Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

some more things we've been harping on, finally the NY Times catches on
simple cooking from scratch is the cheapest, easiest way to eat
(and growing it is even cheaper)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/weekinreview/02bittman.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&src=tptw&adxnnlx=1294023631-3fqD22s/rum1yrSYWX10UA

Sustainable Food
Chop, Fry, Boil: Eating for One, or 6 Billion

“Revolutionary” diet books flood the market this time of year,
promising a life changed permanently and for the better — yes, in just
10 to 30 days! — but, as everyone knows, the key to eating better
begins with a diet of real food.

The problem is, real food is cooked by real people — you! — and real
people are cooking less than ever before.We know why people don’t
cook, or at least we think we do: they’re busy; they find
“convenience” and restaurant foods more accessible than foods they
cook themselves; they (incorrectly) believe that ready-to-eat foods
are less expensive than those they cook themselves; they live in
so-called food deserts and lack access to real food; and they were
never taught to cook by their parents, making the trend
self-perpetuating.

Yet Americans watch 35 hours of television a week, according to a
Nielsen survey. (Increasing amounts of that time are spent watching
other people cook). And although there certainly are urban and rural
pockets where people have little access to fresh food, about 90
percent of American households own cars, and anyone who can drive to
McDonald’s can drive to a supermarket.

But perhaps most important, a cooking repertoire of three basic
recipes can get anyone into the kitchen and beyond the realm of
takeout food, microwaved popcorn and bologna sandwiches in a few days.

One could set off a heated argument with a question like, “What are
the three best basic recipes?” but I stand behind these: a stir-fry, a
chopped salad, and the basic combination of rice and lentils, all of
which are easy enough to learn in one lesson. (“Lessons” might be
called “recipes,” and need no “teacher” beyond the written word.) Each
can be varied in countless ways. Each is produced from basic building
blocks that contain no additives, preservatives, trans fats,
artificial flavorings or ingredients of any kind, or outrageous
calorie counts; they are, in other words, made from actual food. The
salad requires no cooking; the stir-fry is lightning fast; the
rice-and-lentils, though cooked more slowly, requires minimal
attention. The same can be said for other recipes, of course, but not
for all of them, and certainly not for the food that most Americans
rely upon most of the time.

These recipes offer other benefits: They’re nutritionally sound and
environmentally friendly. They’ve sustained scores of generations of
societies worldwide, using traditional farming methods and producing
little negative impact on the earth. (Almost without exception, your
ancestors relied on something like one or more of these dishes.) All
of them can be made with meat, poultry or fish, but they can be
satisfying and delicious when made vegetarian or even vegan. In fact,
if you cooked only variations on these three dishes you’d be well on
your way to becoming an intuitive, fluid cook (the fanciest pilaf is
essentially a rice-and-bean variation), eating more healthfully and
with a lighter carbon footprint.

There is one notable thing these recipes are not: magic. You cannot
produce them without having a functioning kitchen (a sink, a
refrigerator and a stove will do it); some minimal equipment,
including a pot, a skillet and a bowl (though in a pinch, the salad
could be made in the pot); a couple of knives; some utensils; a
strainer and a cutting board; and the ability (and money) to stock a
pantry and at least occasionally supplement it with fresh food. These
requirements cannot be met by everyone, but they can be met by far
more people than those who cooked dinner last night.

(It’s worth noting, furthermore, that the stir-fry and the
rice-and-lentils can be made entirely from the pantry, if you allow
for the fact that frozen vegetables are a completely acceptable
substitute for fresh, especially in winter, when “fresh” may mean
“flown in from Peru.”) This pantry list can be as simple as oil,
vinegar, grains, legumes and a few other things, but as people learn
to cook it inevitably grows.

Given ingredients, a kitchen and equipment, all that is left is some
time, and with a well-stocked pantry that time can be about the same
as driving to Burger King and back. You can make a chopped salad in 15
or 20 minutes, practicing knife skills and producing a vegetable-heavy
dish quickly and easily. Anyone who can boil water can whip up a batch
of rice and lentils in just over half an hour, providing fiber,
protein and one of humankind’s classic comfort foods. And anyone who’s
learned how to chop (primitively is fine), apply heat to a pan and
stir can produce a stir-fry — really the epitome of a traditional dish
based mostly on plants with just enough meat or other protein-dense
food to contribute additional interest, flavor and nutrition — in less
than half an hour.

Make these three things and you’re a cook. And with luck and
perseverance, these foods will crowd out things like (to single out
one egregious example from hundreds of its competitors) KFC’s Chicken
Pot Pie, which costs about $5 (so much for the myth of cheap fast
food; a terrific meal for four can be put together for $10); contains
nearly 700 calories, more than half of which come from fat; and has
well over 50 ingredients — most of which cannot be purchased by normal
consumers anywhere — including things like “chicken pot pie flavor”
and MSG.

By becoming a cook, you can leave processed foods behind, creating
more healthful, less expensive and better-tasting food that requires
less energy, water and land per calorie and reduces our carbon
footprint. Not a bad result for us — or the planet.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 2, 2011, on
page WK3 of the New York edition.