A couple of main concerns for people back in the time of the Neolithic Revolution (although it wasn't really a revolution in terms of fast change, but it was a drastic, widely adopted, gradual transition from foraging to farming over a period spanning a few thousand years) were poor nutrition (when people switched from foraging to farming, they lost a great deal of variety in their diets because they only cultivated certain crops) and soil exhaustion (many early farmers would simply cultivate plots of land and abandon them after the soil was nutrient-poor, usually after one or two growing seasons). It is really interesting to learn about the creative techniques people used to manage their fields, such as constructing chinampas (mainly in Mesoamerica people would dig up fertile soil from the bottoms of lakes and create a raised bed above the water which would be naturally irrigated by water seeping into the dirt from the surrounding lake) or utilizing the naturally occurring flooding of an area to fertilize fields (for example, the Lozi people of Zambia moved from the valleys to the higher areas when great floods came in, creating huge lakes in the valley and fertilizing the soil).
Nowadays, it seems that instead of finding creative agricultural solutions which work with natural cycles of the world (and maintaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and the surrounding environment), the goal of most industrialized agriculture is to tame the land (in this case, the humans are in control) without paying much attention to environmental concerns (i.e., spraying harmful pesticides without thinking about their environmental implications).
One of the things that I think is very interesting is that the act of domesticating plants and animals causes genetic changes, so technically, every domesticated food produced today has been genetically modified over a period of thousands of years to suit the needs of humans. Seems pretty similar to what we are doing today with GMO crops, however, instead of waiting thousands of years for a desirable trait to be bred into our out of a food crop (i.e., getting rid of unpalatable toxins in a plant), we can now go in and modify the DNA of a crop and cause more immediate change to the organism. We humans are pretty good at coming up with creative ways to "solve" our problems (or, at least put them on hold for a little while), the question is where is the line between ethical and unethical environmental manipulation? Something to explore...
On another note, I sent Coco a care package yesterday with brownies (that looked like blondies because they were so light in color, but they had chocolate, so they were technically brownies!), meyer lemon shortbread cookies, lots of chocolate, and a birthday card. Hopefully he will get the package before the food becomes stale (I would love to know how people manage to mail baked goods across the country!).
I have been eating really good food lately, and have been trying my hardest to stay away from refined sugars and dairy, both of which have been causing some major issues with my stomach/digestive system. The other day, I made a coconut milk rice dish with veggies and shrimp, and last night, Lyca & I made mashed parsnips with black beans, onions, red pepper, & spinach on top (then we put some fresh salad greens and I added crumbled blue corn tortilla chips)... it was soooo tasty!
Some food brainstorming/ things I want to make:
Pistachio cookies... can I make pistachios into a nut flour and use the flour as a base for a gluten-free cookie?
Pistachio white chocolate chip cookies
Almond milk cornbread
Sweet potato pie!
My own chai tea
Applesauce (I need to get a bushel of apples first!)
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free scone
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free cinnamon buns
...and many other things!
Side note: SPRING IS COMING! SPRING IS COMING! SPRING WILL BE HERE SOON!
I can't wait for the asparagus to come up, the salad greens to grow outside instead of in hoop houses, baby chicks to replenish Bob's destroyed chicken population (the majority of his chickens were recently killed by a mink), rhubarb pie, Dragon Day (I still have to figure out some kind of costume to make), spring break (Lyca & I are going back East to the Hudson Valley for crazy shenanigans!), dandelions (homemade dandelion wine?), MUD, daffodil fields next to Bebee lake, wild cherry trees, birds in the mornings (today was the first day this spring that I woke up to birds outside my window! they are singing so happily right now!), and so many other wonderful things...
Hopefully this will be the last major storm of the winter season:
