Interesting point to ponder: People in the past ate a lot more than we do today. They weren't obese eating 8,000 or 10,000 calories a day, because they walked everywhere and nearly all labor was manual labor. The round belly of a banker or fleshy arms of a noble woman were indeed the unusual signs of prosperity, an indication of the exemption, not the rule. Everyone else consumed what must have been vast quantities of meat, fish, fruits and vegetables to make their daily fuel needs, given the lack of high fat, high calorie snacks we can pack on today.
So where did all the food come from--especially in winter?
When we think of home food preservation today, we usually thinking of sticking things in the freezer or home boiling water bath or pressure canner two-piece-lid glass-jar canning methods. That's if we think of home food preservation at all, since nearly everything you could want to eat and more is available in the freezer section or in a steel can at your local grocery store. Both of these methods are relatively new inventions of the modern post-industrial era. But are they improvements?
Government health agencies warn constantly of lurking dangers in home canning like botulism, yet people get sick and die from commercial fresh and steel-canned goods as well. Take a step back in time from the home canning, and the food industry professionals really go apoplectic, insisting that a long bath in boiling water is the absolutely minimum that food should ever undergo before consumption, just to make sure everything in it is dead as a doornail. Open the jar of green beans, and cue the horror movie soundtrack theme music.
Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante (Chelsea Green Publishing 1999) paints a different and much less frightening picture. Drying, lactic fermentation, oil, salt, sugar or alcohol are just a few of the old-school methods of food preservation still used by rural food fans in Europe, and now making a comeback amongst the American Localvore crowd. These methods retain more of the natural flavor and nutrients of the produce they preserve, transforming those elements into new food products different but just as worthy of enjoyment as the original fresh produce.
The book is less a how-to than a collection of letters from the horticulturalists and cooks of Terre Vivante, a non-profit ecological agricultural center in France. The book's warning page about food safety notes that common sense should apply--keep cooking surfaces and utensils clean, use only fresh, unspoiled produce, and if something smells or tastes 'off', then don't eat it.
Whether or not you dive in to make Lacto-Fermented Green Bean Soup or Sun-Cooked Cherries in Brandy, Preserving Foods Without Freezing or Canning is well worth a summer read, while the earth's bounty is bursting its buttons all around you. The sheer pleasure of contact with creative gardeners and farmers who have not leapt unquestioningly into modern food preservation methods, and who are generous enough to share the recipes and techniques passed down by their parents and grandparents in the language of friends and neighbors sharing the makings of their favorite dishes, is just delightful.
The take away lesson: The way we do things now is not necessarily the only, or best, way. And people in the past who dined on Pear Jam with Cinnamon or a stew of sun-dried tomatoes and eggplants are hardly the deprived, food-ignorant savages we often assume our ancestors to have been. Read up, take heart, and dig in!
So where did all the food come from--especially in winter?
When we think of home food preservation today, we usually thinking of sticking things in the freezer or home boiling water bath or pressure canner two-piece-lid glass-jar canning methods. That's if we think of home food preservation at all, since nearly everything you could want to eat and more is available in the freezer section or in a steel can at your local grocery store. Both of these methods are relatively new inventions of the modern post-industrial era. But are they improvements?
Government health agencies warn constantly of lurking dangers in home canning like botulism, yet people get sick and die from commercial fresh and steel-canned goods as well. Take a step back in time from the home canning, and the food industry professionals really go apoplectic, insisting that a long bath in boiling water is the absolutely minimum that food should ever undergo before consumption, just to make sure everything in it is dead as a doornail. Open the jar of green beans, and cue the horror movie soundtrack theme music.
Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante (Chelsea Green Publishing 1999) paints a different and much less frightening picture. Drying, lactic fermentation, oil, salt, sugar or alcohol are just a few of the old-school methods of food preservation still used by rural food fans in Europe, and now making a comeback amongst the American Localvore crowd. These methods retain more of the natural flavor and nutrients of the produce they preserve, transforming those elements into new food products different but just as worthy of enjoyment as the original fresh produce.
The book is less a how-to than a collection of letters from the horticulturalists and cooks of Terre Vivante, a non-profit ecological agricultural center in France. The book's warning page about food safety notes that common sense should apply--keep cooking surfaces and utensils clean, use only fresh, unspoiled produce, and if something smells or tastes 'off', then don't eat it.
Whether or not you dive in to make Lacto-Fermented Green Bean Soup or Sun-Cooked Cherries in Brandy, Preserving Foods Without Freezing or Canning is well worth a summer read, while the earth's bounty is bursting its buttons all around you. The sheer pleasure of contact with creative gardeners and farmers who have not leapt unquestioningly into modern food preservation methods, and who are generous enough to share the recipes and techniques passed down by their parents and grandparents in the language of friends and neighbors sharing the makings of their favorite dishes, is just delightful.
The take away lesson: The way we do things now is not necessarily the only, or best, way. And people in the past who dined on Pear Jam with Cinnamon or a stew of sun-dried tomatoes and eggplants are hardly the deprived, food-ignorant savages we often assume our ancestors to have been. Read up, take heart, and dig in!
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