Nourish and Flourish Chocolate Edition

NOURISH Flourish

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THE ALLURE OF CHOCOLATE ECO-FASHION

MUSIC: THE LANGUAGE OF EMOTION

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Let the journey begin . . .

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”

~ Hermann Hesse

Herman Hesse (born July 2, 1877, Calw, Germany—died August 9, 1962, Montagnola, Switzerland) was a German novelist and poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. The main theme of his work is the individual’s efforts to break out of the established modes of civilization so as to find an essential spirit and identity.

Ancora imparo.

I am still learning. ~ Michelangelo ~

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Welcome!

Just as our title suggests, we want your experience to grow beyond the printed word. Throughout this edition we have included hyperlinks that will transport you to expanded content on the web.

We open doors to more information than the pages alone can contain.

We are offering you something new and interesting long after the publication hits your coffee table.

Our content is evergreen. Pick it up again, read it again, and click the links for new digital adventures between issues and beyond.

As always, thank you for joining us, and please share a copy with friends.

••• Publisher + Creative Direction Nancy (Suttles) George Photographer + Producer Morgan Rhodes

Better Living Through Smarter Choices.

Nourish and Flourish is a special interest publication dedicated to creating authentic, informative, and interactive content that inspires learning.

Published by Creative 3 Publishing, LLC a private, independent media company located in the United States.

All Rights Reserved. © 2024 Creative 3 Publishing, LLC. Copies are available for purchase online:

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Cover photo: Morgan Rhodes | Leaf photo: Nancy (Suttles) George

“Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.”

– Stanley Horowitz

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CONTENTS PART ONE: EARTH MATTERS 8 Art of Nature 10 Fantastic Fungi 20 PART TWO: EXPLORATION & DISCOVERY 32 Music: The Language of Emotion 34 Food + Music: A Recipe for Community 38 A Bridge 42 Hall of Fame: Heritage Radio Network 44

PART THREE: BACK TO BASICS 47 Where Has all the Flavor Gone?

48 The Allure of Chocolate 56 The Future of Chocolate 68 Cacao-Trace: A Sustainable Sourcing Program 72 PART FOUR: WITH NATURE IN MIND 77 Resident Dog: Incredible Homes and the Dogs that Live There 78 Piña 86 Eco-Couturier 88 Fibershed 92 A River with Soul: The North Umpqua 98 Stewards of the River 102 Disconnect to Reconnect: The Steamboat Inn 104 RECIPES Wild Mushroom Soup 30 T J’s Prime Rib Roast 41 The Original Toll House Cookie 65 Real Hot Chocolate 67 Pumpkin Apple Dog Treats 85 Chef Adam’s Smoked Chicken Thighs 107 Fig and Orange Preserves 109 Jalapeño Goat Cheese Cornbread 111

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Resident Dog: Incredible Homes and the Dogs that Live There, by Nicole England is featured on page 78.

Shown here are Harry and Daisy, half-siblings that look pretty similar and couldn’t be more different. Harry is a boisterous boofhead, while Daisy is reserved and a little judgmental.

Surrounded by lush landscaping, this home is full of clean Scandinavian lines, with Japanese and mid-century modern influences.

Breed: Cairn terriers Architect: Inarc, Fitzroy, Melbourne Photo © Nicole England. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson. thamesandhudsonUSA.com.

Photo by Nancy Suttles

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ONE: Earthmatters “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”

– Aristotle

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Detail shot of an “elephant ear” leaf. This the common name for a group of tropical perennial plants grown for their large, heartshaped leaves. Most of these herbaceous species in the arum or aroid family (Araceae) that are offered as ornamentals belong to the genera Colocasia, Alocasia, and Xanthosoma, although there are others that have similar appearance and growth habits.

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The Art of

NATURE Photos by John Slemp

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. ~ Richard P. Feynman, scientist and physicist, 1918 - 1988

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Art In Nature Gallery > Photos by John Slemp

Natural Armour P

ine cones are a true beauty of nature and they have a vital job: they keep pine tree seeds safe and protect them from the freezing temperatures during the winter. To protect their seeds, pine cones can close their “scales” tightly, keeping out cold temperatures, winds, ice, and even animals that might eat their precious cargo.

Pine cones were a dinosaur delicacy. Today, pine cones are prized food sources for squirrels, woodpeckers, and crossbills, but about sixty million years ago, they were a favorite meal of Parasaurolophus, the famous crest-headed hadrosaur (often referred to as “duckbill dinosaurs” because their skulls resemble modern ducks). Parasaurolophus had uniquely formed jaws and thousands of rows of teeth perfectly adapted to eat tough, chewy pine cones, which they savored in their Cretaceous marshlands habitat as fossils attest.

Did you know?

The pineal gland, the geographic center of our brain, is named for the pine cone because of its shape.

The pineal governs our body’s perception of light as well as our wake/sleep patterns. It receives the highest amount of blood flow of any organ in our body other than our kidneys. The pineal gland has been long considered our biological “third eye” and “the epicenter of enlightenment.” This may explain why pine cones have been exalted in religious imagery for thousands of years.

In 1600s Old English, the word “apple” was applied to coin terms for many fruits and flora including “earth apple” (a potato), “love apple” (a tomato), and “oak apple” (the round nut produced by oak leaves). “Pine apple,” was named for the tropical fruit’s resemblance to pine cones. “Pineapple” is the only one of these Old English terms that stuck.

You can eat pine nuts. Only 20 varieties of pine tree worldwide produce cones with large enough pine nuts for harvesting. The Korean Pine and the Chilgoza Pine of the Himalayas contain Asia’s best pine nuts. The Stone Pine produces Europe’s (and the world’s) most famous pine nuts. Pinyon Pines (which grow only between 6,000 and 9,000 foot altitudes) offer the finest pine nuts in North America and are largely harvested by Native Americans. Italians have been using pine nuts (“pignoli”) since the Middle Ages as a prime ingredient in pesto and desserts such as torta della nonna, and pignoli cookies.

Pine nut coffee (known as piñon) is a dark roast specialty of the southwestern United States (especially New Mexico). Pine cone jam (similar to honey) has long been a staple in Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia.

Made from the natural syrup of boiled soft, green, young cones, the tasty, aromatic jam is used as a folk remedy for weakened immune systems. Pine cone jam has been used for centuries to treat bronchitis, cough, asthma, respiratory diseases, TB, arthritis, and cancers. Cooks worldwide use the immature green tender pine cones as edible garnish, to season meat, or to slip into tea. Some pine needles are edible too and very similar to rosemary.

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Pinecones can stay on pine trees for more than 10 years before falling to the ground.

Eventually the seeds need to be released so that they can grow into new trees.

When the weather is hot and dry, the seeds will have an easier time finding good soil for growing into trees. In these conditions the pine cone scales will open, allowing seeds to escape and drift away.

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Art In Nature Gallery > Photos by John Slemp

Beauty Within W

hen most people think of sea urchins, they think of scary, spiny creatures that live on the bottom of the sea floor, but sea urchins come in many shapes and sizes. Sand dollars are scientifically classified in the order Clypeasteroida, and there are many varieties and species in that classification. These flat, bottom-hugging creatures are closely related to sea cucumbers and starfish, but their unusual appearance once they wash up on shore has fascinated people for centuries.

Sand dollars tend to live just beneath or on top of sandy or muddy areas, into which they burrow.

The life expectancy of sand dollars is, on average, 7-10 years. You can tell by looking at the rings on the bottom of their shell, just as you would measure a tree! When the sand dollars die, however, they are unable to hold themselves in place any longer. With the movement of the tides, these urchins are eventually unearthed and washed towards the shore. The hair on their outer shell will begin to fall away or be fed on by underwater scavengers. Finally, once the hard shell washes onto the beach, the remaining hair will disappear, and the sunlight will bleach the shell until it is nearly white.

These white sand dollars, with the unusual five-pointed design, are instantly recognizable and make for a great souvenir from your day at the seaside. That pattern on the shell is also telling of the urchin’s form; those five separate branches are the locations of pores on the shell, which allow for gas exchange that the urchin needs to live. However, once the shell is dry, it looks like a flower petal–or the shape of a starfish on top of a white rock.

The name “sand dollar” is a bit unusual, albeit memorable, and comes from centuries ago, when explorers began finding these unusual “rocks” on beaches. As they resembled the large coins in use back then and had a repetitive design, they earned their monetary-linked name. Some people even believed that they were a form of currency used by underwater creatures such as mermaids, who lived in the city of Atlantis.

Source: www.scienceabc.com/nature/animals/what-are-sand-dollars.html 14

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Art In Nature Gallery > Photos by John Slemp

Sandstone: the name itself is a contradiction.

Sand. Stone. The process of creating sandstone yields a surface that reflects the intense pressure it is formed under. The patterns created are simultaneously intriguing, unique, and mesmerizing if we will but observe. Mind you, observing is a more intense, more deliberate form of looking. Study the shapes, the colors, the patterns of this stone and challenge yourself to recall it in an hour, a day, a week from now.

Beauty is all around us if we just stop to notice.

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Art In Nature Gallery > Photos by John Slemp

Water Patterns

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences • www.pnas.org 18 Nourish Nourishand andFlourish Flourish

Seashell patterns are Nature’s way of depicting what a great artist (and mathematician) she is. How do seashell patterns look the way they do? We don’t completely know yet, but biology and math may be bringing us closer to the answer. Pattern generation on shells is a very special case of how complex organisms develop structure or how dynamic systems evolve.

Seashells display a remarkable variety of ornate pigmentation patterns. Accumulating evidence now indicates clearly that shell growth and patterning are under neural control and that shell growth and pigmentation is a neurosecretory phenomenon. Most of this evidence has been gained by detailed studies of the mantle, a tongue-like protrusion of the mollusk that wraps around the edge of the shell and deposits new shell material and pigment at the shell’s growing edge.

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Good Read > Fantastic Fungi Introduction by Paul Stamets

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Fantastic Fungi

Mushrooms are mysterious.

They come out of nowhere suddenly, with their splendid forms and colors, and just as quickly go away. Mushrooms’ startling appearances and enigmatic disappearances have made them forbidden fruits for thousands of years. Only a few of the cognoscente—the shamans, the witches, the priests, and the wise herbalists—have gained a glimmer of the knowledge mushrooms possess.

Why?

Left: This small-to medium-sized saprobic fungus, Flammulina velutipes, fruits in dense clusters during winter on both exotic and indigenous fallen or standing wood. It has a sticky pale yellow to rosyorange brown cap darker in the center, with a distinctively velvety stem that darkens from the base upward, without a ring and having attached, close gills.

Believe it or not, the “enoki mushroom” often found in grocery stores and restaurants, also called the “enokitake,” is a cultivated form of Flammulina velutipes.

It looks nothing like the wild mushroom, however; it is pale, long-stemmed, and tiny-capped. Photo by Bernard Spragg, New Zealand.

Photo by Nancy Suttles

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Fantastic Fungi > Introduction by Paul Stamets

The Magic Beneath Us I

An all-star team of professional and amateur mycologists, artists, foodies, ecologists, doctors, and explorers joined forces with time-lapse master Louise Schwartzberg to create The Magic Beneath Us, the life-affirming, mind-bending film about mushrooms and their mysterious interwoven rootlike filaments called mycelium.

What this team reveals will blow your mind and possibly the planet.

This visually compelling companion book, edited by preeminent mycologist Paul Stamets, expands upon the film in every way. Fantastic Fungi is at the forefront of a mushroom revolution.

Louie Schwartzberg is a visual artist and master storyteller whose groundbreaking films have inspired millions of viewers to celebrate life by taking them on journeys through time and scale.

t is natural to fear what is powerful, yet unknown. Some mushrooms can kill you.

Some can heal you. Many can feed you. A few can send you on a spiritual journey. Their sudden rise and retreat back into the underground of nature make them difficult to study.

We have longer periods of contact with animals and plants, and we usually know which ones can help or hurt us. Mushrooms are not like that. They slip into our landscape and exit shortly thereafter. The memory fades quickly, and we wonder what we saw.

Mushrooms are the fruit bodies of a nearly invisible network of mycelium, the cellular fabric beneath each footstep we take on the ground. Reach down and move a stick or a log, and you will see a vast array of fuzzy, cobwebby cells emanating everywhere. That’s mycelium, the network of fungal cells that permeates all landscapes. It is the foundation of the food web. It holds all life together. Yet these vast underground networks, which can achieve the largest masses of any organism in the world and can cover thousands of acres, hide in plain sight, silent but sentient and always working tirelessly to create the soils that sustain life.

Over thousands of years we have accumulated a large body of knowledge when it comes to edibles. Starvation is a good motivator for finding novel foods. Our ancestors quickly learned that some mushrooms are not only nutritious but delicious. Mushrooms provide protein and vitamins, and they can strengthen our immune systems. They have been critical in our species’ struggle for survival.

Many elderly people share joyous memories of going with their parents and grandparents on family trips into the forest to pick mushrooms. They have experienced that eureka moment of discovery and understand the challenges of identifying edibles and the danger of misidentifying toxic species. They know the reward and joy of a delicious meal foraged by their family from the natural world around them. Many mushroom patches are kept as family secrets, shared only with future generations. When each organism reaches the end of its life, it returns to the soil and continues replenishing the cycle.

Excerpted with permission for Earth Aware, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness & Save the Planet, Edited and introduction by Paul Stamets. It is the companion book to Fantastic Fungi, The Magic Beneath Us film by Louie Schwartzberg. mandalaearth.com

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Above: Lion’s mane mushrooms, Hericium erinaceus, are white, globe-shaped fungi that have long, shaggy spines. People can eat them or take them in the form of supplements. Research suggests that they may offer a range of health benefits, including reduced inflammation and improved cognitive and heart health. They can be found growing wild in the Pacific Northwest and New England.

Their flavor and texture are similar to crab or lobster meat: a sweet savory flavor and meaty, stringy texture.

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Fantastic Fungi > Introduction by Paul Stamets

Keeping Us Alive In all ecosystems, death and decay are the fundamental beginning of life. If a

forest never went through this process, it couldn’t regenerate. It would crowd near big trees, leaving few gaps for young ones. The big trees would suck up the light, water, and nutrients. Decay organisms like fungi are crucial for that process of regeneration. They are the building blocks of the ecosystem, the fundamental starting place for how a forest grows.

Forests are incredibly complex places with trees of many different sizes and compositions, depending on the type of forest. There are little trees coming up in the understory, and then there are the parents, the big trees that provide the seeds for the forest’s continued diversity and generational health. We call the biggest and the oldest of these trees Mother Trees because they are connected below ground to all the other trees around them—their community—by what we call a mycorrhizal fungus.

A mycorrhizal fungus is a special kind of organism that forms a symbiotic relationship with the tree. It wraps its fungal body around soil particles, extracting nutrients and water that it then brings to the roots of the tree. In return for this precious nourishment, the tree obliges the fungus by providing it with the sugars that the fungus needs to survive. These sugars are infused with carbon that the tree has accumulated through photosynthesis.

These mycorrhizal fungi form a network of threads that bond with the roots of other trees in the neighborhood and connect them all, no matter the species, like underground telephone wires. The biggest and oldest trees—the Mother Trees—have the largest root systems and the most root tips intertwined with these fungi, and they therefore connect with more trees.

We often think of kin selection or kin recognition as an animal behavior, but our research is showing that these Mother Trees also recognize their own kin— their seedling offspring—through these mycorrhizal networks and communicate with each other through carbon. Carbon is their universal language. The stronger trees support the weaker ones by regulating the flow of carbon between them.

Excerpted with permission for Earth Aware, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness & Save the Planet, Edited and introduction by Paul Stamets. It’s companion book to Fantastic Fungi, The Magic Beneath Us film by Louie Schwartzberg.

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THE MUSHROOM REVOLUTION IS HERE. “What is more important than fungi? Here’s my completely biased answer: Nothing. Fungi are the glue in the kingdoms of life that include insects, plants, and animals. They are what I call the first responders. They unlock doors. They are the keystone species. They make nutrients bioavailable for all the other organisms. They are hidden inside leaves, in our mulch, in the grass we walk on.

They’re on every continent and they’re very resilient.” > Tradd Cotter, microbiologist, mycologist, Environmental Protection Agency fellow, and co-founder, with his wife Olga, of Mushroom Mountain

Above: A pink oyster mushroom, Pleurotus djamor, that Tradd and Olga cultivated at Mushroom Mountain in upstate South Carolina.

Mushroom Mountain was co-founded by this husband and wife team, and they focus on the needs of the planet, developing food and systems for filtering water, creating prototypes for novel antibiotic discovery, isolating target-specific myco-pesticides to replace chemical pesticides for problematic insects, and many other projects that use fungi to harmonize our coexistence with nature.

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Fantastic Fungi > Introduction by Paul Stamets

Restoring Mother Earth If a Mother Tree knows there are pests around and her offspring is in danger,

she’ll increase their competitive environment. A good example is the Leucaena leucocephala (commonly known as the white leaf tree or river tamarind, among other names) that is native to southern Mexico and northern Central America.

When it senses a competing species, it releases a chemical into the soil that stops the competitor’s growth. It’s a magical thing, and it could not happen without the fungi.

We’ve always thought of plants and trees and fungi as essentially inert objects that don’t interact with each other, that don’t build things. But my work and others’ is showing that they need each other to share the load and grow as one: You do this, I’ll do that, and together we will thrive. This gives me incredible hope. Nature wants to heal itself; even if you try to make a bare space, plants will fill it in. They want to be there. They just show up and start doing their thing. So by maintaining and protecting the plants, the forests, and the fungal networks, we will help to support a beautiful, resilient community that is also a natural engine for restoring and maintaining a sustainable planet.

Excerpted with permission for Earth Aware, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness & Save the Planet, Edited and introduction by Paul Stamets. It’s companion book to Fantastic Fungi, The Magic Beneath Us film by Louie Schwartzberg.

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Above: Evidence of morels, Morchella esculenta, goes back to the Mesozoic Era when dinosaurs squashed them with impunity.

Thousands of species that lacked culinary appreciation have turned up their noses at them. And a study based on advanced DNA analysis has shown that this shameful indifference went on for 129 million years. Source: Nancy Weber, a researcher with the College of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University.

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Fantastic Fungi > Mycelium by Suzanne Simard

Mycelium: The Source of Life Mycelium is Earth’s natural internet.

~ Paul Stamets

What goes on beneath a forest floor is just as interesting–and just as

important–as what goes on above it. A vibrant network of nearly microscopic threads is recycling air, soil, and water in a continuous cycle of balance and replenishment. Survival depends not of the fittest, but on the collective.

Imagine a log that was a tree. Maybe it died of old age or became infected by a disease and fell over. When it did, fungi spread into the log from the earth below and started decomposing it. These fungi are part of a vast network of underground vegetation called mycelium, composed of very tiny, cobweb-like threads of organic life called hyphae.

When we see mushrooms, there’s actually a vast network of mycelium hidden in the ground beneath them. Only about 10 percent of all fungi produce mushrooms.

But when you pick a mushroom, you stand upon a vast, hidden network of fungal mycelium that literally extends underneath every footstep you take. These networks are the foundation of l ife.

Without this metamorphic process, the planet would choke. The only reason we can walk around in most woods is because thousands of species of fungi are decaying all of the organic detritus on the forest floor, recycling the dead material and beginning the renewal of life.

Excerpted with permission for Earth Aware, Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness & Save the Planet, Edited and introduction by Paul Stamets. The companion book to Fantastic Fungi, The Magic Beneath Us film by Louie Schwartzberg.

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Photo by Nancy Suttles

Above: A mycelium is a network of fungal threads or hyphae. Mycelia are of vital importance to the soil. They break down organic material, making its raw materials available again for use in the ecosystem. On top of this, 92% of plant families interact with fungi.

This kind of symbiosis is termed mycorrhiza. Hyphae are also an important source of food for insects and other invertebrates.

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Fantastic Fungi > Fungi as Food and Medicine for Plants (and us) by Eugenia Bone Eugenia Bone is a nationally known nature and food writer. She is the author of six books, including Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms and her latest Microbia: A Journey Into the Unseen World Around You. This recipe is from her chapter in Fantastic Fungi.

A few words about buying, storing, and cooking mushrooms.

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi, and as such, they should be purchased and stored much the same way as you would flowers or fruit. When buying mushrooms, look for the elasticity of youth in the texture and a lovely earthy smell. Like berries, do not wash them until you are ready to prepare them. Some species can be eaten raw, but not all–morels, for example, they will make you sick. When in doubt, cook mushrooms.

Wild Mushroom Soup Ingredients 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 cup onion, minced (about ½ large onion) 1 pound wild mushrooms―for example, porcini, chanterelles, hedgehogs, or maitake―sliced ¼ cup sweet Marsala or Madeira 1 tablespoon flour 4 cups chicken (or mushroom or vegetable) stock 2 sprigs fresh thyme 4 tablespoons mascarpone cheese (or heavy cream) Chopped fresh thyme for garnish Salt and freshly ground black pepper Method Melt the butter in a heavy soup pot over medium heat. Add the onions and cook them until they are soft, about 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and sauté them until they give up their liquid, about 15 minutes. Add the Marsala wine, cover, and bring to a boil. Remove the cover and allow the wine to cook out, about 3 to 5 minutes. Stir the flour into the mushroom mixture. Add the stock and thyme sprigs. Bring the soup to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the flavors meld.

Remove the thyme sprigs. Remove about half the mushrooms and grind them in a food processor. Return the ground mushrooms to the soup and combine. The soup should be about the consistency of corn chowder. If it seems too thick, add some more stock or warm water.

To serve, swirl a tablespoon of mascarpone into each bowl of soup and garnish with chopped thyme. Serves 4

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Lucknam Park Hotel is approached by a magnificent mile long avenue of four hundred lime and beech trees planted in 1827. It is located in Colerne, Wiltshire in the United Kingdom. The number one anecdote that staff members tell guests is that during World War II, the driveway was used to hide Supermarine Spitfires under the canopy. A ghostly reminder of days gone past.

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TWO: Exploration & Discovery In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration. ~ Ansel Adams

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Music: The Language of Emotion Sound is capable of producing very powerful reactions and emotions—whether it’s sudden anxiety caused by a snake’s warning hiss or the uncontrollable grin as a favorite song comes on the radio. Scholars have been fascinated by the relationship between sound and emotional states forever, and modern neuroscience has led to some fascinating advances in our understanding of why our ears and emotions have such a strong bond.

For thousands of years we have been telling stories with our voices to preserve information and cultural identity from one generation to another. Today, our voices still play an active role in our creative life, whether we intend them to or not. In addition to our voices, music is capable of producing some of the strongest emotional reactions in humans, whether it’s joy, sadness, fear, or nostalgia. The powerful connections between sound, music, emotion, and memory are driven by each individual’s personal experiences and preferences. It’s interesting to note that people from a diverse range of cultures and backgrounds will often agree on whether a piece of music sounds happy or sad. For this reason, music is often considered the universal “language of emotions.”

The idea of music as language is more accurate than it might first seem. When we hear music, our brains are imposing structure and order on a number of distinct sounds so that we experience them as a whole. It’s a perceptual illusion that changes what we hear, much as we don’t “hear” spoken language as a series of vocalizations. Instead, we hear the meaning of the words. However, music is much more rooted in primitive brain structures than language, structures connected with motivation, reward, and primal emotions.

There’s no strong scientific agreement on why music has such a powerful ability to conjure up the same images and feelings, even among different people with different memories. The appreciation of music involves a complex combination of the brain’s memory, language, auditory, and emotional centers all working together. Perhaps it’s simply this satisfying, harmonious brain exercise that gives us the pleasure response.

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All images © 2019 Blaine Scinta.

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Music: The Language of Emotion

By Alistair Jennings, Ph.D., neuroscience, University College London

From a simple, lonely melody

to an

intricate sonata, sometimes it feels like music can speak directly to your heart in a language that you don’t know but your emotions understand. And that’s because music is a language, the language of emotion. And I mean that literally.

Music has structure, progression, and syntax—just like language.

The brain even processes musical syntax using the same area it uses to process language syntax. Next time you hear someone speaking emotionally, listen to the acoustic characteristics of the voice. The person will mirror music of the same emotion: fast, loud, and high for excitement and happiness, slower and softer for melancholy. ~ Ali Jennings, Ph.D. in neuroscience University College London

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S

o, if music is a language, how does it convey its meaning? After all, it doesn’t have any words, does it? At the very basic, physical level, loud and fast noises excite us more than slow, quiet ones because our brainstem is tuned to attend to these kinds of noises in the environment.

Certain chords sound pleasant because of how we divide tones into different pitches: harmonically simple consonant chords, like majors, are easy to do this for, but harmonically complex chords, like tritones, are harder to distinguish. So, we find them dissonant. But these automatic brain mechanisms are only the beginning of how we read meaning into music.

Much of the emotional significance that we find in music comes from our own life experience. While still in the cradle, we learn to associate the music we hear with the emotional environment we hear it in, so a mother’s lullaby might imprint us with calm memories for major keys, while a lovers’ lament in A minor would remind us of breakups and ex-girlfriends. It wasn’t always this way, however. After all, western cultures have a very different appreciation of dissonance in Arabic music or in Indian ragas.

But we don’t just sense the emotions in music; we feel those emotions too. How? How can it force us to actually feel the same way?

One possibility is that once we’ve understood what the emotional content of the music is, this music activates a population of brain cells called mirror neurons. These cells mentally simulate behaviors that we perceive in the world around us, helping us with social understanding and empathy. In this case they allow us to empathize with the emotion of the music, triggering the same emotions in us by activating the limbic system—the emotion hub of the brain.

Another theory has it that the beat of rhythms and the frequency of soundwaves actually drive the intrinsic oscillations of neurons in the brain. Different groups of neurons synchronize their firing at different rates–some slower, around one to five times a second, others closer to 20 times a second. And different rates are associated with different mood states. Through auditory stimulation, music could drive neurons to fire at a specific rate, as though our brains are resonating to a beat that sets our overall mood.

Some of our most powerful responses to music come from expectation, tension, then resolution. But calculating something that complex requires much more of our brain’s vast processing power.

Humans are expert predictors. We are always trying to figure what’s

Much of the emotional significance that we find in music comes from our own life experience. going to happen next and why. As we listen to music, our brains are continuously trying to guess what’s coming up based on what we’ve just heard and on our experience of music over our lives. We can even see the moment we’ve realized the meaning in the music by a spike in the recorded electrical activity across the brain.

To make simpler harmonic and melodic predictions, we use our auditory cortex. But for more abstract syntactic and structural changes, we use the frontal lobes. These areas are heavily interconnected with the limbic system as well. It both aids in processing the music and adds emotional texture as information loops back and forth between the regions with the ebb and flow of the piece.

Using these circuits, our brains try to calculate what’s coming next. To judge the accuracy of those predictions, we use the brain’s reward system: dopamine. A correct guess gets a little pleasurable puff of dopamine, an incorrect guess gets nothing, and an unexpected, pleasurable resolution gets a great big burst! You know the thrill you get at a particularly beautiful musical moment, that chill that runs across your skin? You can predict when you’ll feel that from a rush of dopamine to the nucleus accumbens, a key node in the reward system.

The nucleus accumbens then triggers the physical response that you feel by activating the autonomic nervous system. So why did we become the musical species? No other animal makes music.

This is an evolutionary question that flummoxed Darwin and is still argued about today. It might be a great and lucky accident, a happy quirk of our brain’s development that it can appreciate this complex integration of sound waves. Or maybe there is something more. Music is exceptionally good at provoking emotion, far more than language is.

People with autism can have great problems perceiving emotion, but can have their limbic systems activated through music.

Communication of our emotional worlds through music could be as important for social cohesion as communication about the physical world is through language. It has been suggested that before music and before language, there was one mixture of the two that sounded across the savannah: musilanguage. That musilanguage split and specialized into two different forms of communication: one for ideas, one for emotion. Whatever the reason is, our ancestors have been playing music for longer than any of us knew. Recently, a bone flute from over 40,000 years ago was found near the Danube in Germany. Music is in our blood, our bones, and our brains.

Article reprinted with permission, Alistair Jennings, Ph.D., American Institution of Physics.

Right: Thomas Wainwright is a classically trained musician and original member of Pariah Recorders community in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Sarah Htun, used with permission.

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Creativity at Large > Pariah Recorders > Atlanta, Georgia

Food +Music A Recipe for Community

Throughout the course of human history, there have been two things that have never failed to bring a community together: music and food. At Pariah Recorders, an analog-equipped recording studio in Atlanta, Georgia, the combination proves even more effective, drawing together an enclave of artists and creatives just north of the city lights.

“Having a studio has always been a dream of mine,” studio owner Nick Magliochetti says. A guitarist, songwriter, audio engineer, and producer, he found music at a young age and played in bands throughout high school and college before making music his fulltime career alongside friends, bandmates, and partners: drummer Tylor “TJ” James, bassist Brandon Witcher, and keyboardist/vocalist Thomas Wainwright. “The community that came with it makes it even better than I ever could have imagined.”

Like the legendary Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Pariah Recorders has created a devoted community that calls it home after only a year of operation. “It’s part recording studio, part 24-hour diner, and part hostel,” Magliochetti says. “We’ve always got people in and out of here. The door’s always open.”

Boasting an analog-outfitted live room with in-house photography, publicity, booking, and artist management, the close-knit team runs the studio, manages the official site and social media channels, films the videos, and builds the studio fittings—like the custom console desk and tape machine case. The team also mans the grills outside when work is done, offering a fully immersive live, work, and play experience to the artists who come to write or record their next album.

Top Left: The original members of the Pariah Recorders community: Tylor “TJ” James, Thomas Wainwright, Brandon Witcher, and owner/operator Nick Magliochetti. Middle: One of the many microphones housed within the studio, a Stam Audio SA47 Condenser Mic. Click the QR Code to see demo videos. Bottom: One of TJ’s many t shirts supporting a local amplifier shop during a jam session.

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Boasting an analog-outfitted live room with in-house photography, publicity, booking, and artist management, the close-knit team runs the studio, manages the official site and social media channels, films the videos, and builds the studio fittings—like the custom console desk and tape machine case. The team also mans the grills outside when work is done, offering a fully immersive live, work, and play experience to the artists who come to write or record their next album.

The Pariah Recorder’s live room, and the famous White Falcon, played by Magliochetti.

All photos by Morgan Rhodes.

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Creativity at Large > Pariah Recorders > Atlanta, Georgia

Besides cooking up mouthwatering food, the addition of the Big Green Egg at Pariah Recorders contributed something most of the community hadn’t even realized they were missing: the chance to set aside the day’s tasks and sit together to share a meal.

“The Big Green Egg has been a real hit,” Magliochetti adds, as Witcher and James crowd over the smoker, where hickory and cherry wood smolder below a fifteen-pound prime rib roast. “TJ pulled an all-nighter a few months ago to make a brisket for a big dinner we were having. It was probably the best brisket I’ve ever had. He came up with the recipe for the rib roast, too.”

Besides cooking up a mouthwatering brisket, however, the addition of the Big Green Egg at Pariah Recorders contributed something most of the community hadn’t even realized they were missing: the chance to set aside the day’s tasks and sit together to share a meal.

“Everyone gets busy, and we’re running around trying to finish a million different things and maybe get a few hours of sleep,” Magliochetti says. “When you’re in the music industry or you’re running your own business, it’s hard to clock out and say, ‘I’m done for the day.’ We were all here—a lot of us live together—but we were hardly seeing each other.

When we were, we were busy doing something else.”

But that changed when the artists and musicians that called the studio home made it a tradition to gather together once a week and share a meal long after the days of family dinners faded into something hardly more than an idealistic daydream set in the 1950s. In a time where more and more Americans are eating out or eating alone and isolation and loneliness are at an all-time high, having the support of a community—a family—is nearly as necessary to a healthy existence as a nourishing meal or a good night’s sleep. In the music industry, it’s nearly impossible to survive without it.

“The Pariah community is all in it together,” Magliochetti says. “This is just another way to remind each other of that, and to share a good Top: The Pariah Recorders family, lining up for dinner. You met the guys, shown in this photo also are sisters, Luci (left) and Beau (right) both talented singers and recording artists, oh and Zooey tugging at her leash for what’s on the Big Green Egg. Bottom: A whole lotta love. Beau and Brandon with Zooey in her blue sweater.

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meal and a few laughs at the same time.”

TJ’s Prime Rib Roast

Ingredients 1 14 lb prime grade rib roast (for a large group - 25+ people) Dry Rub Salt Pepper Thyme ½ cup minced garlic Marindade Cherry hard cider of your choice Organic apple cider vinegar Garlic clove Method: Allow meat to reach room temperature prior to seasoning. Once it is at room temperature, generously cover meat with equal parts salt, pepper, and thyme; and then top with minced garlic. Combine equal parts cherry hard cider and organic apple cider vinegar in a spray bottle. Then add 1 whole garlic clove.

Set your Big Green Egg up for indirect heat cooking by adding the convEGGtor.

Light the Big Green Egg. Add cherry and hickory wood chips and bring temperature to 275° F. Place the meat, bones down, in the center of the grate and close the EGG. Open the Big Green Egg every 40 minutes and spray meat with the marinade. Be sure to open the lid very slowly and let the EGG breathe to allow proper ventilation.

Take the meat off the grill when it reaches an internal temperature of 110° F. Let the meat rest for 20 to 30 minutes.

Set the Big Green Egg up for direct heat cooking by removing the convEGGtor and letting the grill reach 550-600° F. Sear each side of meat for about 90 seconds.

Take off and let rest again for 45 minutes. Slice along the bones and enjoy with friends.

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A Bridge From the origin of the sound to the listener, here are some thoughts to ponder • When radio was “the” entertainment in the home, radio was a depiction of vaudeville acts on radio and sound effects used. Radio became the “theater of the mind.”

• Moving on to sound engineering in cinema, the early “talkies” opened new frontiers. But movies also made it very difficult as the viewers were no longer seeing in their own mind’s eye, but what the director was able to put on the big (and later, little) screen. Thus, movies evolved into today’s technology of stereo and cinema sound (think blockbuster action movie) that is heard and felt via frequencies in the sound spectrum.

• Books continue to be amazing works because they allow the reader to go beyond what can be transferred perfectly to the screen. It’s also a reason people get different reactions from books than from movies.

• Musicians, sound editors, and engineers determine why they write what they write by what reaction they are seeking from the audience/listener.

Every day, we are beset by millions of sounds-ambient ones like the rumble of the train and the hum of air conditioner, as well as more pronounced sounds, such as human speech, music, and sirens.

How do we know which sounds should startle us, which should engage us, and which should turn us off?

Why do we often fall asleep on train rides or in the car? Is there really a musical note that can make you sick to your stomach? Why do city folks have trouble sleeping in the country, and vice versa? In this fascinating exploration, research psychologist and sound engineer Seth Horowitz shows how our sense of hearing manipulates the way we think, consume, sleep, and feel.

Starting with the basics of the biology, Horowitz explains why we hear what we hear, and in turn, how we’ve learned to manipulate sound: into music, commercial jingles, car horns, and modern inventions like cochlear implants, ultrasound scans, and the mosquito ringtone. Combining the best parts of This is Your Brain on Music and The Emotional Brain, this book gives new insight into what really makes us tick.

Book available at: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-universal-sense-9781608198832/

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• The variations in sound/music/tempo/audio dynamics are all tools used to evoke emotion, motivation, stimulation, communication. The range and application of uses can be traced back centuries. These sounds range from what would be classified as primitive drumbeats and patterns to signal a tribal hunt to the soothing sounds of a string or wind instrument used centuries ago to modern motivation and stimulation heard in college fight songs or drum cadences. Even military parade, troop movement, and signaling uses sound/music/tempo/audio dynamics to set the tone and communicate unison messages.

• Think about WWII’s use of sound. While many have seen a military parade, the use of these sound concepts exists, and here’s how. Military troop movement on the ground wasn’t always mechanized in vehicles; troops marched a lot! How far could a unit be moved in a day, in an hour, while maintaining order?

• A military march tune (John Phillip Sousa or George M. Cohen) is played at 120 beats per minute.

• Military standard stride is 2½ feet per step (30 inches).

• At 120 BPM (beats per minute) the marching squad covers 300 feet (a football field) a minute.

• This translates to just under 3 ½ MPH (miles per hour). It is a condition pace that allows planned troop movement.

• A military unit marches 50 minutes and rests 10 minutes each hour. This pace allows planned movement and does not degrade the performance capability of the forces.

• Most college marching bands play these tunes and others at a quickened tempo which energizes their team and crowd. The driving drums are heard AND felt throughout the body.

• Rock bands and other musical artists also leverage tempo and rhythm. Styles evoke emotions beyond language. Why are foreign concerts so popular regardless of language sung? Not the language.

• Today’s subwoofers are felt more than they are sometimes heard; have you ever been next to a “thumper car” at a traffic light?

• Rambling on, here… ah!!!! Led Zeppelin, anyone? Listen to the transformation throughout “Stairway to Heaven,” with its emotion and tempo!

• So, this sound that is heard or more specifically listened to gets into a completely different space.

If you are not attending an event in person, something, some device, must be able to accurately reproduce the sound in such a way as to allow your brain to get back to your personal “theater of the mind” and experience the event as if you were there, but on demand and in your personal timeframe and availability.

This opens an entirely new conversation. As technology to reproduce sound was entwined with technology advancements in miniaturization, sound reproduction really became a highly technical space. As we moved from the original phonograph to the “furniture” console stereos, to components, tubes to transistors and capacitors, all the way to digital, things just keep evolving. Some high-end audiophiles believe that hum-free direct drive turntables remain best in class.

The speakers, that last piece of technology just before your ears transmit the vibrations to your brain, have also undergone remarkable metamorphosis. Although there may still be some “music rooms” in homes, we’ve taken a giant step in personal speakers, headphones, in-ear monitors, and even hearing aids adaptability. Each type of personal speaker has also gotten very technical in the environment that compliments it best, even to the point of having some headphones that generate “white noise.”

“White noise”? What in the world is that? Now we go back to biology of the human brain and body as it hears sound. Architects, audio engineers, scientists, and those disciplines studying the human brain discovered how sound wave amplitude (the vertical range of the sound wave) and the frequency (the horizontal range of the sound wave) can be masked with a direct offsetting pattern in the same space. In public spaces, you see waterfall features that mask shopping cart or crowd chatter. Those sounds help mask the otherwise unpleasant sounds the ear detects. In a very specific application, manufacturers have designed “noise cancelling” or “sound isolating” headphones for travelers, pilots, and other occupations where loud or annoying sounds can be neutralized.

A major step in the evolution of technology was the entrance of Bluetooth. Suddenly, people weren’t bothered with wires everywhere connecting their device to their speakers.

Home installation was easier, and traveling with headphones was easier. The interesting point some will make is that to get the very best sound reproduction, there must be wires.

The only way to be better than wires is to be with the orchestra in a perfectly balanced acoustic theater and drift away into the blissful sonata or concerto, middle row, stage center. Of course, this is all dependent upon the people around you remaining quiet and silencing their cell devices!

Scan codes to learn more about the story on this page.

Radio in the 1920’s up through WWII was a big deal in the home. Many listened to “Radio Programs”. The Lone Ranger, Amos & Andy, and scary programs such as Lights Out… all were popular, it was also a way for communication, as in FDR’s “fireside chats” to keep the people informed. If you are under 40 years old, ask your parents or grandparents, or search the web on War of The Worlds… a radio broadcast from 1938, meant to be entertaining, alarmed the nation into believing the earth was under attack from “Martians” (people from Mars)!

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Pioneer in Radio > Heritage Radio Network

Hall of Fame Celebrating the individuals whose accomplishments in agriculture, food, and beverage spaces have furthered Heritage Radio Network’s mission to make the world more equitable and sustainable.

What’s the best way to celebrate 10 years of being on the air? That’s the question Patrick Martins asked the team at Heritage Radio Network (HRN), the independent food podcast station that he started in 2009.

Ever since he enlisted a few audio tech students from NYU to turn two shipping containers into a recording studio in the backyard of Roberta’s Pizza in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Martins believed that a network of shows devoted to expanding the way people think about food and educating them about the real issues affecting our food systems could help start a badly needed revolution. Ten years in, he knew the milestone should remind people why nonprofit food radio is still essential: it gives voice to all the farmers, chefs, and activists who make the world a better place through their work.

So last December, HRN launched a Hall of Fame to honor the individuals whose accomplishments in the agriculture, food, and beverage industries have furthered HRN’s mission to make the world a more equitable, sustainable, and delicious place and who greatly inspire HRN’s hosts and listening community. Martins turned to Caity Moseman Wadler, HRN’s Executive Director, and her small but mighty team for help jumpstarting the project. “We loved this challenge,” says Moseman Wadler. “With an archive of nearly 14,000 episodes, we knew HRN could compile a list that’s diverse and deserving.This Hall of Fame list truly showcases what HRN is doing.”

Moseman Wadler encouraged the hosts from all of HRN’s 35+ shows, plus past and present members of the board, to take a listen down memory lane and choose Hall of Fame nominees from guests who’ve

appeared on the network over the years. This inspirational list is curated by some of the most respected names in food media. Current HRN hosts include Dana Cowin, former editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, Dave Arnold, the founder of the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD), and Jimmy Carbone, who has hosted more than 500 episodes of his popular show Beer Sessions Radio.

Since January 2019, HRN has unveiled a new crop of honorees on the website every month along with audio recordings from all of the Hall of Famers’ HRN appearances. To date, about 250 people have made the cut, a small percentage considering how many shows exist in HRN’s immense archives. These are available for free on HRN’s website or downloaded from top podcast platforms including Apple and Spotify.

HRN’s Hall of Fame includes household names: Tom Colicchio, Alice Waters, and The New York Times’ Florence Fabricant, as well as many less well-known heroes in the food world. This year’s honorees were also feted at HRN’s 10th anniversary gala at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in November. They received custom-designed honorary enamel pins: ten stalks of wheat surrounding a microphone to represent HRN’s 10-year history. They can wear the pin wherever important conversations about food are taking place.

HRN’s goal, of course, is to keep that kind of meaningful dialogue going forever. “We’ll continue to add more praiseworthy people to the Hall of Fame in the years to come,” says Moseman Wadler. “After all, HRN’s love of food, storytelling, and social justice is as strong as ever.”

Top left: HRN’s guests often dine on Roberta’s legendary pizza at the studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Photo by Patricia Brown. Top right: Longtime HRN host of Eat Your Words and Hall of Fame inductee Cathy Erway. Right page: HRN’s Hall of Fame inductees represent great thinkers across every aspect of the food system 44 Nourish and Flourish

Photo credits: Top Row: Alice Waters, Photo by Amanda Marsalis; Nat Bradford; Jessica B. Harris, Photo by Kristy May. Middle Row: Peter Reinhart, Photo by Ron Manville; Pierre Thiam, Photo

by Sara Costa; Dana Cowin, Photo by Lauren Salkeld. Bottom Row: Charlie Papazian, Photo courtesy Brewers Association; Priya Krishna, Photo by Edlyn D’Souza; Frank R. Reese, Photo by Jim Tunner.

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THREE: Back to Basics The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.

There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

~ Carl Sagan

Earth on a plate: wild chanterelles, morels, and peanuts. Many people are surprised to learn that peanuts do not grow on trees like pecans or walnuts. Peanuts are legumes, not nuts. The peanut plant is unusual because it flowers above ground, but the peanut grows below ground. Once peanuts are planted, yellow flowers begin to bloom. The flowers pollinate themselves. Once the petals fall off, the peanut ovary will begin to form and grow. It will grow down into the soil, away from the plant, forming a stem. The peanut embryo will penetrate the soil, turn horizontal to the soil surface, and begin to mature, taking the form of a peanut. Over its lifetime, the peanut plant will produce about 40 peanut pods before dying.

Peanuts are harvested between 120 to 160 days after planting when the farmer uses a machine called a digger. The farmer will drive the digger up and down the rows, using the blades to loosen the root and carefully shake the plant. The digger then gently lays the peanut plant back on the ground for the plant to dry. Lastly, a machine called a combine will separate the peanuts from the vines, putting the peanuts into a hopper and the vines back into the field. The peanuts go into wagons for curing and processing. Photo by Nancy George.

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An Introduction to Regenerative Agriculture

By Ron Nichols

Where Has All the Flavor Gone?

Science suggests that improving soil health can bring taste and nutrient density back to our food.

You see the red, tempting slice of delicious on your sandwich. It was labeled “tomato” in the produce section of the supermarket where you picked it up. It certainly looks like a tomato and even has the faint, familiar smell of tomato. But after just one bite, your taste buds aren’t buying it. Meh. Blah. It might as well be a slice of water-filled balloon for all the flavor it offers.

This reaction seems to be increasingly familiar. And it’s not just the tomatoes that betray our sense of taste and smell. When it comes to most commercially grown fruits, vegetables, and meats, consumers across the country are increasingly asking, “Where has all the flavor gone?” Have our taste buds been dulled, or is something more nefarious stealing the taste from our food?

Science suggests it’s probably not the food itself, but how we grow the food that matters most when it comes to increasing taste and nutrition.

Research now shows that what passes as food and what actually tastes like food is most affected by a secret that’s hidden under foot.

For some time, we’ve known that a single teaspoon of healthy soil contains more life (bacteria, protozoa, fungi, nematodes, worms, etc.) than there are people on the planet. The soil biome is the single largest on earth, but is among the least understood. This mostly unseen and largely underappreciated ecosystem is responsible for all terrestrial life.

Simply put, without our living soil, there would be no “us” or any other terra firma creatures roaming about.

Today, scientists exploring this subterranean frontier are working not only to identify the microscopic organisms that make up this elegant ecosystem, but also to more fully understand the complex interactions and symbiosis between these organisms, the plants they feed, and the plants and animals that ultimately feed us.

The tie that binds: Healthy soil The inner connectivity between plants and animals is enabled wholly by soil. So the soil’s health is the key to healthy plants, animals, and humans. According to Allen Williams, Ph.D., soil is also largely responsible for both the taste and nutrient density of our food.

“Mineral density in any food is critical to the flavor profile that a consumer experiences,” Williams says. “The greater the mineral density, the more intense the flavor.”

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A sixth-generation farmer/rancher, Williams is a former animal genetics researcher and current regenerative agriculture consultant with the Soil Health Academy and Understand Ag, LLC. He also serves as the Chief Ranching Officer at Joyce Foods, a family-owned, regenerative agriculture-based food company headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Williams spends much of his time teaching other farmers and consumers about the wideranging benefits of soil-health improving regenerative agricultural practices. Chief among those benefits is enhancing food flavor. “Many of our conventionally produced foods are bland in flavor due to their lower mineral content,” he says. “Minerals are imparted by the soil and soil microbes into the plant. Animals eat the plants and convert those nutrients into the protein or meat we eat.

Poorly mineralized soil equals poorly mineralized plants, equals poorly mineralized meats, equals poor flavor profiles. It is truly that simple,” Williams says.

Williams says he and his associates have tested soils from farms all over the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. More than 80 percent of those farms have soils that are deemed “unhealthy.” “Soils that lack abundant, diverse microbial populations and activity cannot have a properly functioning mineral cycle,” he says. “So the plants being grown in those soils will be lacking in mineral density, and this even includes foods that are grown as ‘certified organic.’”

Regenerating our soil, restoring food flavor Williams says regenerative agricultural principles focus on restoring and enhancing soil health by using farming practices that create more diverse soil microbiological communities. The resulting farming practices allow food growers to create an ideal subterranean home for these flavor-delivering soil microbes. These nature-mimicking principles include the following.

Limiting soil disturbance Unlike conventional farming methods, regenerative farming shuns the plow, but instead uses no-till planting techniques to limit soil disturbance. As a result, soil organic matter, soil structure, and the environment in which soil microbes thrive remain intact. No-till

Photos © 2019 Nancy Suttles

Photo by Nancy Suttles

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Because soil microbes solubilize and impart minerals to plants, they are the key to the health of both plants and animals. Consequently, healthy soil, teeming with billions of soil microbes, is the key to food flavor. planting preserves not only microbial habitat, but also the intricate network of plant health-supporting mycorrhizal fungi. These delicate fungi form symbiotic relationships with plant roots and reach out far beyond the plants’ own root systems to deliver water, minerals, and even information from other plants back to their host plants, warning them of impending disease or pest infestations so the host plants can initiate advanced protective action.

In addition, by avoiding soil disturbance, the microbe- and rootdeveloped pores within the soil remain intact, allowing more water to infiltrate deep into the soil profile, banking precious moisture for drier weather periods. “The combination of higher soil organic matter and superior soil aggregation is why healthy soil is far more resilient to weather extremes like droughts and floods,” Williams says. “When you think about it, nature doesn’t plow, so why should we?”

Keeping the soil covered Both living and decaying plants provide valuable protection for the soil from the elements, so regenerative farmers rarely, if ever, allow their fields to “be naked.” The protection afforded by plants and plant residues reduces or eliminates wind and water erosion and helps moderate temperature extremes, which are detrimental to soil microbe health.

“Not surprisingly, we tell our farmers, ‘Don’t farm naked,’” Williams says.

Keeping living roots in the soil Regenerative farmers know that nature abhors a void. Rarely do bare soils exist in nature. “If you plow your garden and don’t plant a thing, just see how long it takes for nature to cover that ‘soil wound’ for you,” he says. “It won’t take long, and you’ll see the void being filled with vegetation. It may not be the vegetation you want, but nature will cover the soil.”

Scientists have known for some time that microbes feed plants, but Williams says we now know that roots aren’t simply straws. “It’s a carefully orchestrated, two-way exchange, with plants providing sugar-rich exudates through their roots to attract and maintain diverse microbes around their roots,” Williams says. “In fact, plants may spend up to 40 percent of their carbohydrate reserves in exchange for the nutrients and protection microbes provide to them in this symbiotic underground economy.”

Consequently, regenerative farmers plant diverse cover crops between and sometimes in concert with their commercial cash crops to continually feed the microbes that feed their crops. Cover crops have the added benefit of suppressing weeds, providing pollinator habitat, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers, increasing soil organic matter, and, as a climate plus, sequestering more carbon in the soil profile.

Photo by Ron Nichols

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FROM THE SOIL TO YOUR FORK. Consumers are becoming more interested in where their food comes from, how it is produced, processed, and transported. That means everyone in the food industry need to be increasingly transparent about all of those factors.

Photo by Nancy Suttles George

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Photo by Sam Carter

Mixing it up Nature is diverse and collaborative. But the industrial agriculture model has been built on monocultures and competition. The focus on growing wide swaths of single crops, often produced year after year in the same locations, sets the stage for a range of unintended, detrimental consequences, including the proliferation of plant pathogens and pests.

Regenerative agricultural practices mimic nature’s diversity by rotating a wide range of cash crops and by integrating multiple cover crops and animal species throughout the entire farming operation. This infusion of plant and animal diversity disrupts plant pathogen and pest infestations and provides habitat for beneficial predatory insects and pollinators.

Growing healthy soil and animals together Long before humans populated the planet, plants, animals, and soil evolved and thrived through an elegant and efficient exchange of nutrient commerce that benefitted all three. Plants fed both the soil and the animals. The animals (through their waste) fed the soil, which in turn fed the plants. It wasn’t until the introduction of fossil fuel-based, synthetic fertilizers in the mid-twentieth century that all of that changed.

For a time, it appeared as though science was able to exceed the production capacity of nature. Indeed, synthetic fertilizers (and the mining of carbon-rich soils) produced a never before imagined bounty throughout the industrial agriculture era. But that bounty continues to come at a cost, including off-site environmental impacts like hypoxic (dead) zones in our oceans and cyanobacteria outbreaks in our lakes— the result of fertilizer runoff from our farms. In addition, the industrial agriculture model is heavily reliant upon chemicals that have known detrimental impacts on insect populations as well as the plants, animals, and humans that come in contact with them.

Regenerative agricultural practices, in contrast, put back in place the natural symbiotic relationships between plants, animals, and soil.

In so doing, these practices ameliorate the adverse environmental and climate impacts of industrial agriculture as well as restore the nutrient density and flavor to our food.

“To put it simply,” Williams says, “If we correct our soil health problems, then we will correct our mineral density and flavor issues in our foods. The health of the soil holds the key to human health, our planet’s health, and the flavor of our food.

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Animals, plants, and soils have played a synergistic role together over geological time. In recent years, animals are playing a reduced role due to being placed in confinement, and fewer farms now include livestock as part of their overall operation.

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“In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are a series of little silver waterfalls in the moon.”

- Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois, on January 6, 1878. His parents, August and Clara Johnson, had emigrated to America from the north of Sweden.

“Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg,” said a friend of the poet, “is like trying to picture the Grand Canyon in one black and white snapshot.” His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg “the one American writer who distinguished himself in five fields: poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music.” Sandburg composed his poetry primarily in free verse.

A self-styled hobo, Sandburg was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, had six high schools and five elementary schools named for him, and held news conferences with presidents at the White House.

“My father couldn’t sign his name,” wrote Sandburg; “[he] made his ‘mark’ on the CB&Q payroll sheet.

My mother was able to read the Scriptures in her native language, but she could not write, and I wrote of Abraham Lincoln whose own mother could not read or write! I guess that somewhere along in this you’ll find a story of America.”

Source: www.poetryfoundation.org

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PhotoNourish

by Nancy and Suttles Flourish George 55

Story by Ray Lyn Hixon

The Allure of Chocolate

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T

Chocolate:

There are few foods that people feel such passion for, a passion that goes way beyond the love of eating something sweet. Chocolate is in a class of its own. Just the thought of chocolate can evoke a real desire and pleasurable response. When you ask around, very few people dislike chocolate. As a matter of fact, most people love chocolate and have a very particular sense of what kind of chocolate they like best. You may want to dig into your chocolate stash or make a delicious cup of hot cocoa before you begin reading this story.

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he story of chocolate begins with a tree, a small tree of the tropical understory. It grows in the forest to a height of 6 to 12 meters (20 to 40 feet). Its oblong, leathery leaves measure up to 30cm (12 inches) in length. Cacao trees are found in limited geographical zones. These trees grow only in hot, rainy tropical areas within 20° north and south of the Equator. They thrive in areas that receive rain almost daily and have temperatures that average 80°F year-round.

According to Cornell University, in 1735 Linnaeus designated this tree Theobroma cacao, a scientific name that handily links two ancient cultures a world apart. Theobroma, the genus name, is from the Greek and translates “food of the gods,” a designation that chocolate lovers would agree is fitting. Although Linnaeus was reputedly fond of chocolate, he would have been familiar with early Spanish writings describing the Mayan and Aztec beliefs that cacao was a gift from the gods. Cacao is the Mayan root word retained by the Spanish colonizers of Mesoamerica to describe the tree and its products.

Its flowers are either foul-smelling or odorless; they can be present at all times, but appear in abundance twice a year. The flowers grow in clusters directly from the trunk and limbs and can be white, rosy, pink, yellow, or bright red, depending on the variety. They are pollinated exclusively by tiny flies called midges.

Because of the hazards of disease and pests, most of the world’s cacao is grown on small, labor-intensive farms of less than two hectares (five acres) instead of on large plantations through which these hazards can rapidly spread. However, even with the protection of their isolated farms, cacao growers frequently experience losses ranging from 30 to 100 percent of their crops, usually because of disease. Other tree crops such as banana, palm, or rubber are often planted with the cacao to provide shade and wind protection for the young trees. Floral buds are removed from the trees until they are five years old. Commercial cocoa bean crop yields may vary from under 100 to over 3,000 kg per hectare (110 to 2,700 pounds per acre), with the world average being between 340 and 450 kg per hectare (300 to 400 pounds per acre).

After four years, the mature cacao tree produces fruit in the form of elongated pods; it may yield up to 70 such fruits annually. The pods, or cherelles, range in color from bright yellow to deep purple. They ripen in less than six months. Each pod has numerous ridges running along its length and holds 20 to 60 seeds or cocoa beans arranged around the long axis of the pod. The oval seeds are about 2.5 cm (1 inch) long and are covered with a sweet, sticky white pulp. The plant itself has no mechanism by which the pods can open and the seeds disperse; only humans in stands of domesticated cacao, or monkeys or squirrels in stands of wild or feral cacao can open and disperse the seeds.2 The True History of Chocolate, page 21. The animals are most likely attracted to the sweet pulp, not the beans, which are made bitter by alkaloids. The seeds, called cocoa beans, are processed into cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and chocolate.

Cocoa flowers either smell bad or are odorless; they can be present at all times, but appear in abundance twice a year. The flowers grow in clusters directly from the trunk and limbs and can be white, rosy, pink, yellow, or bright red, depending on the variety. They are pollinated exclusively by tiny flies called midges.

Above: A Theobroma cacao tree, photo courtesy of Puratos, an international group offering a full range of innovative products, raw materials, and application expertise to the bakery, patisserie, and chocolate sectors. Their headquarters are just outside Brussels, Belgium, where the company was founded in 1919. The Puratos Cacao-Trace is the only sustainable cocoa sourcing program that redefines the standard for chocolate. More than any other program, Cacao-Trace benefits the cocoa farmers. By working side by side, Cacao-Trace empowers cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast, Vietnam, The Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Mexico to obtain the highest possible income and to manage their plantations with greater autonomy.

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For some 3,500 years this delicious confection

has been at the center of world history. From its beginnings around 1500 B.C.E. as a ceremonial drink in the ancient Olmec, Maya, and Aztec

cultures to its multifaceted forms and uses today, the story of chocolate leads us on a fascinating journey through many places and times.

The Story of Chocolate Many people believe that the Aztecs first developed chocolate in the 16th century, but it was actually the ancient Maya, who inhabited parts of southern Mexico and Central America. In fact, the word “cacao” is Mayan. As early as 500 A.D., the Mayans were writing about cacao on their pottery. Some think chocolate may be even older, dating back to the Olmec civilization that preceded the Maya.

According to history.com, in the 1500s Spanish conquistadors such as Hernán Cortés, who sought gold and silver in Mexico, returned instead with chocolate. Although the Spanish sweetened the bitter drink with cane sugar and cinnamon, one thing remained unchanged: chocolate was still a delectable symbol of luxury, wealth, and power.

Chocolate was sipped by royal lips, and only Spanish elites could afford the expensive import. Spain managed to keep chocolate a savory secret for nearly a century, but when the daughter of Spanish King Philip III wed French King Louis XIII in 1615, she brought her love of chocolate with her to France.

Chocolate grew popular among the kings and queens of France, and confectioners were appointed by the nobles and the royal family to make their daily cup of chocolate. Confectioners, thus, were highly trained and regarded in this period. King Louis XIV was known to be a great lover of chocolate. He was the first one to introduce chocolate to the Court of Versailles.

When Marie Antoinette married King Louis XVI and arrived at Versailles, she brought along her personal chocolate maker. She started the day with a cup of thick hot chocolate topped with cream. She is also the one who started consuming chocolate with some sugar so that it toned down the bitterness and became easier to take in (when meant to be taken as a medicine). The popularity of chocolate quickly spread to other European courts, and aristocrats consumed it as a magic elixir with salubrious benefits.

Top: Aztec men at a feast from The Florentine Codex, is a 16thcentury ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún.

Bottom: Frontispiece illustration for New and curious treatises of coffee, tea and chocolate, Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, 1685.

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Top: Archaeological evidence shows cacao beverages were consumed at least as early as 1000 B.C.E. This example from nearly 2 millennia later is one of only three known of a type of squat jar with screw-on, locking lids. The lid that once fit this vessel has not been preserved. It has four glyphs in the ancient Maya language around the outside. Three describe the place of origin, owner, and shape of the vessel; the fourth–illustrated above–is the glyph for “cacao,” confirming its ancient function as a chocolate pot. From Art of Africa and the Americas, Minneapolis Institute of the Art. Right: When Marie Antoinette married King Louis XVI and arrived at Versailles, she brought along her personal chocolate maker. She started the day with a cup of thick hot chocolate topped with cream. She is also the one who started consuming chocolate with some sugar so that it toned down the bitterness and became easier to take in (when meant to be taken as a medicine).The popularity of chocolate quickly spread to other European courts, and aristocrats consumed it as a magic elixir with salubrious benefits.

Above: Chocolate grew popular among royal families during the 1600s. The Family of the Duke of Penthièvre (“The Cup of Chocolate”). By Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the Elder was a French Rococo portrait painter, associated with the Royal Court. He is best known for portraits of Marie-Antoinette and Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre. He also painted members of the Duke’s family. His early works were mostly genre scenes.

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The first people to grow cacao trees were the Maya, one of the oldest civilizations on the American continent. They used the cocoa beans as a barter currency to exchange for food or clothes as well as for preparing a bitter drink known as Xocoatl, which was nothing like the hot chocolate that we drink today. This beverage was made of roasted and ground cocoa beans mixed with water and spices. The chocolate-flavored drink was reserved for the nobility and for warriors.

The spread of the cacao tree started during the age of Colonialism, as did the spread of cacao beans and of chocolate itself. Christopher Columbus was the first European to come in contact with cacao. On August 15, 1502, on his fourth and last voyage to the Americas, Columbus and his crew encountered a large dugout canoe near an island off the coast of what is now Honduras. The canoe was the largest native vessel the Spaniards had seen. It was “as long as a galley” and was filled with local goods for trade—including cacao beans. Columbus had his crew seize the vessel, its goods, and its skipper as his guide.

As one of the men with Columbus observed, “They seemed to hold these almonds [referring to the cacao beans] at a great price; for when they were brought on board ship together with their goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen.”

What Ferdinand and the other members of Columbus’ crew didn’t know at the time was that cocoa beans were the local currency. In fact, in some parts of Central America, cacao beans were used as currency as recently as the last century. While it is likely that Columbus brought the cacao beans he seized back to Europe, their potential value was initially overlooked by the Spanish king and his court. Twenty years later, however, Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez is said to have brought back three chests full of cacao beans. This time the beans were recognized as one treasure among the many stolen from the conquered Aztecs.

An officer serving with Cortez observed Motecuhzoma, the ruler of the Aztecs, drinking fifty flagons of chocolate a day. The frothy beverage, which was sometimes made with water and sometimes with wine, could be seasoned with vanilla, pimiento, and chili pepper. It was thought to cure diarrhea and dysentery and was believed to be an aphrodisiac. Cortez is said to have tried the beverage, but found it too bitter. He did, however, write to King Carlos I of Spain, calling “xocoatl” a “drink that builds up resistance and fights fatigue.”

Soon chocolate would make its way across the Atlantic—first to Spain and then to the rest of Europe. The first official shipment was made in 1585 from Veracruz to Seville. When the Spanish first brought chocolate back to Europe, it was still being served as a beverage, but soon went through an evolution where the chili pepper was replaced by sugar. The newly sweetened chocolate

beverage was a luxury few could afford, but by the 17th century the drink was common among European nobility.

During the 17th century, when Belgium was still ruled by the Spanish, explorers brought cocoa beans from South America and introduced them to the Belgian community. At the time, cacoa beans were mostly used to make “hot chocolate” for nobility or to impress new visitors. Henri Escher, the mayor of Zurich, was served a cup of this delicious drink when visiting the Grand Palace of Brussels in 1697. He immediately fell in love with it, took the recipe home with him, and introduced his own country to chocolate. Switzerland is now considered Belgium’s biggest competitor regarding the production and distribution of chocolate.

During the 18th century, Dutch merchants controlled virtually the entire trade in cocoa beans. Amsterdam developed into the most important cocoa port in the world and thereby stimulated a local cocoa industry. As cacao became more commonly available, people began experimenting with new ways of using it. Chocolate began to appear in cakes, pastries, and sorbets. But it wasn’t until 1828 that the “modern era” of chocolate making and production began. Coenraad Van Houten, a Dutch chemist, invented and patented a hydraulic press removing most of the cocoa butter from the processed beans, leaving a powdered chocolate. To improve the powder’s ability to mix with liquid, Van Houten treated it with alkaline salts, a process which became known as “Dutching.”

The introduction of cocoa powder made creating chocolate drinks much easier; cocoa powder also made it possible to combine chocolate with sugar and then remix it with cocoa butter to create a solid. Others began to build on Van Houten’s success, experimenting to make new chocolate products. In 1849, English chocolate maker and Quaker Joseph Storrs Fry produced what was arguably the world’s first eating chocolate.

The greatest innovation came when they devised a means of mixing cocoa powder with sugar and cocoa fat into a paste which could be molded into a bar. This was the first chocolate bar in Britain. It transformed chocolate from a drink into a portable snack. In 1866 they produced their famous cream bar and also the first pure cocoa powder called Chocolate Essence.

Call-out source: National Bank of Belgium Museum, www.nbbmuseum.be

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After four years, the mature cacao tree produces fruit in the form of elongated pods; it may yield up to 70 such fruits annually. The pods, or cherelles, range in color from bright yellow to deep purple.

They ripen in less than six months. Each pod has numerous ridges running along its length and holds 20 to 60 seeds or cocoa beans arranged around the long axis of the pod.

Photo by Nancy Suttles George

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Chocolate played an integral part in World War II. The military in the first half of the 20th century had a problem. Men were fighting on the front lines in conditions where field kitchens could not be established.

Sustenance would have to be shipped in, and it would have to be compact and portable. It was to this end that Captain Paul Logan, of the office of the U.S. Army Quartermaster General, turned to chocolate.

DID YOU KNOW? During WWII, US soldiers from Massachusetts who were stationed overseas shared the Toll House cookies they received in care packages from back home with soldiers from other parts of the US. Soon, hundreds of soldiers were writing home asking their families to send them some Toll House cookies, and Ruth Wakefield, creator, was soon inundated with letters from around the world requesting her recipe. Thus began the nationwide craze for the chocolate chip cookie.

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Chocolate in the American Colonies Chocolate arrived in Florida on a Spanish ship in 1641. It is thought that the first American chocolate house opened in Boston in 1682.

Historians have located shipping records from the late 1600s detailing imports of chocolate beans from Jamaica, and a 1773 ship’s manifest lists a shipment of 320 tons of cocoa beans. That’s enough to make 32 million cups of chocolate! Bonbons and brownies came later, but it turns out that chocolate was a source of pleasure for the seemingly abstemious Puritans. (source: newengland.com) Captain Newark Jackson opened a chocolate shop in Boston’s North End in the 1740s. He was a member of the Old North Church and a successful mariner and merchant. His wife Amey maintained their home and shop while raising their children. Today, you can visit Captain Jackson’s Historic Chocolate Shop in the Clough House at the Old North Church in Boston.

According to the Boston Globe, the first chocolate made in this country was manufactured in 1765 in Dorchester Lower Mills by John Hannon and James Baker, who brought cocoa beans home from the West Indies. Baker’s Chocolate is still a staple of home bakers everywhere.

And “white chocolate”? It’s another local creation, thanks to Frederick Hebert of Herbert Candies in Shrewsbury, who concocted the creamy confection by mixing sugar and milk solids with cocoa butter.

Then there is Ruth Wakefield, the founder of the famous Toll House cookie. In 1930, she accidentally invented this cookie at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. A former dietitian and food lecturer with a passion for quality cookery, Ruth was experimenting in the kitchen one day when she decided to take a bar of Nestle semisweet chocolate and break it up into bits, which she added to a butter drop cookie batter. When she took them out of the oven, she was surprised to see that the chocolate hadn’t melted, and the firm bits gave the cookies a unique (and addictive) crunch. She liked the texture so much she called them Chocolate Crunch Cookies and added the recipe to her collection. The chocolate held its shape and creamy texture and voila: The chocolate chip cookie was born. The recipe, published in Boston newspapers, became an immediate hit, and Nestle began selling chocolate morsels in 1939. With Ruth’s permission, Nestle began printing the recipe on the bar’s wrapper. In 1939, they started selling the chocolate bits in their own in bags, calling them “morsels.” The recipe, nearly identical to the original Toll House Cookie recipe, is still printed on each bag today. As the story goes, Mrs. Wakefield received a lifetime supply of chocolate chips in exchange for her recipe, which still graces the packages today.

By 1773, cocoa beans were a major American colony import, and people of all classes enjoyed chocolate. During the Revolutionary War, chocolate was provided to the military as rations and sometimes given to soldiers as payment instead of money. Chocolate was so esteemed as a medical supply that in 1780, Continental Army surgeon Dr. James Mann sent a desperate letter to the military hospital in Danbury,

One of the great inventions of the 20th century . . .

The Original Toll House Cookie

Ingredients 1 cup unsalted butter, plus more for baking sheets ¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar ¾ cup granulated sugar 2 large eggs, beaten 2 teaspoons baking soda dissolved into 1 teaspoon hot water 2¼ cups sifted all purpose flour 1 teaspoon table salt 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) 12 ounces (2 cups) semisweet chocolate chips 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Method Preheat your oven to 375°.

Cream the butter and sugars. Add the beaten eggs. Add the baking soda dissolved in hot water.

Sift together the flour and salt and add to the butter mixture. Then stir in the nuts, chocolate chips, and vanilla. Chill the dough [Editors’ note: We usually skip this step].

Drop by the tablespoonful onto lightly greased cookie sheets and bake until browned at the edges, 10 to 12 minutes.

Ruth Graves Wakefield (June 17, 1903 – January 10, 1977) was the inventor of the Toll House Cookie, the first chocolate chip cookie, which she created c.1938. She was also a college graduate and educator, a business owner, a chef, and an author. She was educated at Framingham State Normal School Department of Household Arts in 1924.

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Saved by a Kiss • Milton Hershey and his wife Kitty had booked a first-class cabin on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, but they had to cancel their plans at the last minute due to business matters. They were perhaps saved by a kiss, so to speak.

• There are a reported 80 million Hershey’s Kisses are produced in one day.

• Because Hershey was unable to have children, he decided to found the Milton Hershey School in 1909. About $60 million was left to the school after Hershey died, and before his death he made sure that 30 percent of all future Hershey profits would go to the school. Today, the school, which provides free boarding, education, health care, and counseling to 2,000 students from lower-income families, has more than $7 billion in assets.

• While it’s not known exactly how KISSES got their name, it is a popular theory that the candy was named for the sound or motion of the chocolate being deposited during the manufacturing process.

Sources: The Daily Meal, The Candy Professor, and Hershey’s

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Connecticut requesting “cortex” (a kind of tree bark) and a “pound of chocolate for the use of the wounded men at this place.”

During World War II, the snack that helped power the Allies before, during, and after the D-Day invasion on the beaches of Normandy was Hershey’s chocolate bars. In 1937, the U.S. Army approached the Hershey Company about creating a specially designed bar just for its emergency rations. According to Hershey’s chief chemist Sam Hinkle, the U.S. government had just four requests about their new chocolate bars: They had to weigh 4 ounces, be high in energy, withstand high temperatures, and “taste a little better than a boiled potato.” The army didn’t want the bar to be so tasty that soldiers would eat it in nonemergency situations. The final product was called the “D ration bar,” a blend of chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, skim milk powder and oat flour.

The viscous mixture proved too thick to move through the normal chocolate bar manufacturing setup at the Hershey plant, so initially each bar had to be packed into its 4-ounce mold by hand.

Today, military chocolate is issued to troops as part of basic field rations and sundry packs. Chocolate rations served two purposes: as a morale boost and as a high-energy, pocket-sized emergency ration.

Military chocolate rations are often made in special lots to military specifications for weight, size, and endurance.

19th Century and beyond The Swiss are famous for their chocolate, and rightly so. In the late 19th century, they developed a number of processes that contributed greatly to creating the solid chocolate candy that we all enjoy today.

Two major developments occurred in 1879. First, Daniel Peter, a Swiss chocolate manufacturer, had the idea of using powdered milk (invented by Swiss chemist Henri Nestle in 1867) to make a new kind of chocolate: milk chocolate. Chocolate had come a long way during the 19th century; however, it was hard to chew. In 1879, another Swiss chocolatier, Rudolf Lindt, invented the conch machine which mixed and aerated chocolate, giving it a smooth, melt-in-your-mouth consistency that blended well with other ingredients.

By the late 19th century and early 20th century, family chocolate companies such as Cadbury, Mars, Nestle, and Hershey were massproducing a variety of chocolate confections to meet the growing demand for the sweet treat.

It was Jean Neuhaus (ironically, from Switzerland) who first put Belgian chocolate on the map. In 1857, he moved into a pharmacysweet shop in the Galérie de la Reine in Brussels, where he sold plaques of dark chocolate. Gradually, the apothecary transformed into a real sweet shop, and the first praline was created there in 1912. The bite-size hollow chocolate shell was filled with a sweet filling invented by Jean’s grandson (also named Jean), who also invented the Ballotin, the box in which pralines are wrapped. The Jean Neuhaus store still exists to this day and is deemed a must-see when visiting Brussels.

Real Hot Chocolate Ingredients 2 cups whole milk 2 tablespoons sugar 6 oz dark chocolate (chopped) ½ teaspoon cornstarch ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract whipped cream (optional) marshmallows (optional)

Method Combine milk and sugar in a medium saucepan on stove over medium heat. Bring to a boil, whisking periodically. Add chocolate and continue whisking. Then add cornstarch, still whisking. When the cornstarch and chocolate are entirely melted, add vanilla and bring the mixture to a second boil. This will make it smooth and flavorful. Turn off the heat as soon as it starts to bubble. Pour the hot chocolate immediately into two mugs. Top with whipped cream and marshmallows. Hot Chocolate may be stored in the fridge for several days and reheated over medium-low heat.

Flavor Notes: You may use bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate. If using milk chocolate, reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe. Add an old-fashioned peppermint stick after pouring hot chocolate into mugs and allow it to melt. If using skim, 1% or 2% milk, use 1 ½ cups of milk and ½ cup of heavy cream. Stir in a teaspoon of peanut butter or add a pinch of sea salt. Try cinnamon and nutmeg. Celebrate the season by adding bourbon, brandy, spiced rum, Irish cream, or dry red wine.

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The Future of Chocolate: The Bittersweet Reality essential ingredient to achieve sustainability is that farmers Modern-day chocolate production comes at a cost. As many most come to regard their work as honorable and valued and that their

cocoa farmers struggle to make ends meet, some turn to low-wage or slave labor (sometimes acquired by child trafficking) to stay competitive.

This situation has prompted efforts for large chocolate companies to reconsider how they get their cocoa supply. It has also resulted in appeals for more “fair trade” chocolate created in an ethical and sustainable way.

The challenges to the meet rising demand for chocolateconsuming markets such as North America, Asia, and Europe are overwhelming. Cocoa is grown on plantations concentrated in a small number of developing countries across Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. Production is fragmented among many small family farms whose owners typically earn a subsistence living.

The condition of cocoa farmers, the disparities in the distribution of value across the supply chain, and the supply-demand imbalance pose significant concerns. The solution requires the involvement of everyone who loves chocolate. (source: Puratos) According to Dr. Kirsty Leissle, author of Cocoa, there is today a far wider, more exciting range of chocolate bars available than we knew even a decade ago, and consumers can exercise a certain amount of ethical practice in buying them. Putting faith in a blueand-green Fairtrade label alone is, perhaps, too simple. Through their different models, Fairtrade-certified companies, direct-trade companies, and artisanal producers are pushing each other to rethink standards for the entire chocolate industry.

In her book, Leissle asks what the future of the industry holds.

African growers are fighting the threat of changes in the climate and of cocoa diseases. Multinationals, meanwhile, still want access to a cheap product. So, what is to be done? She argues that the

children see the worth of staying in the business. As for those of us who are far removed from the point of production, the book is an educational reminder that, in the author’s words, “chocolate starts on a tree.”

How can you make a change? You can ask that chocolate makers and retailers provide straightforward information about their products. Ask some hard questions about the chocolate on your store shelves: how much did farmers earn for the cocoa in this bar? Was it higher than the world market price or about the same? What country did the cocoa beans come from? Expect to get correct information, and if someone answers you “Switzerland,” start shopping somewhere else. (Source: Dr. Kirsty Leissle, Author of Cocoa) According to Research and Markets, the global chocolate market is forecasted to reach USD 139.94 billion by 2024. The global chocolate market is highly competitive, with the presence of numerous leading players accounting for the major share. The increasing demand and growing popularity of dark and organic chocolates are fuelling the market’s growth. Furthermore, the seasonal demand plays an important role in the chocolate sales.

Various companies are launching a wide range of chocolate varieties during occasions.

For craft chocolate makers, there are many exciting things on the horizon. Each year at the Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle, Washington, artisan chocolate makers from all over the world come together to share their latest creations while offering attendees many educational programs.

Sources: A Brief History of Chocolate, Smithsonian.com • Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry • The Food Empowerment Project • Chocolate-Making Conch • The National Museum of American History • Chocolate Use in Early Aztec Cultures • International Cocoa Association • History of Chocolate: Chocolate in the Colonies • The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation • The Bittersweet History of Chocolate • Time • What We Know About the Earliest History of Chocolate.

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Chocolate knows no boundaries; speaks all

languages; comes in all sizes; is woven through

many cultures and disciplines . . . it impacts mood, health, and economics, and it is a part of our lives from early childhood through elderly years.

— Herman A. Berliner

Photo by Morgan Rhodes

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Photos courtesy of Puratos Group

1

No matter what the level of technology, the following basic sequence has been in force

for at least four millennia and still is followed in the modern world.

Harvest and Fermentation Photos 1-4: Workers typically harvest and cut open the pods using a machete to expose the beans. Each pod usually contains 30 to 50 beans. The beans and pulp are removed from the pod and placed in wooden boxes or on banana leaves and covered.

The beans will start to ferment and the “sweatings” drain from the boxes or banana leaves. During this process, the chocolate flavor develops in the beans. The fermented beans are then left to dry in the sun before being bagged and shipped.

Drying Photo 5-6: Once the fermentation is complete, the beans are dried, traditionally on mats or trays left in the sun for typically about two weeks, depending on the weather. During this time, the beans lose more than half their weight, and the enzymatic action initiated by the fermentation process continues.

Roasting Roasting lasts from 70 to 110 minutes and is necessary for the development of flavor and aroma. During this step, owing to chemical changes and further loss of moisture, the nib becomes a richer brown, more friable, and even less astringent.

Winnowing Next, the outer shell of the beans is removed. Then the machines or workers break the cocoa bean meat into small pieces called “cocoa nibs.” The roasting process makes the shells of the cocoa brittle. Cocoa nibs pass through a series of sieves, which strain and sort the nibs according to size in a process called “winnowing.”

This is where the thin shell is peeled off and removed.

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Photos courtesy of Puratos Group

Cacao-Trace: A Sustainable Sourcing Program Imagine a region where each cocoa farmer grows, harvests, ferments, and dries his own cocoa beans. Each

will use his or her own skills and customs to produce different types of cocoa beans with different qualities to make chocolate. This is what commonly happens. Although fermentation seems by no means to be of the highest priority among many companies in the cocoa industry, that process is key.

The chocolate industry traditionally focuses on an increased quantity of dried cocoa beans, but CacaoTrace takes a different approach. This sustainable cocoa-sourcing program was founded by Puratos and aims for chocolate with superior taste. The program focuses on creating value for all through taste improvement. Improving fermentation via post-harvest centers in sourcing regions is key to delivering a superior taste for chocolate lovers and more income to the cocoa farmers.

Based on years of research, new criteria for the fermentation process have emerged. Growers collect the finest fresh beans and bring them to Puratos centers who ferment them. It allows Puratos to produce consistent high quality. Experts take control of the natural fermentation process to let the beans’ original taste potential develop. They closely monitor the whole process and adapt the fermentation sequence, time, moisture, and temperature. This level of control allows Puratos to produce only the specific flavor combinations desired–even different chocolate flavors made from the same beans.

As fermentation is an essential step in producing delicious chocolate, fermentation makes the difference between average and superior quality. Properly controlled fermentation is the key to great tasting quality chocolate, much as guided fermentation in wine produces high quality. After the successful introduction of Cacao-Trace in Vietnam, Ivory Coast, and the Philippines, Puratos recently launched the program in Papua New Guinea in June 2019. Mexico, its fifth region, has now started to ferment with Cacao-Trace standards. Its first chocolate will be produced before the end of 2019.

The Cacao-Trace program has all the elements of sustainable certification programs such as farmer field training, fair pricing, and diversification of the farmers’ production and revenues. Cacao-Trace does not stop there. Additionally, every year farmers receive an added Chocolate Bonus. Per kilo of Cacao-Trace chocolate sold, C14¢ (10 eurocents) goes to a Chocolate Bonus Counter which is redistributed every year entirely among members of the cocoa farmer community.

The goal is to inspire at least 50 per cent of its customers to switch to Cacao-Trace chocolate solutions by 2025.

Puratos is also looking to set up two new post-harvest centers in cocoa-producing regions yearly, thereby also considerably growing the number of farmers supported.

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“The Cacao-Trace program goes far beyond the average industry standards for sustainable chocolate by creating value throughout the supply chain, starting with the cocoa farmers down to customers. We are there on the ground, alongside farming communities to coach farmers to grow higher-quality cocoa and give guidance to run plantations in a more sustainable way.” ~ Liesbet Vandepoel, Director of Marketing for Puratos Canada

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Photos courtesy of Puratos Group

It all starts with the farmers...

The focus on superior-tasting chocolate contributes directly to better living conditions for the farmers and their communities. The farmers pictured are part of a network of 7,800+ farmers supported by Cacao-Trace. Puratos helps them create more income thanks to higher quality beans, and Puratos collects 10 cents per kilo of chocolate sold on their behalf. The farmers benefit from individual coaching to grow higher quality cocoa and receive guidance to run their farms in a more professional way.

Once the farmers have collected the fresh cacao beans, the beans taken to a Cacao-Trace post-harvest fermentation center, giving farmers extra time to spend on other crops on the farm. Thanks to the high quality of beans, they get an additional quality premium. In addition, the farmer receives an extra Chocolate Bonus every year. This amount can add up to an additional 1 or 2 months of salary.

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FOUR: With Nature in Mind The esoteric qualities of nature have become a living dream filled with subtleties that only she can provide, a lesson so long in the learning, a vision just now being seen. When I look into this setting , I see the realization of nature and humanity becoming one.

~ Ryan Gainey

Left: Shot on location at the late Ryan Gainey’s home in Decatur, Georgia by Nancy Suttles George in 2015. “He was my friend and collaborator,” says Nancy. “I miss his phone calls and wicked sense of humor.” He was one of the most celebrated American garden designers of the past three decades. He grew up in rural South Carolina, where he developed a deep love of plants from his relatives and neighbors. After coming to Atlanta in the 70s and opening three beloved garden shops, he began to design gardens around the city and eventually around the the world. He died in July 2016 in Lexington, Georgia. Scan code to learn more.

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Resident Dog: Incredible Homes and the Dogs that Live There. By Nicole England Just as every home is different, so is every dog. In this stunningly photographed book of architecturally superb houses—many of them architects’ own homes—readers see ho the presence of a dog brings warmth and life to the most dramatic spaces.

“Photographing people’s homes on a regular basis, I soon realized that the shoots I enjoyed most were the ones where dogs were present,” writes author and photographer Nicole England. “It didn’t matter how imposing the architecture, how serious the home owner, or how earnest the architect might be, some doggy hijinks could immediately bring an element of sociability, authenticity, and fun to the day.

Seemingly oblivious to the designer furniture, heritage considerations or serious design aesthetics, dogs can make themselves at home anywhere, and make any room feel more like home.

e Sensitive and responsive, Skipper has a knack for reading the mood of the household. He is a best friend to everyone: engaging, comforting, and surprising. Breed: Border collie.

Architect: Handelsmann + Khaw Hunters Hill, Sydney All photos © Nicole England. Book cover courtesy of Thames & Hudson

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Stewey is sweet, very loving, and extremely cheeky. If he could talk, he’d probably ask, “What’s with the weird stairs?”

Breed: French bulldog. Architect: Austin Maynard, Northcote, Melbourne.

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For the most part, Charlie is a relaxed, easygoing kind of guy. Breed: Spoodle. Architect: SJB Melbourne, Blairgowrie, Victoria.

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A typical lab, Canela is loyal, warm, playful, and happy. Offering unconditional companionship, she brings a reassuring, positive energy to this serene modernist home. Breed: Labrador. Architect: Andrés Casillas de Alba with Evolva Camberwell, Melbourne.

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Above: Cookie has her very own futon to sit on, which she likes placed so she can view all entrances and exits to the house.

As long as she can keep an eye on the goingson of the household, she’s content. Breed: Labradoodle. Architect: Cavill, Foritide Valley, Brisbane.

Right: There are plenty of interesting nooks and crannies for precocious, indefatigable Harry to explore in this inner-city sanctuary. Breed: Toy poodle. Architect: Jackson Clements Burrows, Elsternwick, Melbourne.

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Pumpkin Apple Dog Treats Purchase all organic ingredients when possible.

Ingredients 3 cups oat flour 1 cup pumpkin puree 3 large eggs 1 medium apple, grated Method Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl combine oat flour, pumpkin puree, 2 large eggs and apple. If dough is sticky, add more flour.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

Lightly flour a work surface. Using a rolling pin, roll dough to ¼-inch thick.

Cut shapes with cookie cutters and place on the lined baking sheet. Mix the last egg in a small bowl and brush on to each cookie with a pastry brush. (optional)

Pumpkin is a great source of fiber for our furry friends, as well as for us. Apples also help clean residue off a dog’s teeth, which freshens their breath. Apples are a also a good source of fiber as well as vitamin A and C. Notes: To keep treats on hand that freshen your dog’s breath, split dough into two halves before rolling and add 1 tbsp of fresh mint leaves and 2 tbsp of parsley leaves to one of the halves.

Use a sweet apple like Fuji, Ambrosia, Gala, Golden Delicious or Red Delicious. For an even sweeter treat, add 2 tsp of honey.

No oat flour on hand? Place 2 cups of organic rolled oats in a food processor and pulse until ground. Small bits left in the flour are fine as dogs don’t mind it. For a finer flour, add 1 cup of rolled oats to a blender. Process in small batches for better results.

Bake cookies for 25 minutes until golden brown. Adjust time depending on your oven. Turn off oven and allow cookies to cool inside of oven for one hour. This will make them crunchier.

Remove from oven and cool completely. Store cookies in a sealed container for two weeks in a refrigerator, or freeze for up to three months.

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Culture and Tradition > Philippine Textiles

By Leena Oijala

Piña

Considered the finest of Philippine textiles, the piña fabric is made from the fibers of the leaves of the red Bisaya pineapple, ananas comosus, through an arduous process.

Originating in the Philippines as a lightweight option for their

hot and moist island climates, pineapple fabrics and their lustrous qualities are catching the eye of luxury and couture designers.

Although pineapple fabrics were first created in the Philippines, the pineapple plant actually originated in South America around the region of Paraguay. In the 16th century, Spaniards invaded the Northern Philippines and planted pineapple plants they had discovered in the Americas since they deemed them to do well in the tropical climate.

The Spanish settlers also had a long list of demands to establish among the native Filipino population, one of them being that all should be fully clothed from head to toe. This was understandably ridiculous and impractical to the indigenous peoples, who had for centuries maintained their local wisdom and lack of bodily shame through staying comfortable and cool by baring all. However, since the Spaniards had the advantage of armaments, the natives decided to adhere to the pressure to wear garments and devised a way to weave cloth from the newly planted pineapple plants. Having developed methods for weaving cloth from their native banana and abaca leaves, the Filipino population discovered similarities between the sheath leaves of all three plants.

Through experimentation, they realized how pineapple leaves rendered a gossamer fabric that was diaphanous, breathable, and had excellent cooling properties. Ideal for the tropical climate, the material also managed to meet the European standards for being properly clothed.

Weaving the pineapple leaves into this graceful fabric continued and rapidly rose in popularity among European fashion circles by the 19th century. Parisians in particular coveted the fabric, and in 1850

Filipino officials gifted a petticoat and undergarments made from pineapple fabric to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of the British Empire. The material was held in favor until the cheaper and more easily obtainable option of cotton overtook the textile industry by the end of the 19th century.

The process of obtaining pineapple fabrics is long and arduous, due to the fact that it is mostly done by hand. The leaves are first soaked to soften the plant gums, then scraped to obtain the fibers, and hung to dry in the open air. Once waxed to remove tangles, they are then knotted and spun into a lustrous, white yarn.

As pineapple yarn is extremely delicate, working and weaving with it requires precision and patience. The resultant fabric is a glossy but slightly stiff, ivory-colored material that is considered one of the finest materials made by the Philippines. It is also used for their ceremonial Barong Tagalog outfits.

Pineapple fabric is known as piña (the Spanish word for pineapple) and can be woven in combination with other fibers such as cotton, banana leaf, silk, and polyester. The fiber takes natural dyes very well, and is usually dyed without the use of chemicals. The glossy surface of the material also eliminates the need for toxic treating agents, since it acts as a protective layer for the fabric in itself. Softer than hemp and better in quality than raw silk, piña is like a lightweight, lustrous, and smooth linen material. As an added bonus, it is easy to wash, not requiring dry cleaning.

Although these qualities make piña the perfect material for ethereal clothing, it is expensive due to the time and skills involved in processing. It has therefore caught the eye of luxury fashion designers such as Oliver Tolentino, a Filipino.

Reprinted with permission: http://ecosalon.com/fiber-watch-its-ripe-time-to-pull-out-the-pineapple-leaves 86

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Considered the finest of Philippine textiles, the piña fabric is made from the fibers of the leaves of the red Bisaya pineapple, ananas comosus, through an arduous process. The fibers are ivory-white and naturally glossy.

The cloth is translucent, soft, and fine with high luster. Piña fiber is often blended with cotton, abaca, silk, or polyester to create wonderfully light, breezy fabrics.

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Manila | Beverly Hills > Oliver Tolentino: Eco-Friendly Fashion on the Rise

Eco-Couturier

Creating exhilarating fashion with responsible products

To illustrate the use of piña fabric, we shine a spotlight here on Oliver Tolentino, the premier Filipino-American fashion designer working with these fabrics and promoting them on the international stage from his namesake boutique in Beverly Hills, California.

Tolentino is best known for an “Old Hollywood” style and the use of bold colors, complicated cuts, understated silhouettes, and couture finishes that bring out the feminine figure. While the designer works in all types of fabrics, he’s found a niche in eco-fashion working with native Philippine fabrics (piña, abaca, Manila hemp, silk cocoon), some featuring time-consuming calado embroidery. The piña and abaca plant fiber weavers of Aklan province and calado embroiderers of Lumban, Laguna are never far from Tolentino’s thoughts.

The designer believes that Philippine fabrics are worthy of the world stage. “There are only a few countries that produce handwoven fabric, and piña is probably the most beautiful,” notes Tolentino, who was born and grew up in Bataan province in the Philippines. “I believe it’s important to go to the source, so I’ve traveled to observe the harvesting of the pineapple leaves, the weaving, and to see the calado embroiderers at work,” says Tolentino. “I especially want to know if the process is 100 percent eco-friendly because that’s important in green fashion. I asked myself, who better to promote this lovely fabric than a Filipino who is already working on the international stage?” adds the designer.

Tolentino has been modernizing the use of the fabrics with designs and cuts to appeal to the Western market. His creations don’t require women to make sacrifices in comfort or luxury (think scratchy burlap or dowdy fabric). This blend of eco and couture appeals to many of his clients, including Hollywood celebrities.

Above: Hand-dyed yellow piña gown. Photo by Hydee Marie. Photos provided by Oliver Tolentino and used with permission.

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“I like working in Philippine fabrics for three reasons: They’re very eco and can be hand-dyed with natural sources like roots and vegetables; they are artistically made using skills passed down from generation to generation, so increasing demand ensures their preservation; and finally, weavers and embroiderers in the provinces rely on this work as the only way to provide a living wage for their families. For these reasons, I feel it is my duty to the planet and my birth country to promote the fabrics.” ~ Oliver Tolentino, Designer

Top Left and Right: Oliver Tolentino with weavers of Lumban, Laguna, Philippines.

Photo by A. Caruthers.

Bottom left: Red Pineapple flower.

Bottom Right: The epidermal (top) layer of the leaf is scraped away using a coconut shell or pottery shard to uncover the bastos, a coarse fiber used to make twine. After the bastos is removed, the leaf is turned over and scraped again. This time, linawan, the finer inner fiber used to make piña, is revealed and extracted.

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Manila | Beverly Hills > Oliver Tolentino: Eco-Friendly Fashion on the Rise

D The Stages of Piña Production Pagkigue: Mature pineapple leaves are harvested from the field, and the thorns along the edges of the leaves are removed by hand. The epidermal (top) layer of the leaf is scraped away using a coconut shell or pottery shard to uncover the bastos, a coarse fiber used to make twine. After the bastos is removed, the leaf is turned over and scraped again. This time linawan, the finer inner fiber used to make piña, is revealed and extracted.

Paghugas & Pagpisi: The linawan is washed (paghugas) under running water, and any remaining plant material is grated away with a clamshell, turning the fibers white.

After being hung to dry, shorter fibers of less use are removed and disposed of (pagpisi).

Pagpanug-ot, Pagtalinuad, & Paghaboe: Individual fibers are knotted seamlessly together by hand (pagpanug-ot), and then spun into spools (pagtalinuad).

The piña threads are woven into a cloth on an upright two-treadle loom (paghaboe). Piña fibers can also be blended with cotton, abaca (banana leaf fiber), or silk for greater strength and durability. Blending piña with silk results in piña seda. Finally, piña cloth can be decorated with a traditional style of hand embroidery, a technique called calado.

Source: SERC, Student Environmental Resource Center, University of California, Berkeley

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While born in the province and subsequently building a fashion career in Manila, Tolentino fulfilled a lifelong dream in 2009 when he relocated to America to dress Hollywood celebrities. In the United States, he’s made his former countrymen proud. His creations have appeared at the OSCARS, Golden Globes, Emmys, and Grammys, and on TV shows such as America’s Next Top Model. And he hasn’t just focused on eco-conscious women. Tolentino created a dramatic piña outfit for Cee Lo Green to wear in a Liberace-themed I Want You music video, and he created the first piña tuxedos ever worn by nominees to the Oscars and Golden Globes.

According to Tolentino, “I like working in Philippine fabrics for three reasons: They’re very eco and can be hand-dyed with natural sources like roots and vegetables; they are artistically made using skills passed down from generation to generation, so increasing demand ensures their preservation; and finally, weavers and embroiderers in the provinces rely on this work as the only way to provide a living wage for their families. For these reasons, I feel it is my duty to the planet and my birth country to promote the fabrics,” he adds.

The world has taken note of Tolentino’s efforts. The designer brought an Associated Press (AP) film crew to Lumban to showcase local calado embroiderers, and he personally promoted piña fabric in a EURONEWS TV interview that aired for a month in Europe and the Middle East. Finally, a photo of his work appears in the 2017 textbook Materials Sourcebook for Design Professionals as an example of piña fabric in fashion.

No doubt the planet will be a little greener and the specialized, often impoverished, weaving and embroidery industries in the Philippines will be nourished from the fruits of Oliver Tolentino’s eco-ethical labors. Tolentino is considering a more mainstream line of eco-friendly consumer clothing. Stay tuned. This designer is one to watch grow!

No doubt the planet will be a little greener and the specialized, often impoverished, weaving and embroidery industries in the Philippines will be nourished from the fruits of Oliver Tolentino’s eco-ethical labors. Tolentino is considering a more mainstream line of eco-friendly consumer clothing. This designer is one to watch grow!

Top left: Oliver Tolentino at the Global Green USA’s pre-OSCARS party in Hollywood with models in his eco creations. Photo courtesy of Sthanlee B. Mirador. Global Green USA is the American affiliate of Green Cross International, founded by President Gorbachev to foster a global value shift toward a sustainable and secure future. Left: Natural colored piña gown with colado embroidery. Photo by Filbert Kung. Photos provided by Oliver Tolentino and used with permission.

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Good Read > Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy

by Rebecca Burgess (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher. Photos by Paige Green.

In the world of fiber production, there is a new concept being discussed.

Rebecca Burgess calls it the “soil to soil” framework. Burgess is the founder and executive director of Fibershed, an organization devoted to public education on the environmental, economic, and social benefits of bringing the textile supply chain home to local communities in the United States and other places around the world.

She encourages people to think about fiber production as starting with farmers producing organic, fully recyclable fibers like cotton, wool, alpaca, flax, and hemp on farms where the soil is sustainably managed. Natural dye plants like indigo, madder, and many others can also be grown in this way. Structures could be created to harvest, clean, move, mill, and manufacture the materials in the same region, further creating income and work for the local economy. All these structures used to exist in the United States. Eventually, at the end of the textile or garment’s useable life, it could be recycled or safely composted and returned to the soil without polluting or damaging the environment.

Source: The Center for Regenerative Agriculture, California State University

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Different breeds of wool take up plant dye in subtle and different ways. Here handpspun Corriedale cross and machine-spun Merino yarns are dyed with black walnut. Photo by Paige Green.

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Good Read > Fibershed by Rebecca Burgess The following excerpt is from Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher. Photos by Paige Green.

T

aking on the responsibility for introducing (or reintroducing) a new crop like indigo to a community can be a daunting task. But there is a deep, almost cellular response in humans when we take on this type of work, one that creates an unbreakable bond. In fact, it has been an incredible surprise to see how many people are similarly committed to the cause of regionalizing and relearning what it means to produce fiber and dye. Through my work, I have seen the act of growing our own clothes to be a galvanizing community experience.

Because we have been disconnected from the impacts our clothes have on land, air, water, labor, and our own human health for such a long time, we’ve been lulled into a passive, non-questioning state of being as consumers. When we begin reconnecting these dots, however, we create opportunities to build new relationships that are rooted in sharing skills, physical labor, and creativity, all of which carry meaning, purpose, and a way to belong to one another and to the land. While there has been important work in recent decades to ensure access to safe, local, nutritious food as a culture, we have largely overlooked the production of fibers and dyes that make up our clothing. In fact, when people hear the word “clothing”, most automatically think, “Oh, I don’t care about fashion” and assume it has nothing to do with them. But clothing, like food, matters because we directly engage with it every single day. Clothing is a multifaceted industry that involves many of the same supply-chain dynamics as the food industry, starting with its roots in agriculture and dependence upon the land.

What Do Clothes Have to Do with Agriculture?

The simple answer to this question is a lot. On average, over 80 percent of the cotton grown in the United States annually is genetically modified to withstand the use of a range of herbicides and pesticides, and less than 1 percent is certified organic. And while two-thirds of Americans support GMO labeling for their food, few understand the role GMOs play in their clothing. In fact, we have yet to broach any large-scale public discussion of how GMO agriculture as a whole is impacting the health and diversity of our landscapes, rural economies, and personal health. Due to the omission of these larger conversations, we’ve largely left the genetic engineering of fibers out of the land-use ethics debate altogether, and as a result there is little to no transparency offered on garment hangtags enabling us to determine if our clothing is genetically modified or not, unless we are searching out and purchasing Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified garments. As a result of the large gap between our knowledge of how clothing is made and where the ingredients are sourced from, when we make decisions as a consumer about what to buy, we are largely making them blindly.

Improving the existing centralized systems of textile production,

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Good Read > Fibershed by Rebecca Burgess

I call this place-based textile system a fibershed. Similar to a local watershed or a foodshed, a fibershed is focused on the source of the raw material, the transparency with which it is converted into clothing, and the connectivity among all parts, from soil to skin and back to soil. ~ Rebecca Burgess, founder and executive director of Fibershed

currently based largely overseas in countries with minimal attention to human rights and weak environmental standards is one avenue for social and environmental change that offers rays of hope. But it has not been without countless disappointments. And novel technologies also have a role to play in reducing negative impacts of the garment industry.

But both of these tools for reform on their own do nothing to transform the existing power dynamics and economic models that provoked the environmental and labor rights catastrophes we are currently digging ourselves out of globally. And yet it is these two strategies that dominate the agendas of sustainability teams at the world’s largest textile companies that are written about and debated within the trade group journals and that receive awards at global textiles conferences, reaping investor capital. As a result, the conversation that inserts economic and climate justice into the DNA of the systems-change thought is still waiting for its day in the sun.

This book seeks to open the door for that conversation, while recognizing that many more individuals and organizations are also expanding this dialogue on a daily basis. In the book you will read a vision of change that focuses on transforming our fiber and dye systems from the soil up. This vision embraces everyone involved in the process, including farmers, ranchers, grassroots organizers, designers, manufacturers, cut-and-sew talent, crafters, fashion pundits, investors, transnational brands, and you, the wearer. It is a vision for globally impactful solutions that consider and provide a voice about how to reconfigure the seat of power and begin putting decision-making into the hands of those most familiar with the social and ecological infrastructure of their communities. It is a vision that enhances social, economic, and political opportunities for communities to define and create their fiber and dye systems and redesign the global textile process.

It is place-based textile sovereignty, which aims to include rather than exclude all the people, plants, animals, and cultural practices that compose and define a specific geography. I call this place-based textile system a fibershed. Similar to a local watershed or a foodshed, a fibershed is focused on the source of the raw material, the transparency with which it is converted into clothing, and the connectivity among all parts, from soil to skin and back to soil.

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Fibershed systems borrow considerable inspiration and framework design from the Slow Food movement, which can be traced back to 1986 when the movement’s founder, Italian farmer Carlo Petrini, organized a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s chain restaurant near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Petrini’s galvanizing quote ushered in global affirmation of the need to attend to our food system: “A firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.” The Slow Food movement quickly gained a following, attracting rural and urban residents alike. It joined an energetic effort by people around the world to address how our food is farmed, who is farming it, how it is processed, and who has access to it.

This book is designed to support the reader’s critical thinking and evaluative processes. Together we need to ensure that the textile system transformations that we make do not shorten or debilitate our lives or the health of generations to come as well as the rest of the species on the planet. While the story is focused on fiber and natural dye systems, this book also taps into the broader cultural shift going on around the world as people and communities reconnect in a meaningful way with the land. With every passing day, we increasingly see, hear, and feel the destructive effects of our complicity in perpetuating systems that were designed to make us the primary recipient of the planet’s finite resources. Fibershed asks how can we work together to transform contemporary cultural and economic systems to benefit all life and promote regeneration? And how can we do it without perpetuating consequences that force another set of technological solutions? As we learn the fundamentals of the carbon, water, and nutrient cycles, we understand that the earth’s true ecological carrying capacity is directly connected to the regenerative capacity of natural resources such as the soil and the fiber it grows. This knowledge begs a deep human question: How will we care for, protect, and use what the Earth provides in a manner that leaves the land and water more diverse and productive than we found them?

Finally, this book is designed to help stimulate our work toward a regenerative future.

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ECO-FRIENDLY DESTINATION > North Umpqua River, Southern Oregon

By Jenny DuVander and Danny Palmerlee

A River with Soul

Western Rivers Conservancy helps keep the North Umpqua River wild, healthy, and open to all

O

regon’s North Umpqua River is a river with soul. It’s a stream where every rock and pool has a story, where the steelhead are famed but impossible to catch, and where ancient forests tower overhead like a living cathedral, beckoning those who know this stream again and again.

The North Umpqua’s emerald water, which rushes across a riverbed of polished basalt, flows not from the Coast Range, like most rivers on the Oregon Coast, but from stores of snow and ice high in the Cascade Mountains. This anomaly gives the river its signature clear, green water and keeps it cold year round, just the way fish need it. It’s also what makes the river one of the most important strongholds for salmon and steelhead on the West Coast.

All told, the North Umpqua’s superb water quality supports some of the healthiest wild fish runs in the Northwest, including steelhead, Chinook salmon, coho salmon, and rainbow and cutthroat trout. Anglers make annual pilgrimages to the North Umpqua’s legendary 33-mile fly-fishing-only water, which promises hard-fighting fish in an unmatched setting. Equally devoted are mountain bikers, hikers, and backpackers who enjoy the world class North Umpqua Trail, which follows the river for 79 miles.

There’s a reason that the North Umpqua has remained one of the finest rivers in the West: dedicated people. For more than a century, a community of river guardians—anglers, conservationists, and others—have defended the river they love. They have worked to preserve this great stream to keep its forests standing, its waters clean for fish, and its trails open to explore.

It’s a task that continues. In 2015, a former county park, Swiftwater Park, went up for sale at the entrance to the North Umpqua Trail and the start of the “fly water.” Instead of allowing it to be sold and potentially logged, the nonprofit Western Rivers Conservancy stepped in to purchase the land and protect it forever.

The Portland-based organization has a 31-year track record of creating healthy river sanctuaries across the western states. Its motto? “Sometimes to save a river, you have to buy it.”

A fly-fisherman casts for the elusive steelhead trout of Oregon’s North Umpqua River. Photo by Tyler Roemer.

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Radiocarbon dating places prehistoric occupation of

the North Umpqua River as

early as 6,300 years ago, and the presence of the time-

sensitive artifacts indicates

the occupation may go as far back as 8,000 years.

Visitors were initially drawn

to the Steamboat area within the North Umpqua River corridor because of the

excellent fishing. The first

known fish camp constructed on the river in the 1920s was located in this vicinity.

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ECO-FRIENDLY DESTINATION > North Umpqua River, Southern Oregon

“Western Rivers Conservancy was drawn to the North Umpqua because of its tremendous importance for fish and wildlife and because we know what this place means to people,” said Sue Doroff, Western Rivers Conservancy’s president. “Anyone who has walked its banks or cast a line at dusk will tell you just how magical the North Umpqua River is.”

In 2016, Western Rivers Conservancy bought the 211-acre park, which spans a mile of the river. After holding the lands and raising the needed funds, the conservancy conveyed the property to the Bureau of Land Management in 2018 for permanent protection within the North Umpqua Wild and Scenic River Corridor. Western Rivers Conservancy’s efforts upheld the western gateway to the nationally designated North Umpqua Trail, which is the downstream trail entrance to fly-fishing-only water.

“Now that Swiftwater Park is protected, this stretch of the North Umpqua will remain intact for fish and wildlife and a place where people can access some of the finest fly-fishing, hiking, and mountain biking around,” Doroff said.

On top of its recreational benefits, the project protects a mile of critical habitat for coho salmon and assures that the old-growth forests on the property remain standing forever, providing vital shade for the river and habitat for the area’s diverse wildlife.

Although its efforts at Swiftwater Park are complete, Western Rivers Conservancy isn’t finished on the North Umpqua. Just upstream from the park, it is working to conserve nearly 250 acres along another mile of the river. Its effort will protect more key habitat for coho salmon and vulnerable stands of old-growth that shelter northern spotted owls, Roosevelt elks, black bears, and river otters. As with Swiftwater Park, WRC hopes to transfer the land to the BLM to join the wild and scenic corridor.

More good news came for the North Umpqua in March 2019, when Congress approved the Frank and Jeanne Moore Wild Steelhead Sanctuary. This new 100,000-acre refuge is named for the river’s two most famous conservationists: the legendary fly fisherman and World War II veteran Frank Moore and the equally esteemed Jeanne Moore, a renowned botanist and Frank’s wife of 76 years.

Some places should stay wild forever. Thanks to the people and organizations that know the importance of the North Umpqua, we can take heart that this river will remain the storied stream it’s always been: a place of tenacious wild fish, emerald water, and ancient forests open to all.

s Hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, photography, fishing, and sight-seeing opportunites abound in the spectacular settings of the North Umpqua Trail in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Photo by Tyler Roemer.

Frank and Jeanne Moore Wild Steelhead Sanctuary Photos by John Waller, Uncage the Soul Productions

Stewards of the River T

he Frank and Jeanne Moore Wild Steelhead Sanctuary on Oregon’s North Umpqua River designates approximately 100,000 acres of public lands in some of the best remaining wild steelhead spawning areas in the Pacific Northwest. It pairs a legendary river, treasured by Oregonians and frequented by thousands of foreign visitors yearly, with two inspirational conservationists and American heroes Frank and Jeanne Moore bind the people of the North Umpqua to its natural bounty. As stewards of the North Umpqua, Frank and Jeanne embody the resilience and grace of the landscape itself. Their life together is documented in the film Mending the Line, and Frank was the subject of an OPB Field Guide special.

In World War II, Frank Moore stormed the beaches of Normandy along with 150,000 troops during the D-Day Allied invasion and was awarded the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor for his bravery.

He returned home after the war, started a family, and pursued his passion of fishing on the winding rivers in Oregon.

For 20 years, Frank and Jeanne ran the legendary Steamboat Inn on the banks of the North Umpqua. Frank served on the State of Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission from 1971 to 1974. He has been recognized for his conservation work with the National Wildlife Federation Conservationist of the Year award, the Wild Steelhead Coalition Conservation Award, and his 2010 induction into the Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame.

Jeanne Moore is a self-taught botanical expert who has spent her life identifying the myriad native plant species in the Steamboat Creek watershed. Her discovery of rare plants in the Limpy Rock area of the Umpqua National Forest in the 1970s led the U.S. Forest Service to declare 1,800 acres of land a Natural Research Area.

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The sanctuary proposal elevates steelhead as a management priority on high conservation value lands and waters in the Steamboat Creek watershed. The watershed provides over 50 river and stream miles of some of the most important habitat in the region for summer and winter steelhead, spring Chinook, coho salmon, rainbow trout, and other native species.

It serves as one of the few remaining cold water refuges for summer steelhead, which migrate from the main North Umpqua River to the cooler waters of Steamboat and Canton creeks in the summer months and hold in specific pools until the fall rains arrive. The Big Bend Pool of Steamboat Creek is one of the few places in the world where people can easily view hundreds of summer steelhead that use the pool as a refuge from warmer stream temperatures.

v

Sources: www.wildsalmoncenter.org and Uncage the Soul Productions, Portland, Oregon

Mending the Line is the extraordinary story of Frank Moore, a 90-year old WWII veteran and fly-fishing

legend, returning to Normandy with his wife of 70 years to fish the rivers he saw as a soldier in World War II. In 1944 Frank landed along with some 150,000 other troops on the beaches of Normandy, France for the

D-Day allied invasion. Despite the cacophony of war around him, the young avid fly fisherman couldn’t help but notice the productive fisheries on the rivers he and his fellow troops crossed as they made their way into

occupied France. In 2015, Uncage the Soul Productions, along with over 500 crowdfunding backers, realized Frank’s lifelong dream of casting a fly onto these serene French rivers.

John Waller, producer of Mending the Line, grew up near the North Umpqua River. One of his first summer

jobs was picking blackberries for the Steamboat Inn. John met Frank and Jeanne in 2013 while producing a series of short tourism videos about fly-fishing on the North Umpqua River.

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ECO-FRIENDLY DESTINATION > STEAMBOAT INN, SOUTHERN OREGON

Disconnect to Reconnect We love the history of Steamboat; that’s one of the reasons we bought it.

~ Melinda and Travis Woodward, Owners, Steamboat Inn

Above: Melinda and Travis Woodward are just the third set of owners in its 80-year history. The Steamboat Inn has always been a familyfriendly place, owned by families who truly care about conservation and preservation of the area. Photo by Justin Bailey.

Right page: In addition to the world class fly-fishing, the success of the Steamboat Inn has been its legacy for good, locally sourced fresh foods from farmlands, rivers, and the ocean. The Woodwards will continue to host a series of winemake dinners along with other family friendly events.

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The Steamboat Inn, located approximately two hours from Eugene, Oregon in Idleyld Park, is truly a magical place. The area is home to spectacular landscapes and the North Umpqua River where fly-fishing has an international reputation. This truly distinctive canyon landscape is characterized by a combination of jade green rushing water, vertical rock cliffs within a mosaic of mountain meadows, and hemlock forests.

With three properties nestled along the North Umpqua River and Steamboat Creek, Steamboat Inn has been a popular destination for fly-fishers, hikers, and visitors of nearby attractions like the numerous waterfall trails and Crater Lake National Park. This is a perfect place to disconnect to reconnect as there are no Wi-Fi, telephones, or television.

In the Spring of 2017, Sharon and Jim Van Loan passed their 40-year ownership of the Steamboat Inn to Melinda and Travis Woodward, two native Oregonians.

“The business is the perfect fit with our skills. I understand the food and beverage side, and he can fix anything and keep up with the grounds,” says Melinda Woodward. “We love the history of Steamboat, and we love that it already has a huge following and has many loyal guests.”

“We both love fishing, so the fishing lodge just fit perfectly, and the venue itself is perfect for weddings and other events; my wife was experienced in presenting those at the country club,” says Travis. He said fly-fishing was one of the major draws for them to purchase the Steamboat Inn. Travis commented, “We knew this was it as soon as we walked through the door.”

The Woodwards are just the third set of owners in its 80-year history.

In 1957, Frank and Jeanne Moore bought the Steamboat Lodge previously owned by Clarence Gordon. They built the original six guest units and named it “Steamboat Inn”. They owned and operated the Inn until 1975 when they sold it to Jim and Sharon Van Loan. From 1975 until 2017, the Van Loans owned and operated the Inn along with Manager Patricia Lee, a great cook and respected fishing guide.

During this time, the country inn movement was gaining strength in the United States. The Steamboat Inn, along with a number of other Northwest inns, established a network to aid travelers who wanted an alternative to the highway motels and hotels. This was the beginning of a new era for the Inn. The Steamboat Inn has always been a family-friendly place, owned by families who truly care about conservation and preservation of the area. In addition to the world class fly-fishing, the success of the

JD Elegance (Jaime Rider)

Joshua Rainey

JD Elegance (Jaime Rider)

Joshua Rainey

Nourish and Flourish 105 Joshua Rainey

Joshua Rainey

Joshua Rainey

ECO-FRIENDLY DESTINATION STEAMBOAT INN, SOUTHERN OREGON

Many of the current advances in vineyard management, clonal selection, and winemaking are advanced at the Steamboat, resulting in a landmark contribution to the remarkable success with Pinot Noir in Oregon and California.

Chef Adam’s Smoked Chicken Thighs with Honey Mustard BBQ

~ Winepress Northwest

Steamboat Inn has been its legacy for good, locally sourced fresh foods from farmlands, rivers, and the ocean. In keeping with the wilderness fishing experience, the camp cooks at the old fishing camps along the North Umpqua outdid themselves to ensure that the anglers’ good fishing would be matched by the quality of the food they enjoyed.

This became known as the Fisherman’s Dinner and served several important purposes. The anglers would gather around the dinner table each evening to exchange information on the flies and the methods that had been successful on that day in luring the river’s native summer steelhead. These dinners created a unique community of like-minded people and forged life-long friendships.

The Fisherman’s Dinner tradition was carried forward by Sharon Van Loan and then Manager Patricia Lee. They incorporated the best of both the traditional fishing camp cooking with new, healthy approaches to preparing fresh foods. This dynamic culinary duo also raised the bar in the food and wine world. In addition to creating a wholesome dinner every day for their guests, their combined talents brought forward the amazing wines being produced in Oregon. For decades, the Van Loans and Lee hosted the Winemaker Dinner Series that would entice visitors from all over the world to the destination.

The Steamboat Inn has also been the host of the Steamboat Inn Pinot Noir Conference since 1979. It is held each July and brings together a wide range of guests. The mission of this symposium is to bring together vintners from Oregon and all over the world to share their knowledge of winemaking. According to Winepress Northwest, attendees do some fishing; however, it is the blind tasting of unfinished Pinot Noir wines, the discussions that result, and the camaraderie over dinner and the time shared that has led to the Pinot Noir renaissance in America. Many of the current advances in vineyard management, clonal selection, and winemaking are advanced at the Steamboat, resulting in a landmark contribution to the remarkable success with Pinot Noir in Oregon and California.

Travis and Melinda fell in love with the history of the Inn, one of the reasons they bought it. In addition to their love of good food and fishing, they are committed to keeping the traditions of the Inn in place while growing with the times. “We want the Steamboat Inn to be a place that everyone is welcome–particularly families with children.” says Melinda. There will still be the fine dining element along with choices that will allow more flexibility. That was Lee’s biggest recommendation when we bought the Inn.” The Woodwards are working very hard to keep these traditions alive and modernized for their guests. They have many exciting things planned for the future. The Woodwards welcome you to visit.

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Chef Adam Ruplinger, Steamboat Inn Adam grew up on a farm in the heart of Wisconsin, where meat and potatoes are king. But the move to Minneapolis proved to have the biggest influence on his culinary style; he landed squarely at the side of a James Beard Best Chef: Mid-West semifinalist Doug Flicker at Auriga. After assisting Chef Flicker at a James Beard House dinner, Adam’s passion took flight. He learned to push the boundaries of what a chef can do with food. He started to play with seafood and then with everything he could get his hands on!

After ten years in Minneapolis kitchens (Auriga, Sous Chef at Martini Blu, Mission, Barrio, Common Roots, Chef de Cuisine at Cocina del Barrio), Adam made a pilgrimage to Portland, Oregon.

In August of 2013, fresh off Interstate 84, Coppia Restaurant & Wine Bar nabbed him as the Executive Chef before anyone else had the opportunity.

At Coppia the focus was on the food and wine of Piedmont, Italy. But Adam was able to infuse his devotion to locally sourced ingredients, supporting organic farmers when possible.

Then the excitement of a bold new restaurant project drew Adam to The Parrott House at Roseburg, Oregon. Adam oversaw the design and transformation of several former upstairs bedrooms of the house into a full kitchen. As Executive Chef, he also created and executed a European-focused menu.

His farm-to-table passion drew him to Steamboat Inn which has had a commitment to sourcing locally long before it was a movement. Adam is the perfect addition to the team at Steamboat.

Here he provides guests with a true taste of Oregon perfectly paired with local wines. He also loves cooking on the Big Green Egg and trying out new flavor profiles each season.

Ingredients 4 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on 6 tablespoons Steamboat Dry Rub Method Trim the chicken thighs of excess fat, skin, and cartilage. Apply the rub to the chicken thighs and leave in refrigerator overnight.

Smoking Fill the Big Green Egg with charcoal and place 3 chunks of cherry or apple wood halfway between the center and the outer rim. Light the coals. Place the convEGGtor™ inside for indirect cooking which provides a barrier between the food and the fire. Place grate on top.

Bring temperature to 200°F. Allow the temp to stabilize for about 10 minutes. Place thighs on the grate, skin side up. Allow to smoke at 200° for 60 minutes and bring up the temp to 225°. Cook until the internal temperature is 165°. Total cook time is about 1½ to 2 hours, depending on the size of the thighs.

Remove thighs from the Egg and remove the convEGGtor™.

Place grate back on EGG and grill the thighs skin side down until skin is charred and crispy. Finish with a honey mustard BBQ sauce.

Carolina Mustard Barbecue Sauce This sauce is easy to make, spicy, and flavorful!

Ingredients 1 cup yellow mustard ¼ cup honey – source honey in your area ¼ cup light brown sugar ½ cup apple cider vinegar 1 tablespoon chipotle pepper in adobo, minced 1 tablespoon ketchup 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce 1 teaspoon garlic powder Ground black pepper to taste Method Mix all ingredients well. For best results, refrigerate in an airtight container overnight to allow the flavors to develop.

Before serving, warm in a pot over very low heat. Makes about 2 cups. Sauce recipe from selfproclaimedfoodie.com.

Steamboat Smoked Chicken Dry Rub Makes 6 Cups Ingredients 2 cups packed brown sugar 1¼ cups kosher salt 2 teaspoons whole celery seed ¼ cup dried rosemary leaves 4 teaspoons whole black peppercorns 2 tablespoons Mexican oregano 1 teaspoon whole anise seed 2 teaspoons aji amarillo powder 2 tablespoons whole coriander seed ¼ cup whole mustard seed 3 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon sweet paprika 1 tablespoon smoked paprika ¼ cup granulated garlic 3 tablespoons onion powder 2 teaspoons whole cumin seed Method In a steel pan combine peppercorns, anise seed, celery seed, coriander seed, mustard seed, and cumin. Toast over medium heat until fragrant. Set aside and let cool. After it is cool, add rosemary leaves and Mexican oregano. In a spice grinder, grind all ingredients into a fine powder and place in a large mixing bowl. When you finish grinding the spices, add the brown sugar, kosher salt, aji amarillo powder, paprika, smoked paprika, granulated garlic, and onion powder. Mix until all ingredients are equally dispersed. Store in an airtight container. Will keep for about a month or more.

All photos by Jamie Rider.

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Sweet Treat Whether you call it jam, jelly or preserve – this delicious treat is another traditional method of larder preservation. From the very proper English scones with jam and cream to your humble jam on toast, this old favorite is enjoyed worldwide by people from all walks of life.

But did you know this humble treat had a rather illustrious beginning? Although historians can’t pinpoint an exact date, it is widely believed that cooks in the Middle East were the first to make fruit jams and preserves. It might have been during the 4th Century or even earlier. The first mention of fruit preserves (made using honey) can be found in the oldest surviving cookbook from antiquity called “De Re Coquinaria”, The Art of Cooking. The book is believed to date back to the late 4th or early 5th century and is attributed to one Marcus Gavius Apicius, the famed epicure who lived during the reign of Tiberius, early in the first century AD.

~ Source: Marian Tisi, foodfaith.com.au

Fig and Orange Preserves Recipe provided by Rebecca Aldana, a professional chef and gardener living in Los Angeles.

Ingredients 4 cups fresh figs (Brown, Mission, Turkish), about two dry pints 2 cups water 2 cups granulated sugar 3 tablespoons tawny port or brandy (optional) 1 organic orange (for zesting, 2 teaspoons) ¼ cup lemon juice 1 cinnamon stick Pinch of salt Method Rinse figs, cut off stems, and cut into desired chunks. I like mine big, but if you prefer a jam-like texture, cut them to ¼” chunks. Toss into a 3-quart saucepan. Rinse and dry the orange. Use a fine grater to remove the rind. You should have at least 2 teaspoons. Toss into pot. Remove remaining peel and as much of the pith and skin as you prefer. Cut the orange into chunks and toss into pot. Add sugar, water, port or brandy, lemon juice, cinnamon, and a pinch of salt into pot.

Cook on medium heat until bubbling; liquid should reduce into a jammy consistency. Figs have natural pectin, so no additional fruit pectin is needed. Depending on the heat of your burner, it should take 30 to 60 minutes to cook. Stir it occasionally to prevent preserves from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Reduce heat if the water is evaporating too quickly. I use an enameled cast iron pot, but any non-reactive pot with a heavy bottom will work. If you have a candy thermometer, make sure the temperature reaches 220°. Then it is done. This should make about four small jam jars or about 4 cups. You can sterilize jars and lids by boiling them in water for 10 minutes or longer and process them for canning and storing them in the pantry, or store the preserves in glass containers in the fridge for up to a month.

Notes: If you can’t find fresh figs, dried figs work just as well. Boil the 2 cups of water and soak the figs overnight or 4 to 6 hours. Use the same water for the recipe. You may want to reduce the sugar by ¼ cup or so. You won’t have that same fresh fig bite, but it’s still really tasty.

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Jalapeño Goat Cheese Cornbread In place of skillet, you can use a 10- or 12-inch pan with cooking spray. Char jalapeños in a separate, stove-safe pan.

Ingredients 4 teaspoons refined coconut oil (or a vegetable oil) 2 cups all purpose flour 2 cups yellow or white cornmeal 1 tablespoon granulated sugar 2 tablespoons brown sugar 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon sea salt 2 cups whole buttermilk 1 cup butter, melted 4 large eggs 1½ cups cheddar cheese, grated 2 4-oz packages goat cheese, crumbled 1 jalapeño, seeded and diced 5 jalapeños to char for the top Method Preheat oven to 400°F. Place a 12-inch cast iron skillet over medium-high heat, with 2 teaspoons of coconut oil. Cut the 5 jalapeños in half. You may make slices and remove the seeds or just leave the jalapeños in halves. Cook until lightly charred on each side, about 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from skillet and set aside.

Add 2 teaspoons of coconut oil to skillet, then place in oven.

Oil will become hot in about 8 minutes. Make sure you have proper ventilation while charring jalapeños.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, granulated sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and sea salt.

Add buttermilk, melted butter, and eggs. Mix completely.

Fold in 1 cup of cheddar cheese and diced jalapeño. Add goat cheese and fold until mixed, leaving small pieces.

Remove skillet from oven. Carefully pour batter into hot oiled skillet. Sprinkle with ½ cup cheddar cheese, then arrange charred jalapeños on top.

Bake until golden brown for 30 minutes, depending on your oven. Check center with a toothpick. If it comes out clean, it’s ready. Serves 10 - 12.

Flavor Notes: Top cornbread slices with pats of butter and drizzle with honey.

For more heat, add 1 extra jalapeño, seeded and diced to the batter.

Other notes: Use gloves when handling jalapeños and avoid touching your eyes. Avoid breathing jalapeño fumes when charring. Cast iron skillets are very hot, so remember to use good hot pads when lifting or moving them.

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Copies are available for purchase online: nourishandflourish.site Front and back Cover: Photography: Morgan Rhodes Art Direction by Nancy George Nourish and Flourish is a special interest publication dedicated to creating authentic, informative, and interactive content that inspires learning. Published by Creative 3 Publishing LLC, (C3P) a private, independent media company located in the United States. Nourish and Flourish / C3P has not independently tested any services or products that are featured on these pages herein and has verified no claims made by these companies and or individuals regarding those services or products. Publisher is not responsible for any claims made and no content presented is an endorsement. Content provided is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be used to diagnose, treat, prescribe, prevent or cure any health issues and are not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of a trained health care professional. Readers are encouraged to research and consult your heath care professional for any treatments. The featured content in this issue is published in a good faith. C3P cannot guarantee and accepts no liability for any loss or damage of any kind caused by this content and for the accuracy of claims made by the individuals featured. All rights reserved and nothing can be partially or in whole be reprinted or reproduced without a written consent. Creative 3 Publishing LLC has received permission and approvals to publish all content in this edition as provided by the contributors. Printed in the USA. © 2021 Creative 3 Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

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