may be a challenge to get winter squash before disease and bugs do you in. A cure for powdery mildew is to spray the foliage with sour milk or sulfur solution BEFORE the onset of the disease. Once the plant gets it, it's too late. If you live in an area that gets powdery mildew, start spraying your squashes early. In Florida, I had a much better experience with growing gourds than with the Curcurbit family. Lagenaria is a bit bitter, but is very good as a zucchini substitute. There are also many winter squashes in the Benincasa family, called wax melons and native to SE Asia.

But on to the recipe. In the photo below, you can see the grated butternut squash. The color is vivid and appealing as a "noodle" substitute. It is juicy and sweet, but not as creamy or crunchy as noodles made of flour. I hesitate to call it a noodle substitute since is it just different.

There are as many different toppings for squash as there are cooks. You can try a tomato sauce with garlic, fresh tomatoes and basil, or an Asian sauce of five spices and tahini. This is one of my favorites, a creamy nut sauce that can be made with dill, tarragon, or basil. I also put dried nettles in all of these sauces; along with kelp, nettles are something I eat every day. I have thin blood and kelp and nettles are the best treatment for it. They also help with allergies and have made my hair and nails about twice as thick. I also use a mortar and pestle (no blenders at our house) so my pestos and sauces tend to be more chunky.

1 cup grated squash
1/2 cup soaked nuts (about 5 hours) walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, etc. ground up into a creamy texture
1/4 cup basil chopped finely
1/4 cup parsley (For a greener pesto use 1 cup each. You can also add in other fresh greens, like dandelion, spinach, anything you like.)
1 tsp dried nettles powdered
1 tsp kelp granules
pinch sea salt
1/3 cup olive oil

Optional: garlic, raw cheese

Mash or blend together the ingredients for the sauce and put onto the squash. This is a creamy, heavy dish that will satisfy even the winter blues. Also keep in mind that I don't really like to cook. All these dishes take about 15 minutes to prepare at the most.

Bon Apetit!

Vegan Maki Rolls

One of my favorite dishes is a maki roll like you get in a sushi bar. I can't eat rice, so I have experimented over the years with trying to get a rice substitute for a roll. I tried sprouted grains mixed with avocado, and various mushed up sprouted grains, which did not work at all.

I tried then grated roots and veggies, like zucchini, which were also disasters. The key is that you need to grate up something very fine that is also on the dry side. Anything wet will make the nori sheets fall apart when you try to roll and cut the roll. Vegetables that work well are sweet potatoes/yams, and roots of the umbel family like carrots, parsnips and celeriac. I stopped using sweet potatoes because raw, they do have enzyme inhibitors although I find them fairly easy to digest. I do not eat dandelion roots or sunchokes because I find them hard to digest. You can mix some roots in with celeriac like a bit of radish if you want some punch, but radishes by themselves are too wet. Some winter squashes are dry enough, but often taste awful raw.

Here I have grated up some celeriac. Celeriac, or celery root, wins the contest as the ugliest veggie out there. Like celery, it's grown in mud and has roots all over it. It's also a veggie that you have to eat organic or grow yourself. It likes a lot of water, but is less sensitive than celery. If you cannot get it in the stores, use parsnips (like a white carrot or large radish) or even those old cooking carrots (the new ones are too juicy.) If you want to eat sushi (raw fish) I recommend using green papaya instead of roots; it will digest better.

The trick to a roll is not to use too much on it. Only cover half the sheet with celeriac, only about a 1/4 of an inch deep (less than a cm.) The finer you can grate your roots the better.

Put on some veggies. Try not to overdo it. I like avocado. Avocado is good with sweet peppers as you see here, or cucumbers. Do anything you can think of, get creative. I also like marinated shitake mushrooms (don't use most mushrooms raw). If you like, you can even use raw sushi-grade fish, but it's harder to digest with the carbs in the celeriac. You could also try a fruit maki roll, but be aware that anything too wet will wreck the roll.

It may take you a couple of times to get the hang of rolling the nori sheet. You must roll it as tight as you can. Have some water ready to wet about 1/2 an inch of the last of the sheet (at the top) so that you can seal the roll. The seaweed will stick to itself if you wet the sheet. Don't get it too wet and hold the roll over the seam for a minute, pressing it down onto your board.

To cut the roll demands a very sharp, clean knife. Clean the knife between cuts. Nori sheets have perforate guides on them, but it's easier to cut the roll once through the middle and then double it up and cut two at a time, into quarters and then into eights. Watch the sushi chefs do it. The ends of the roll will be a little messy like in the picture. You can fuss with it if you like.

Also experiment with sauces to go over the roll or to dip the roll in. You can sprinkle black sesame on top for an authentic look. Using colored radish or a bit of carrot makes the roll very colorful.

Sauces:

Traditional Sauce
Tamari
Roasted sesame oil
Vinegar
Wasabe root (or powder)

Raw Sauce
Lemon
Raw tahini
Dulse or Celtic salt
Fresh wasabe

Anne's Allergy sauce
Raw apple cider vinegar
Celtic Salt
Olive oil

This is great fun with kids. Enjoy!

Root Chakra Salad

Over the years, I've experimented with many salads. I get tire of cookbooks that put cheese on salads or treat them like side dishes. For me, a salad is just an interesting pile of veggies that taste good mixed together.

This salad has many variations. The key to some of food enjoyment is presentation, and what better way to present than to play with color! I call this salad "Root Chakra Salad" because it is a magenta salad which is the color of the first chakra. It is also the color of iron. If you feel anemic, this is a great salad to "perk" you up. It is also a warming salad for winter.

I've done this salad three ways. I'll list the ingredients for you and then the dressings. The first time I did it, I used red sauerkraut. Here is that recipe.

One small red cabbage (or half a large one) grated
1 tbs dill seed
1 tbs Celtic salt
1 tbs raw apple cider vinegar

Knead the cabbage and other ingredients, put into a jar (don't put a lid on it) wait a few days until the kraut has the taste you like. Some people get serious about kraut and pack it in a ceramic container all winter--I like it fairly fresh.

I then mix:

1 cup kraut
1 small beet, grated
lemon to taste
1 tsp honey
1 tsp dulse
1 tsp powdered nettles
1 tsp soaked black sesame seeds
1 tbs olive oil

A good variation on this salad is to use freshly grated red cabbage.

1 cup grated red cabbage
1 small beet, grated
1 tbs apple cider vinegar
1 tsp dulse
1 tsp powdered nettles
1 tsp dill seed (or caraway)
1 tsp soaked black sesame seeds (or soaked sunflower seeds)
1 tbs olive oil

You can also substitute (or add) red or purple kale, red lettuce, purple beet leaves, purple flowers, red celery, or other dark red or purple leaves. I don't usually mix beets with any kind of fruit, but elder berries taste good in this salad.

The salad above is:

1/2 cup grated red cabbage
1/2 cup red leaf lettuce
1/2 cup spinach
1 tsp apple cider vinegar (I can't eat lemon)
1 tsp powdered nettles
1 tsp dulse
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tbs olive oil
1 stalk celery

I find the beets sweet enough without honey, but honey makes this salad good enough for kids.

Enjoy!

Eating in Winter

In the West, it is possible to have greens all winter, even in the mountains. I gardened for a long time in Colorado and was pleased to have fresh greens even in January. There are a few tricks to this, but first, let me say, I have not gardened in the NE, but I recommend Eliot Coleman's book Winter Gardening for those who live there.

There are three factors when gardening overwinter. One is temperature, two is sunlight, and three is moisture. Plants cease to grow when temperatures are below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. In most of the West, daytime temperatures, even in winter, are above this, but the factor that is worst in a grow box or a greenhouse in the West is that temperatures, even in winter will get too high, not too low.

In the West, with the exception of some of CA, OR and WA, BC and AK there is no problem with sunlight, but lack of sun (4 hours a day) will halt plant growth. The trick to low temperatures and low light is to grow your plants large enough so that they are held in REFRIGERATION all winter, grow when conditions are right, but are large enough by Hallowe'en that you can take some of the leaves and not strip the plant.

If you have snowfall or grow in boxes, but for much of the west, moisture is a real problem, especially in places with wind. Be aware of this and go ahead and water by hand even if the water freezes later. But I have been able to harvest greens even in dry, frozen soils as long as I left enough leaves on the plant so that it did not suffer when asked to grow again. Of course, you can strip the plant and kill it or take it up when you want to eat it. In the Northwest, be sure to space plants wide enough apart to keep down disease and mold caused by crowding in wet conditions.

Even if you do not have a garden, you can eat well if you grow in pots outside, or even if you have a good market. But this article is about winter greens.

In winter, lettuce prices vary quite a bit depending on weather conditions in California. If you grow your own lettuce, you can be free of what is happening to the Imperial Valley. There are many, many lettuces that do well, even when it is below freezing. This is a picture of "Winter Density" one of the romaine lettuces that does very well overwinter. Seed catalogs should tell you if a lettuce is good in winter; most are, but some take frost better than others. A good place to hunt up lettuces for winter is "Cook's Garden."

In winter, the brassicas are queens of the garden. All of the Asian crucifers such as Tatsoi here are meant to be planted in late summer or early autumn and harvested all winter. You will find that most mustards and kales are much milder in winter than when grown in spring. The list of crucifers is very long, and I won't go into here here. There are only a couple of things to be aware of. First off, crucifers will depress the thyroid. To compensate for this, eat seaweed. Even kelp salt or dulse flakes will give you enough iodine to compensate for a depressed thyroid. Although crucifers have a lot of vitamin K, they will also thin the blood, which can be a good or bad thing, but be aware of it. They are also extremely high in Vitamin A. Crucifers also vary as to how much mustard taste they have. I find raw broccoli too strong for my tastes, but mild kales and Asian mustards are easy to eat when mixed with other greens. Crucifers need alkaline soil, so if you have sour soil, be sure to give them calcium or some other mineral like gypsum to compensate. Also try the leaves of broccoli like Spigarello or radish leaves for a change.

Other biennials like spinach, chard and beet greens are also better in winter. Eating them raw helps with the oxalic acid, but if you are sensitive to oxalic acid, be aware that many greens have it, even kale, not just spinach. Better than growing spinach are the perennial goosefoots like Good King Henry or this perpetual spinach. They are hardier and will keep giving good greens well into spring. Spinach is one of the only seeds that will sprout at low temperatures.

But this article is mostly about eating greens that used to be popular and are hardy enough to survive winter. One of my favorite greens is that of the common pansy. Pansies are often grown all winter and, like their violet cousins, will bloom in late winter or spring. Although they contain salicylic acid they are easy on the stomach. They will thin the blood, but also are high in vitamin K and vitamin A. Pansy leaves are mild, and unlike those of violets, smooth so you don't have to cut them up so fine to avoid the hairy texture. Their flowers are a joy on a salad as well

A common weed to enjoy in winter is plantain. There are many different kinds, even Italian ones with huge leaves like chard. They are extremely healthy to eat, but some are a bit tough, so you must cut them up very fine. They are mild and grow, well, like weeds. They are also much better in winter than in late spring or summer. I like to walk past people's lawns and look at all the weeds that I know are good to eat. It is a joke on Americans that they spend so much money digging up these goodies only to throw them out.

Another weed every lawn owner hates which is better, (much better) in winter is the dandelion. Rather than take a risk of pollutants, gather these herbs where you know someone has not been spraying or away from roadsides. You can also grow your own. I've had the best experience with wild chicory, which has leaves like this but much larger. Chicory and dandelions are closely related to lettuce, but more bitter, a taste Americans have to get used to. Mixed in a salad with milder greens, dandelions are wonderful and full of iron, calcium and other vitamins and minerals.

Chickweed is another pernicious weed that is good to eat in winter and rich in Omega 3. The crucifers, the mint family, spinach and the lettuce family are all high in Omega 3. Be aware that Omega 3 will thin the blood. Chickweed does not come in a "nicer" domesticated form, but plant it and gather the small leaves for it is mild, delicious and great in salads. It grows like a weed during the cool, rainy months of the West Coast and well in warmer regions inland.



A favorite wild herb of the East is Claytonia virginica or Spring Beauty. I do not have experience with this weed, but it is here because I want to emphasize that it is important to know your plant families. An excellent place to learn more is from the database: "Plants for a Future." The reasons to get to know your families are many. One is that you can grow a native kind of plant that might do much better in your climate. There are many, many goosefoots and crucifers and chicories that grow wild in the West and can be substituted for the more tender European varieties. Some varieties are perennial and I am always in favor of perennials or re-seeding annuals that require less work in the garden. The other is that if you are forced or choose to wildcraft or are camping, you will know your families and be able to identify some mustard that might be good (but hot) or an edible wild lettuce. You will also learn that many plants that are good in winter are horrid when they go to seed in late spring and summer (like wild lettuce.)

Here is the Western equivalent of Spring Beauty. It is a mild, wonderful green that grows all winter on the Coast and can be grown in boxes or in the open in the milder regions inland. It is in the purslane family, which will let you know (if you know your families) that there are a few hot season relatives to round out your seasonal diet from the garden. Miner's lettuce, or Claytonia is mild enough to eat out of hand, juicy and very prolific. It also re-seeds under the right conditions and grows on damp, acid soil.

One of my favorite "weeds" is the plant rapunsel, made famous in the fairy tale. Campanula comes in a hundred varieties, many of which will survive winter. Campanulas and their close relatives Plactycons vary in taste from pungent to very mild. Some go dormant in winter, but many will survive and stay green up through zone 5. Some are very invasive, but others will stay in place and give you lovely flowers in late spring. Still others are grown for their roots, which can be as hot as radishes or very mild. They are largely carefree, grow under all kinds of conditions, and are good eating!

There are a number of herbs that do better in winter than in summer, like many of the leaf umbels: dill, parsley, sweet cicely, cilantro; the mints, some of which go dormant, but most of which sprout so early in spring to be winter plants; and all the onion family. Shepard Ogden talks about digging up winter leeks with a flame torch in sub-zero ice.

The thing about eating salads is that they are unappealing when it is cold outside. However, if you get used to eating them and do eat them, you will find greens to be very warming right after you eat them. If you like salads in summer, try winter salads, especially if you can grow and experiment with your own greens. Remember that eating them raw means that you must break down the cell walls, either by chewing thoroughly, chopping them very fine, or putting them in juices and smoothies. If you do not care for the taste of chlorophyll, mixing greens with something pungent will mask the taste, or mixing them into pestos will give you the nutrition, but cover the taste with garlic or basil.

Eating Local

I'm on what I call the "mermaid diet." This is a diet that is a combination of blood type diet and paying attention to my ancestry. The ONLY way I was able to overcome many of my food-related health issues was to do some serious research along these lines. I cannot do the "normal" raw diet.

Susun Weed brings up a valid issue in her debate with Brigitte Mars. Although I know Brigitte and know that she eats locally and grows her own food, she does eat quite a bit of tropical food, food that is shipped in from far away. It is difficult to understand the food politics, but it is harmful to many countries even to buy fair trade food. My problems are a little more involved in that I cannot eat many tropical foods like citrus and coconut which are mainstays of a raw diet. I also have trouble with most nuts because they are acidic.

Because of my ancestry, I have a very acidic system. Not my blood, which is normal, but my stomach. There are two kinds of acid reflux; over seventy percent of cases involve, not too much stomach acid, but too little. As enzyme activity dies out in the middle years, most people have trouble digesting their food. My problems were with always with high stomach acid--runs in the family. Eating many fruits and grains and nuts and legumes just make my stomach go into overload, not while I'm eating but after my stomach empties.

But I have rare respiratory allergies to coconut and to citrus, both of which give me eye infections, asthma and sinus congestion.

I have found that eating foods native to the British Isles and Northern Europe helps me quite a bit with allergies. I can eat some American foods, but not many. Tomatoes and beans and corn are all no-nos with me.

I love being on the West Coast. I can eat food that's pretty much local to the NW and to California. It isn't trucked in very far and much of it agrees with me. However, even when I was in Colorado, I was able to get good salads out of my garden in January. In the West, we have enough sunlight to grow all year--there is no excuse at all for not having good food from your own yard all the time if you live in the West. Even when I lived at 9000 feet, the solar power was so great that I had to vent my grow boxes.

But most of the gardeners I know do not grow in the winter. I think it's too depressing. But I always get a rush about August and into September when I know it's time to plant for winter. I abhor the thought of the old-fashioned NE winter diet where one eats old cabbages, and root-cellared carrots and sprouted potatoes! It's just not necessary. Even NE gardeners can grow all year around--Anna Edey proved this in her book Solviva.

But there is one thing that is very hard to get in winter--fresh fruit. My raw diet does not revolve around fruit--it can't, I have blood sugar issues that limit my fruit and carb intake. I believe that, in addition to eating raw, it's possible to widen one's perspective about eating fruit or eating from the store, period. Even though it's hard to want to eat a salad when it's pouring out, the greens are very warming and I always feel warmer after eating a salad. Eating dense foods like winter squash and roots like beets and rutabagas and carrots are good for winter. I also step up my intake of nuts and oils in the fall, before the Solstice. After the solstice, no matter if it's 50 below outside, I try to eat more cleansing food like salads to get ready for the brightening days.

Although dried fruit is hard to eat if you have blood sugar issues, I can get away with a small amount of it. The key is to eat three dates, not ten. I cannot eat raisins, apples or pineapple and mango (way too much sugar) dates, figs, apricots, plums, berries of all kinds, are okay in SMALL amounts. They are very warming as a small snack, especially followed by nuts.

Don't take eating raw for granted. At first it's easy to eat all those strange fruits. I encourage people to explore. Don't think about what you can't eat, but explore new foods. But once you get going, try to pay attention to what you eat and be open to strange things like having asthma from coconut. Try eating what your ancestors ate, or combining diets like the blood type diet with your raw diet.

Happy eating!