From Lierre Keith's book The Vegetarian Myth
Defend the soil with your life, reader: there is no other organism that can touch the intelligence of what goes on beneath your feet.
So here are the questions you should ask, a new form of grace to say over your food. Does this food build or destroy topsoil? Does it use only ambient sun and rainfall, or does it require fossil soil, fossil fuel, fossil water, and drained wetlands, damaged rivers? Could you walk to where it grows, or does it come to you on a path slick with petroleum?
…We've all built this world of gift and need, birth and return. To repair this planet, we must take our sustenance as part of those relationships instead of destroying them. We can pull the forest down or we can eat the deer that live there…All flesh is grass, wrote someone named Isaiah in a book I don't usually quote. In Hebrew, the word translated as "Flesh" is baser, meaning meat, something one eats.Isaiah understood what is no longer physically visible to us, living at the end of the world: we are all a part of one another, made from grass, become meat.
…To save the world we must first stop destroying it. Cast your eyes down when you pray, not in fear of some god above, but in recognition: our only hope is in the soil, and in the trees, grasses, and wetlands that are its children and its protectors both.
Life must kill and we are all made possible by the dead body of another. It's not killing that's domination: it's agriculture. The foods the vegetarians say will save us are the foods that destroy the world. The vegetarian attempt to remove humans from a paradigmatically pinnacle is commendable. And it's crucial. We will never take our true place, one sibling amongst millions, sharing a common journey from carbon to consciousness, sacred and hungry, then back to carbon, without firmly and forever rejecting human dominion.
Personally, I eat no sugar, no flour (of any kind unless I made it myself), no gluten, no pork, no cow milk (and right now no sheep or goat either), vegetable oils, soy (except occasional miso and tamari), agave, all packaged/produced products, and i am in the middle of doing an elimination diet to see what else is causing my face to be such a reactive mess and my gut to not heal (thereby causing secondary food sensitivities to things which i am not normally allergic, like goat milk). What i do eat- meat, organ meats (i am working my way to the hard core stuff- right now sauteed liver once in a while and heart comes in stews), fish, coconut, olive, and palm oils, ghee, all vegetables and fruits (basically, except for this testing period), gluten free grains, beans and lentils. and chocolate. I soak, sprout, ferment, and so forth vegetables, grains, beans, lentils, nuts and dried fruits. And I am looking into the whole grain thing very seriously to figure out how i can buy grains that are ecologically just and sound- for example from biodynamic farms only that are, even in the grain fields more of a polyculture than most, plowing with draft horses, often. The good thing in my case, is that my face tells me right away if i have eaten something not healthy for me. it itches, burns, turns red and makes pustules. not pretty, but handy. And I am noticing I have a similar reaction on the soul level when I eat something not handmade, even if the ingredients are all things I can eat, I will still have a reaction.
This thing of becoming more and more sensitive is that it means I am less "fit for human consumption" or at least civilised consumption, as it were. It means going out to a restaurant is really hard, going to people's houses for parties- unless we share the same views, is hard. It means I have even a hard time selling certain products to folks in my shop, because I find them not so healthful. It means I remove myself from the mainstream of shopping, consuming craziness and return to a slower, more handmade, certainly hand cooked and more labor intensive way of life. We are starting a garden this year- finally- to grow as much of our own food as possible. We'll share it with 2 other women, so we won't grow enough for us all to eat and store for the winter, but we hope to grow a large portion of what we eat. I spend a lot of time and money on what I eat and where it comes from and how it is prepared. I invite people over for lunch or dinner, often. And we intend to spend time every day gardening and growing food, to close the circle a little bit and know where the things on our plate come from. I am looking for a dairy to get raw goat or sheep's milk and cheeses and we get lamb form a shepherd not far from here twice a year and pack it in the freezer. We just need to find beef and chicken now until we can have chickens of our own. So, We are trying to do what we can to get out of the petroleum greased food- even though we eat organic, it is not enough. we need to eat regional and grow things ourselves. and we need to eat bioregional- what grows here, really? What thrives without labor intensive techniques, without massive amounts of water that must be hauled to the garden. What can live here in a polyculture of vegetables and provide for us during the growing season.
And the most important question- where can we build a compost pile?!
As inspiration and concrete examples of how to live well on a small amount of land, producing food for 2500 families, 10 restaurants and 25 stores (not that you'll want to grow that much, but he has done all that on 10 acres), here is Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, the guru of the sustainable animal farm movement.
And a delicious recipe that is not difficult, it just needs to be started 2 days before you want to eat it for fermentation time.
Dosa (indian pancakes from fermented lentil and rice batter) from sally fallon's book.Yum.
1 Cup Lentils (Urad Dal, if you can find it)
2 Cups long grain Brown Rice
Warm filtered water
2 Tablespoons Whey or Lemon Juice
1 tsp Salt
about 1/3 Cup Ghee (clarified Butter)
wash lentils and rice separately and place them in separate bowls to soak. Cover each with warm water, add 1 T whey or lemon juice and leave overnight in a warm place. In the morning, drain the lentils and rice and puree them in the food processor with a little water until smooth. Mix lentils with warm water and salt, it should have the consistency of heavy cream. Cover and leave another 24 hours in a warm place.
To cook, heat a heavy cast iron skillet and brush with ghee. Ladle about 1/4 cup batter into the pan and either tip the pan to spread the batter, or push the ladle in a spiral outwards to spread the batter. It should be relatively thin, like a crepe. Let the one side be completely brown and crispy before you try to turn it- about 5 minutes- or it will only stick to the pan and be very annoying. Flip and cook the other side not as long.
fill with either curried potatoes or vegetables and eat with chutney and yoghurt. yum.
