Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

It's not so complicated. My partner Barb would stress that you eat better
for less money by cooking from scratch, vegetables, fruit, grains, even
meat if you want. It's an axiom of home ec that the more processing and
packaging food has, the more it costs. They call it value added. They make
more money on prepared food than basic produce. 

We don't need a lot of scientific gobbledygook to know what to grow or what
to eat. Nutritionists have always urged eating fiber, vitamin-rich
vegetables, fruit and grains. Some meat but meat does not have fiber.
Variety is the key. Now, the exact varieties we like aren't always
available or grown in all climates. But *some* varieties in each category
are almost everywhere. We may want oranges but many vegetables and berries
are also high in vitamin C. Grains aren't grown locally everywhere but
calorie for calorie they're cheap to ship and store well. Again, baking
your own bread is far cheaper than buying the cardboard stuff in the
grocery. Without bread we can still get the starch from potatoes,
sunchokes, and other root crops. And some of those can be grown just about
anywhere. Easy.

Barb is an expert shopper and versatile cook from scratch, having grown up
with an immigrant mother. At checkout she notices how many other people
fill their grocery carts with absolute garbage. How many people today know
how to make a meal from the produce section? She finds a number of items
cheaper at upscale Trader Joe's than standard grocery stores, not to
mention their own brands omit a lot of the junk found in similar items
elsewhere. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a good cook to teach them,
but the basics can be found in books or online. I'm no cook
(understatement) but even I can take several basic items and make easy,
nutritious meals, starting with a baked potato for example. I don't use
margerine because flies won't even touch it. 

We haven't seen much on the list about cooking and storing what we grow.
Part of Living On The Land, isn't it?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/29/2007 at 7:03 PM E. E. Mitchamore Jr wrote:

>My wife and I often discuss the separate universe that economists
>inhabit.  It appears we each have to become a "home" economist.
>
>In some ways it's true for the medical establishment as well.  Given that,
>statistically, most folks are overweight, sedentary, and sickly, their
>guidelines are based on those statistics.  So how does one determine what
>a HEALTHY person should eat?  If it's hard to determine what to eat, it's
>hard to decide what to GROW.
>
>Combining those two perspectives has led me to a rather complex study
>matrix: Nutrition, diet, gardening, cooking, food buying.  How to eat
>better for less money.  It's certain that the home garden and the Farmer's
>Market are partial solutions, but it requires a lot of knowledge and
>understanding.  One thing I've found is that most literature is written
>for Ohio or some such place.  Not much has been written for Central Texas
>or Northern New Mexico.
>
>E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
>www.hillcountrynatives.biz
>  ----- Original Message ----- 
>  From: TradingPostPaul 
>  To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org 
>  Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:42 AM
>  Subject: [Livingontheland] The Price of Almost Everything We Need to
>Survive Has Jumped by 100 Per Cent
>
>
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