White rice: Scourge of the Pacific

Photo: Sticky white rice growing in a streamside taro patch on Oahu, photo courtesy Hunter Heaivilin.

 

After years working overseas in the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and now Vanuatu, ADRA Country Director David Cram refers to white rice as 'the scourge of the Pacific', and for good reason.

Polynesian cultures brought many of their sustenance plants with them as they migrated - the so-called canoe plants - and their cultivation practices both evolved with and shaped their lands.   

Photo: Taro under wet cultivation at Reppu's Farm in Waiahole Valley, Oahu (Hawaii) [photo credit: Pete Hodgson].

Taro, yams, and sweet potatoes were the staple crops of these peoples, supplemented by animal proteins from fish, fowl & pigs.

White rice, although popular with modern polynesian cultures, was never a part of the traditional polynesian diet. 

After generations of co-evolving with extensive taro cultivation (cultivating a relationship with a staple food that Hawaiians regard as their 'older brother') in recent generations Hawaiian food culture has shifted to include a mishmash of cultural influences which manifest itself in the local favorite of the 'plate lunch':

Photo: Courtesy of cougareats.blogspot.com.au.

Two scoops white rice, one scoop mac salad, a bed of shredded cabbage (if you are lucky), and then whatever local-style meat dish: chicken cutlet smothered in brown grazy, teri-beef drowning in sugary teriyaki sauce, fried fish glob bed with mayonaise-based tartare sauce… and almost anything else you could imagine.

The results of this change in diet & lifestyle have been dire: Polynesians rank significantly above other ethnic groups in Non Communicable Disease (NCD) categories such as diabetes, obesity, and other related 'lifestyle diseases'. 

In fact, Polynesians that have maintained traditional diets have maintained obesity rates lower than those of Western Populations. (1)

Photo: Harvesting taro at Reppu's Farm in Waiahole Valley, Oahu (Hawaii) [photo credit: Pete Hodgson].

 Once you've spent some time working in a lo'i (wet cultivation taro patch) it's not hard to imagine how this seemingly simple shift in diet has contributed to such dis-ease:

First, the amount of calories you would burn in the daily course of planting, tending, harvesting & processing your family lo'i would have been significantly higher than the amount of calories burnt by the average modern person purchasing a package of white rice and boiling it up at home.

Second, if we understand how white rice is created, we may decide to change our relationship with that food.  Rice is harvested as a grain crop - much in the same way as wheat, rye or barley - it goes as a tall grass, and its seed heads are threshed and winnowed to separate the grains from the rest of the plant.

Photo: White rice grains.

Simply put, each grain of rice is held inside an outer protective hull, and the inner layer(s) of the pericarp adds more protective layers - this is the rice bran. 

Most of the nutrients available in rice are stored here; the grain itself acts as an energy store for the plant embryo inside and is designed to give it it's initial burst of energy to sprout forth its roots & shoots, to then absorb & create its own nutrients from the soil & sun.

White rice is created by removing this protective skin, and polishing the grains so that they are more attractive, and become soft & fluffy when cooked.

Third, because white rice is mostly made of carbohydrates, it is converted by the body into sugars (click here for a more detailed explanation, which will cause havoc if they are not used up by the body through physical exercise… not exactly a good combination for the average, modern, sedentary lifestyle.

A facilitated class discussion was held in an attempt to give students a deeper understanding of this food, so that we could understand the impacts of white rice overconsumption:

• What is white rice?
• How many of you eat white rice?  How many of you grow white rice?
• How does it grow?  Where does it come from? 
• How does it get here?
• How does it affect your health?

Next, we brainstormed alternatives to this locally popular imported food:

• Reduce portion size
• Balance servings with traditional foods
• Create new white rice dishes using local ingredients:
      white rice cooked in coconut milk
      white rice mixed w/ grated coconut
      white rice mixed w/ ginger & onion
      white rice mixed w/ seasalt/seaweed
      white rice mixed w/ grated yellow ginger (turmeric) & canarium nut...

....this list is limited only by our imagination, and taps into the creative energy of human innovation, a much more effective strategy to affect behavioural change than dire health warnings and finger-wagging public lectures.  Who doesn't like to hear about a great new recipie?

If it tastes good - we humans love it - so a permacultural approach looks as this as an energy flow we design with, rather than work against. 

Overconsumption of white rice is not a good thing - especially in these communities - but it is already there, so we work to redirect & deflect this energy rather than put all our effort into fighting against it, and focus our design efforts towards long-term systemic improvement rather than knee-jerk symptomatic reponses.

 

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(1)  'The Obesity Epidemic in the Pacific Islands', Michael Curtis (United States Department of Army); Journal of Development and Social Transformation

Traditional Food Culture in Vanuatu

Sawi treated us to a Sunday feast of traditional foods called laplap, which are wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in the traditional umu earthen oven (similar to the Maori hangi or Hawaiian imu):

Photo: The women prepare laplap dishes for our feast.

Photo: Chicken slaughtered yesterday.

Photo: Grated yam & coconut milk, tastes like a fluffy kulolo.

Photo: Fresh fish in coconut milk.

Photo: Nalalas, pig tripe & coconut milk.

I think we ate enough in one sitting to last us two days!

Shifting Food Cultures

Modern cultural pressures are acting upon even remote communities, shifting values away from traditional values of natural resource stewardship and living from the land.  Imported goods are replacing traditional foods & materials, creating new challenges ranging from how to properly dispose of plastics, scrap metals and batteries. 

Photo: Inorganic waste is buried at Dixson's Reef on Malekula Island.

Dixson's Reef community currently separates & buries their inorganic waste, while on Araki & Ifira Islands piles of leaf litter & other organic matter mixed with plastic & other inorganic wastes are regularly burnt. 

The diversity of island cultures throughout Vanuatu is perhaps most apparent in the diversity of languages spoken here, where even neighboring villages will often have their own distinct dialect.  Languages hold information & nuances that are very specific to people & place - even down to neighboring valleys.  On Araki Island, only 4 speakers of their native language remain.

Imported & processed foods which are cheaply & abundantly available (especially white rice & packaged noodles), present a seductive option to cook & prepare because there is much less time & physical effort expended to purchase from the store & cook a meal with these items - especially compared to the time & physical effort required to grow, harvest, clean, prepare
and cook traditional root crops & vegetables.

Photo: White rice is even featured on the signature Flying Fox dish at the L'Houstalet, a high-end French restaurant in Port Villa.

On Ifira Island, this has led to a shift of focus towards away from crop cultivation and towards income generation as the primary means to feed oneself.

This shift away from traditional food culture is already contributing to an increase in Non-Communicable Diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and is particularly tricky to address since it requires an understanding of the opposite tensions between traditional & modern culture in order to effectively re-frame simple daily choices (such as choosing to eat white rice) in such a way to affect better decision making at a household level. 

Photo: Without innovation, traditional culture stagnates & dies.  Without respect for traditional culture, traditional culture stagnates & dies.  Culture can flourish when the balance between tradition and innovation is maintained.

A facilitated class discussion was held in an attempt to re-connect traditional foods with traditional culture, so that simple acts of growing & eating foods appropriate to place & culture can regain their significance.

What is culture?

• How has your landscape impacted your culture?  Your diet?
      [Explore cultural foods, mythologies, ceremonies, processing & preservation techniques, and so on]
• How has your culture impacted your landscape?
      [Explore cultivation techniques & philosophy, village design, relationship w/ land, and so on]
• How does modern culture impact your landscape?  Your diet?
      [Share stories]
• Why save seeds?  Why grow cultural foods?

 

Photo: 'Seedsaving = No Thank you Monsanto', on Oahu, Hawaii (photo credit: Michael Broady Jr.).

Back home in Hawaii and Australia, this conversation begins by exploring the modern food system & agricultural practices (and its impacts upon planet & people), and narrows down to the simple practices of seed saving, water harvesting & stewardship, and gardening. 

As a part of this exploration, we can re-frame the political significance of these simple & peaceful acts - while understanding that in the modern consumerist society, harvesting our own water, saving our own seeds, and growing our own food are in many ways among the most radical & revolutionary acts we can do.

As one student in Hawaii (whose #1 agricultural export commodity is GMO seed) said:  

''It's like gently, but firmly saying 'F&^k You to the multinational corporations who seek to control our food and water supply."   - Student in Hawaii -

 

Here in Vanuatu, the situation in many ways is perhaps not quite so dire (subsistence farming is still widely practiced, and local food production still very much valued), though the conditions are ripening for such cancerous attitudes to fester. 

The government building on the main street of Villa boasts a large electronic notice board which flashes monthly reports of agriculture commodity exports by tonnage and dollar amount - not a bad thing in and of itself, though perhaps indicative of a broader shifting of focus away from agriculture as 'subsistence farming' and towards 'export commodity production'.

Photo: Breakfast meal served for us on Araki Island, featuring fried doughballs, imported crackers, local cooked sweet banana, and local eggs fried w/ Nalalas (Polyscias fruticosa).  We were treated later with something we dubbed 'Yambu', a delicious pudding of grated yam & coconut milk stuffed into a bamboo node and cooked in the earthen oven.

How much sense does it make to grow enough food to export & sell, to make enough money, to be able to afford your own food, which has been processed, imported & sold back to you?  A pound of harvested, fermented, & dried cacao beans sells for 200-250VT /kg(1); a couple of chocolate bars imported from Australia will cost you 200VT.

We find ourselves in a 'mitigation' situation on the ground here, where the

In order to build locally resilient communities, we must instead focus first upon growing enough to feed ourselves, then our community, and then look for opportunities to trade your surplus to in exchange for items outside of our bioregion.

 

"In Cuba, agriculture means growing food for our people to eat." 

- Roberto Perez, Permaculture Activist featured in 'The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil' documentary -

 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Photo: Learning about lactobaccilic ferment by making kimchee.

 

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(1) http://www.nuipacific.org/home/vanuatu-development

Solar Dryer extends harvest and creates microenterprise opportunity

Elyse Peterson is an experienced food scientist in the dairy, seafood, meat, and soft drink industries, Elyse served two terms in the Peace Corps helping promote sustainable food security solutions. As part of her work in the Peace Corps, she helped to develop a Solar Food Dryer which became the catalyst for a community-based food security and economic development project in in Antigua.

We talked to Elyse about this technology, which is highly appropriate for many tropical areas, and may have application into other climate zones:

Photo: Mangoes drying in the sun.

 

TBG: How does Solar Food Drying work?
Solar drying is a low cost method of drying food.  It is important to understand moisture in food and the properties of the air around us.

All food contains moisture which comes in three forms: liquid, solid & gas.  This moisture is what microorganisms need to live and thrive, so in order to stop microorganism growth you may reduce this moisture to a safe level to preserve and extend the shelf-life of your harvest.

The design of the Solar Dryer harnesses the power of the sun's rays to raise temperatures within the unit to between 110 - 130 degrees Farenheit. 

This heat lowers relative humidity while increasing absolute humidity, so that the air inside the unit attempts to reach the absolute humidity of the climate outside the unit by taking moisture from the food.

Coupled with proper air circulation, this is what makes the solar dryer work.

Photo: Solar dryer built with locally available materials in Antigua, 2007.

TGB: What kind of Solar Dryer Designs have you developed?

There are three basic designs of solar dryers that you may follow when building your own solar dryer: direct absorption, indirect heating, and mixed mode. In this project a direct absorption solar dryer was designed because it was found to be the most sustainable for Hawaii’s needs.

In these designs the food is placed inside a cabinet or “hot box” which allows the rays of the sun to heat up food and air around it. A compartment with a transparent roof and insulated walls is used, but if designed properly all the walls can be transparent. These may also use reflectors at the bottom of the compartment to increase light (metal or foil).

Ventilation holes are required to promote proper air circulation. Indirect heating dryers dry the food with heated air collected by a “solar panel”. The food is placed in an insulated heating chamber with proper air circulation.

These models are effective but cost a lot of money. Mixed Mode dryers are a combination of the other two designs. Food is heated directly by the sun but additional heat is collected with the “solar panel”. These can cost about $1300EC to build, effective but expensive.

Businesses attempting to expand and produce higher quality products should look into building one of these models (for the purposes of this project and the situation in Hawaii the direct absorption model is the best fit). When constructing your dryer be sure to follow the design carefully, because the angles achieved are vital for efficient processing.

Photo: Mangoes selected for drying are peeled and cut.

TGB: How do we select produce to dry?
When selecting food to process in the solar dryer it is important to remember that drying will not improve the quality of the produce. Only produce that you would consume fresh should be dried.

Produce with cuts, bruises, or other evidence of contamination should not be used. Select fruit that is ripe yet firm. Using over-ripe fruit can cause the final product to come out brown and sticky. Ripeness is about 2/3 ripe.

Photo: Mango is prepared for dehydration in the Solar Dryer.

TGB: How do we prepare produce for drying?
Produce shall be soaked in a bleach solution to remove microbial contamination (1 tsp bleach in 1 gallon water). Peel fruits and cut into appropriate sized pieces. The smaller the size piece the faster the drying time. As the size of the piece increases the time for drying grows exponentially.

Example: A slice or piece two times larger with take four times longer to dry. Experiment with your dryer to see what size piece is the best.

TGB: Doesn't that mean we will be eating bleach? 

There are alternative methods for sanitation, but bleach is the most available and inexpensive. One must remember that bleach is highly volatile. It evaporates into the air, so there is essentially no bleach on the product by the time we eat it. This is a standard practice in the food industry that many of us don't know about but owe our safety to.

 

Photo: Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha utilizes the Solar Dryer.

TGB: Does it work in the rain? How long does it take?
No.  The dryer should only be used on days with consistent powerful sun as to reduce the time required for drying. Depending on the results you may find it necessary to rotate the trays throughout the day so every tray gets equal amounts of direct sun exposure.

Drying should take about 12 hours of full sun power (possibly one day with good sun). Optimal temperature for solid drying is 110-120°F but 130°F will be the most effective temperature. Putting a thermometer in the dryer during processing is a  safe way of monitoring the efficiency of your dryer.

Keep a close eye on the produce towards the end of drying because drying happens at a faster rate just before it’s reached 10% moisture. To test for doneness you should see that vegetables at about 10% moisture will be brittle and easily can be broken apart.

Fruits should be soft and chewy, but test the moisture content to verify 5-8% moisture (refer to Principles of Solar Drying). There are a few quality issues that need to be considered when solar drying produce.

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For more information and detailed instructions on how to build your own Solar Food Dryerin Hawaii, download the Solar Dryer Manual here:

solar-dryer-manual-hawaii.pdf Download this file

Food Security and Food Culture

Photo: Mongolians work new potato fields in Zavkhan Province (2010), and are learning to grow vegetables because changing weather patterns are rendering ancient grazing patterns obsolete.

 

“Food security has been defined as ...access by all people at all times to sufficient food for an active and healthy life.

  Food security includes at a minimum: the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and an assured ability to acquire food in socially acceptable ways (without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing and other coping strategies for example).”

  [(Online), Dieticians Association of Australia, www.daa.asn.au (2006.)]

 

Food Culture refers to how we experience our food – from field to plate – and how it impacts our health, happiness, and sense of community. 

Perhaps the best way to explain the impact of food culture upon our wellness is to think of the way you feel, hear, smell, taste, and see another culture when you experience it through their cooking; so much of our cultural values are expressed in the way we grow, prepare, and share food.  Indeed, most of our major holidays and celebrations are centered around the experience of sharing a meal.

Food culture and food security are closely linked: threats to one affect, and are affected by the other.

A society which marginalizes the importance of celebrating and enjoying its food, also marginalizes the importance and richness of the living systems which support and create food.

The ‘fast food culture’ of modern society has distanced most of us from this richness of experience, with sobering results.  The Slow Food movement was spawned out of a response to the globalization of food production, and promotes sustainable food production by small local businesses to preserve and celebrate local and traditional food cultures.

A society which celebrates the importance and richness of its food culture, creates resilient, happy communities: there is much data to indicate that average reported happiness is consistently lower in countries with a pervasive fast food culture [such as the USA] than in countries such as Cuba, which embrace and celebrate a locally produced, organic food system.

When a community is unable to provide for its own food needs, individuals are disempowered, despair sets in, and food aid must be imported.  The community must be rebuilt with the knowledge and practical skills to produce enough of their own food to meet their needs, or a cycle of dependence can develop.

Agricultural yields are arguably at higher levels than ever in recorded history, yet in our world today, 1 out of 7 people will fall sleep tonight without access to enough food to lead an active and healthy life.

A solid understanding of food culture and food security issues are important to a wellness practitioner because it will equip you with a foundation to act on a local scale, and know that you are improving the wellness of humanity on a global scale with your contribution.

"Stupidity is an attempt to iron out all differences, and not to use them or value them creatively."

- Bill Mollison -

The long-term impacts of the modern conventional food system, which has only been in existence for the last 40 years or so, are only now starting to become more apparent.  Obesity levels and diet-related disease are at epidemic levels in the developed world, regional economies are being drained of their livelihoods by big agribusiness, while social and environmental impacts are being reported on by filmmakers, journalists, bloggers and other activists all over the world.

Once we understand the limitations and challenges created by the conventional food system, we can begin to identify opportunities to flourish within, while operating from outside the system: first, by producing enough of our own food to meet our survival needs, then to generate sufficient surplus to share in our local communities. 

It is here than we can access markets most efficiently, here that we can develop our most loyal customers, and it is here that the economic activities of our enterprise will make the most difference, because money will be cycled around local suppliers, distributors, and sellers to ehance and strengthen our community.

Photo: PermablitzHI, a vibrant community of people who share common needs and goals.

‘Market’ does not mean ‘places where we can sell crap’ to a permaculturist.  Instead, we view ‘markets’ as a vibrant community of people [think of your local farmer’s market], who share common needs that we can help to meet.

When we can identify and meet these needs responsibly, ethically, and sustainably then we are rewarded with surplus cashflows to reinvest into our people, our enterprises, and our community. 

For example, we can look for local heritage varieties of crops that have adapted to growing conditions in the area, and develop a niche demand for varieties that are unavailable on supermarket shelves because they may not be suitable for long-term transportation or storage. 

Or, we can look for high-value crops that can be integrated into our polycultures, increasing the biodiversity and resilience of our system, while increasing the diversity and resilience of our economic yield.

Photo: Hana Farms, an example of a Regenerative Enterprise, cycles economic energy back into the community it serves.

 

Only when when our enterprise is able to competently serve the needs of our local community, should we look to developing our system to generate further surplus.  We expand our operations and systems organically, by careful observation, continuous improvement, and constant adaptation to changing long-term trends; and always, always conduct ourselves with respect to the ethics of permaculture, which underpin all of our work.

It is vitally important that we look at what our land offers us, rather than impose our will upon the land.  For example, deciding arbitrarily that ‘I want to grow chamomile’ because there may be a market for it would not be in alignment with the permaculture ethic of Earth Care, while paying our employees less than a living wage would violate our ethical principle of People Care. 

Finally, hoarding all of our profits and not re-investing surplus back into our local communities not only serves to isolate ourselves from our basic need to connect meaningfully with other human beings around us, it would not honour the third ethical principal of permaculture: Resource Share.

 

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by Matthew Lynch
'Essays on Permaculture and Wellness'

Kazakh Food Culture v2.0 (Day 16)

Photo: Typical Kazakh restaurant meal; a typcial home-cooked meal would look more like a boiled & butchered sheep carcass...

Mongol-Kazakh food culture is predominantly dairy and meat-based, although Kazakh culture uses more vegetables, mostly in the form of pickled condiments.  Each meal we have eaten has been based around meat (boiled, fried, in meatballs, dumplings, off the bone, in sausages) and a starch (potatoes, turnips, wheatflour noodles, imported rice), with some sort of shredded pickled vegetable salad (carrots, cabbage, capsicum, onions).

While a vast knowledge of preparing & preserving meat and dairy products exists, there is relatively little knowledge (beyond storing root crops in actively heated cellars) about preparing & preserving vegetables.

Photo: Cultural evolution: men typically do not prepare meals for the family.

A class lecture was given about the microbiology of our foods, main pathonogenic (E.Coli, Salmonella, and C. Botulisus) & beneficial microbes (Lactobacilus, and Saccharomyces), and the lifecycles and microscopic processes of succession which take place within our foods.  Once a theoretical foundation was laid, a practical class was held to demonstrate food safety procedures, proper bottling technique, and how to initiate a lactobaccilic ferment.

Tomato chutney was made with tomatoes, onions, and salt, then bottled in sterilized jars collected & re-used from the course kitchen.  A lactobaccilic ferment was initiated using a basic sauerkraut recipie of salt, water, and cabbage (the same basic process is used to make kimchee, pickles, tsukemono, and many other traditional foods from many cultures).  The sauerkraut was taken home by a student to ferment over the next few weeks, to bring back and share with her classmates when complete.

These simple techniques could be used to extend the season's harvest through the cold winter months, boost nutrition (through lactobaccilic ferment), and create value-added food products which can be packaged and sold to local markets (niche markets could be created based on a family's secret recipie).  If a family was able to produce sufficient surplus vegetable produce, and effectively preserve them to last the winters, they could feasibly meet all of their dietary needs by trading their food products for their meat & dairy product needs.

As the Mongol-Kazakhs of Bayan Ulgii develop their own new & unique recipies for preparing & preserving their vegetable crops, adapting to changing climatic & cultural conditions, we will be witnessing the evolution of an ancient food culture before our very eyes:

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Photos: Masterchef Janibek prepares (and shows off) a bottled tomato chutney.

Food culture [Bayan Ulgii SEAL Project 2011] v1.0

via slideshare.net

Draft 1.0 of presentation to be used as teaching aid to facilitate learning module on Food Safety and Food Security.

The objective is to equip students with a basic technical understanding of causes and risks to food safety, as well as an understanding of how microbial life can also act as an aid to preserve crop harvest.

This theoretical session will be followed up immediately with a practicum on creating using lactobacilic fermentation to make sauerkraut, safe bottling and storage techniques, and basic food safety procedures in the kitchen.

image: Mongolian Permaculture 2010, we ate this.  I'm not kidding.  see for yourself here.

Mongolian Permaculture: Day 26 - Food Culture and Solar Ovens

SHOWING OFF COMPLETED SOLAR OVEN DESIGN

Ankle is swollen to the size of a tennis ball.

Two more treatments of salty tea compress and I am able to hobble around by afternoon on a walking stick Moko cut up for me from an orange painted ger pole.

Spent the morning simmering tomato chutney in the outdoor kitchen for Kat’s Food Culture class; creating value-added products such as chutneys, pickles and preserves that can be processed over winter can create higher proit margins, and extend the co-operatives productivity into the cold winter months.

1kg of cucmbers = 500MNT.
1kg of pickled cucumbers = 1500MNT.

There is 2-3 times more labour involved, and the additional cost of bottling materials, but the long winter season is currently an unproductive time, and proximity to local markets could also give them an edge against inferior goods imported from UB and beyond.

Chimgee plays her Mongolian hip-hop mixed in with Black Eyed Peas and Beyonce while we cook, and we have become friends through our conversations in very basic, very broken Mongolian-English-and-Mime… she has been tending to my wound as if she was my little sister. I am surprised to find out that she is 23 years old, as I had picked her for 16 or maybe 17.

Tsurren, one of the women I spent an afternoon digging irrigation trenches with, gives my ankle a very painful massage and laughs with the others at my howls of anguish.

In fact, the entire kitchen staff and co-operative workers and I are becoming friends through our very basic, very broken Mongolian-English-and-Mime – I love this, making friends across language, cultural and distance barriers…

The Solar Oven Construction group-workshop after lunch is a hit, with 4-and-a-half working ovens being made [vs. the planned 2] from waste cardboard, reflective foil bought in Tosontsengel, waste plastic, rocks, a woolen blanket, and even a washbasin we picked up. This is could be a highly appropriate and replicable technology for the area, given the scarcity of fuelwood and long daylight hours [in summer].

Some boys show up at the gates of the hasha again this afternoon with a fresh catch, and Rick is able to haggle them down to 8500MNT, about $8AUS for 18 pan-sized Mongolian trout…delicious.

Tetch and I buterfly fillet the lot of them, lightly salt and dust with flour, and fry to a crsip in the wok-pan for a late dinner. There is enough for Bek,The Program Director, Rick and I to eat our fill, and feed the remaining kitchen staff.

I can almost feel my ankle healing minute-by-minute as I sit here typing the daily log listening to my iTunes. There is an almost-full moon out tonight, wispy clouds glowing in the Mongolian night sky casting a dark outline of the surrounding hills. The dogs of Tosontsengel are quiet(er) tonight, and the buddhist temples on the hill glow with a pale white light.

Students are buzzing with activity, are showing no signs of slowing down, and the clock is ticking over to 11:30pm. Tomorrow they will present their final designs for the task Rick has set.

Mongolia’s first-ever Permaculture Design Course will soon draw to a close.

Mongolian Permaculture: Day 21 - Mongolian Spaghetti Carbonara and The Dilema of Chocolate Cake

THE CLASS MOUNDS POTATOES IN THE FIELDS

Cake is still being requested each time I walk past the kitchen ...which I spent the better of part of today in... first to prepare the Filipino-Style crispy fried salted fish that was devoured pretty quickly, then to figure out how to prepare a spaghetti dinner to feed 26 hungry Mongolians using the sparsely inhabbited spice rack.

In fact, the pantry is looking pretty sparse, and Rick's watermelon search in town [for Kat's seed-saving lesson] reveals that the recent heavy rains have chewed into the roads and delayed deliveries from Ulanbaataar. We are both hankering for some peanuts to break the monotony of fatty meat broths and noodle dishes, and have been put on text-alert by Mogi The Peanutman, the young Lolly-Shopkeeper who is going to text us as soon as his delivery arrives!

There are no tomatoes in town, the potato and turnip boxes are down to the scraggly dregs that would have been thrown out of most western supermarkets weeks ago, all the milk has been commandeered to make traditional milk vodka by a wealthy local to celebrate an up-coming wedding, and Rick picks through an garlic stocking full of dried husks to come back with barely a handful of cloves. Of course these come at the end of the day, as the kitchen serves up our Mongolian Carbonara Creation...

...we are out of butter and cream, and there are 3 small packets of dried red spaghetti sauce packets in the kitchen. There is no garlic in sight, but we do have 3 potatoes, 3 small tomatoes and 3 onions to work with. A bagful of mineral salt leftover from the fish fry, and I find an unused packet of powdered white pepper. Luckily Kat has brought a packet of sweet paprika from Australia in her vegetarian survival kit, and this just may have saved the day...

Of course there is no shortage of meat, which the cooks insisted be included in our dish, so we use an old [clean!] grinder to mix our onions in with our mince meat. This is then salted and peppered with paprika.

TOSONTSENGEL OUTDOOR KITCHEN

[NOTICE HOW (UN)IMPRESSED THE CHIEF COOK LOOKS WITH MY CULINARY SKILLS]

I find a piece of sheep's fat in the freezer which we slice thin shavings from and use to oil our pan. A large wok-shaped pan sits directly on the thin-iron, wood-fire stove - you turn the temperature up or down by adding or withdrawing more firewood - and once the fat shavings are crispy, in goes the mincemeat mix. Once this had cooked through and started to simmer in its own juices, we removed it from the wok-pan and set aside for our garnish...

Meat as a garnish? A scandalous, revolutionary concept in Mongolian cuisine!

More fat shavings are fried to season the pan since we have run out of butter, how am I going to make a carbonara sauce without butter and garlic? I caramelized some onions instead, then add the last of the kitchen's milk and the cooks gasps audibly.

The sauce winds up being pretty tasty: lots of mineral salt, the freshest, most organic milk on the planet, some white pepper and sweet paprika to pick it up, simmer for two hours and thicken with flour... One scoop of sauce poured over the pasta and garnished with a ladel-full of mincemeat to stretch our meagre rations to feed 30 very hungry people who have just come in from an impromptu working-bee in the potato fields [time to mound the potatoes again], and hey presto Mongolian-Carbonara-with-Meat-Sauce!

Kat forgoes her garnish and one of the herders quickly asks for her portion: 'Wheeeeeeere's the Beef?!?'

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Chocolate Cake.

Who am I to deny my newfound friends the simple pleasures of baking, and sharing a delicious, moist, melt-in-your-mouth Chocolate Cake?

Each time I walk past the kitchen, the question is plantively asked: "Cake?"

When I announce my intentions to teach the kitchen a simple chocolate muffin recipie with Kat, she is quick to point out her discomfort with introducing processed sugar into the diet of a culture not used to eating this kind of food. Have we really come all the way to Mongolia to introduce a part of western food culture that has only lead to epidemic diabetes and obesity rates?

Furthermore, neither sugar nor chocolate are locally available ingredients, having to be imported from tropical parts of the world - high cost goods in financial terms, but more importantly, extremely high-cost goods in terms of embodied energy.

Rick points out that we are here to teach Sustainability, not to be Jamie Oliver in the kitchen... and so agrees completely with Kat's stance.

Howzabout apple cake, I can rehydrate the dried apples bought in town and coat them in sugar to give a nice caremlized taste... when the Co-Operative starts growing apples, they can use their own produce in the recipie, and maybe even use their newfound baking skills to create a new micro-enterprise and income source. That's good, right?

Nope. Still using imported ingredients, and the processed sugar, so foreign to the Mongolian food culture, is very risky to introduce into their diet. Apples are at least 3-5 years away from production, and so won't be a locally available crop to utilize for quite some time. We can do better.

Perhaps carrot-cake, using carrots grown right here on the Co-Operative's plot, sweetened with locally harvested honey, or better yet, sweetened with a locally grown sugarbeet crop? Rick gives the nod, and so I begin my search for a good carrot-cake recipie ...I've never actually baked a carrot-cake!

In this way, we can meet the request of the community in a more responsible way, responding to their needs and wants a little more creatively - and perhaps opening the door to a new micro-enterprise [baking], or maybe even a new cash crop [sugarbeet].

It can be a slippery slope, this business of being more aware of our diet and consumption habbits. The more ecologically aware we become, the harder it can be to navigate our options, even in the Developed World ...perhaps even moreso in the Developed World...

...Organic is better than 'conventional' food production, but if it is produced organically in another bioregion and shipped thousands of miles to get to your door, than how 'green' is 'buying organic'?

A little deeper thought, a little more creatively problem-solving, and we can come up with better ways of living. I think it was Einstein, or perhaps Edison who summed this up best:

"Thinking is the hardest work these is. Indeed, that is why so few people engage in it."
-Einstein. or Edison. or maybe it was Benjamin Franklin...-

Mongolian Permaculture: Day 20 - 1st Design Presentations, Fishing, and A Feast For Kings

STUDENTS LEARN HOW TO USE AN A-FRAME TO FIND LEVEL

Using A-Frames to Find Level and Wicking Garden Beds on the prac list today.

Students were given their first design tasks yesterday and will be presenting this evening so that the Instructors can gague where everyone is at: what areas need more attention, which lessons/principles/tools have been understood best and worst, how people are working together, and which individual students need more attention in any areas.

Ater the pracs I spent much of the day in the outdoors kitchen, working with the cook to prepare some salad and tracking down ingredients to make a socially responsible cake. More on this later as I think it deserves an entire post to explore on its own, The Dilema of Chocolate Cake in Developing Countries.

FEAST FOR A KING

The very talented Michael [our principle translator] invited me to witness the traditional Mongolian livestock slaughtering technique ...HARDCORE.

The sheep is brought into one of the abandoned buildings to face his executioner. Michael takes of his shirt as he sharpens his knife: "Very Important," he says [the knife, not the shirt!].

Gunrick holds the animals back legs while Michael pins him with his leg as he crouches over its exposed belly, makes a small surgical cut just below the ribcage, then reaches into the live animal's organ cavity elbow-deep to sever its artery with his finger. The sheep kicks a few times and organs bulge out of the incision, pulsing with their last throbs as the life fades from its eyes.

Death comes quickly, and the Mongolians deftly push the guts back into the animal and begin skinning the warm carcass. It is a grisly thing to watch, very clean and efficient. No blood.

The animal bleeds to death internally, and the blood will congeal inside to be scooped out later for the broth and sausages. The organs are highly nutritious, highly prized and will all go into the broth for later.

The next part we had not seen before: the stomach and intestines are cleaned out, and the head and hooves scorched of their hair and scraped clean. The entrails are stuffed with the congealed blood, the stomach turned inside out and stuffed with the head and hooves of the sheep.

The fatty tail pad is scooped out, filled with meat, and sewn shut to be boiled next to the stuffed tripe for at least two hours: it is this part that was considered to be Chinggis' favorite meal ...a feast for kings.

I witness and participate in most of the preparation all day, and am picked up at around 6pm by 13-year old 'Gunner' and his little brother 'Huong', and their buddy 'Tetch' [that is the best I can do to pronounce their names!] while the students present their first design tasks to Rick and Kat.

FISHING BUDDIES, FROM L TO R:
'TETCH' AKA 'CHOJO', 'GUNNER' AND 'HUONG'

Gunner stopped by the hasha with about a dozen Mongolian Trout, which we butterfly filleted and salted this afternoon before heading to the river. Tomorrow we will fry them to a crisp and add some garlic and vinegar, Filipino-style. Fish and rice are now on the menu! I have enlisted Tetch help me with my Microfinance class on PDC Day 10 - hopefully he can design a logo for the Co-Operative by then...

It is about a 1 km walk to the river, and Gunner's halting English is good enough for us to have a pretty good conversation all the way there and back. He studies music and dance, likes basketball, soccer and volleyball, and has a very large family living in the ger encampment by the river in the distance.

I am determined to see one of the monster fish that lurk in the depths of Mongolian waterways, but as soon as I start signing that I want to hook the first fingerling he catches, Gunner puts his hands to his throat and signals that going for one of the big fish will mean certain death

So, me and my new fishing buddies stand at the river banks casting handlines hooked with grasshoppers into the current, and manage to pull out one pan-sized trout, and two small fries that the small fries wanted to bag.

We walk back to the hasha as the sun sets behind the hills and I play a little tune on the harmonica Rick has leant me for the trip. I'm not much of a player, but it is fun to walk home Huck-Finn-style from the river, and all of a sudden I am 9 years old again without a care in the world in the middle of Mongolia.

I arrive at the feast late and Rick is not impressed. Rightly so, as Michael has spent the entire day preparing a traditional feast reserved for royalty, and I waltz in with a few small fish on my back just as everyone is finishing up their meals.

We have been invited into their tribe, an extra-special effort is made to welcome us, and one of the guests of honor skips out on the feast. Not the right message to send to the group.

I will have a heart-to-heart with Michael tomorrow, and pay closer attention going forward... but geez it was fun today!