Pablito .... 

BACTERIA TO THE RESCUE
Lately, the media has been digging a little more deeply into the topic of biofuels.  Right now, when people talk about “biofuels”, they are primarily talking about ethanol and biodiesel, made from food crops and run in existing gasoline and diesel engines.  While these fuels may produce less pollutants and are more sustainable than their fossil-based cousins, they have some serious downsides.  For one thing, using food crops to produce fuel might end up raising the cost of food, especially when the price of petroleum goes up dramatically as it has lately.  And because commodity crops are traded globally, the rising price of oil is now making food more expensive for poor people who don’t even own cars, all over the world.  And then there’s the fact that there isn’t enough farmland to produce all of the food and fuel that the world uses, or at least will use in the future.

Ethanol and biodiesel are really just biology-based versions of their chemical cousins, which are themselves 20th century technologies.  Like the synthetic pesticides that are also made from oil, fossil fuels were a product of a century when humans believed technologies like chemistry would allow us to master nature without consequences.

We know better now, right?  After a hundred years of innovation, humans still can’t reliably figure out what the weather’s going to do next week.   Insects develop resistance to chemicals faster than we can develop new ones.  And now we know that  the use of fossil fuels to produce energy — is putting us on a course for extinction as a species.

Ethanol and biodiesel pollute less than fossil fuels, but they still produce CO2.  And they are only partially renewable, always requiring another energy input for production.  If humanity is going to create a sustainable energy platform, it’s going to have to be based on biological and ecological principles, not chemical ones.  Unfortunately, biology is complex and unpredictable, and has proven far more difficult to commercialize than chemistry.  Humanity has had a few successes, such as penicillin and Bt (the  biological pesticide that organic farmers first used to kill caterpillars naturally).  But overall, we’ve failed in our efforts to coop biology for our own goals.

 Ever since I started farming organically, I have developed a profound respect for biology and ecology.  And I have hoped — out loud in this column on occasion — that during this new century humanity might manage to realign our problem-solving mindset with the principles of ecology.  Part of the solution clearly comes from the power of computers — which can map the multitude of factors, players, and potential influences.  In ecology, the possible outcomes of any scenario are numerous, far beyond the ability of the human mind to imagine.

So I was happy and amazed to read about several new developments in the area of hydrogen energy.  For some time, hydrogen has been recognized as the best choice for a sustainable fuel, since the only by-product from burning it is water.  The problem is that, until now, obtaining has been a problem. Converting water into hydrogen requires lots of energy from other sources.  And the other potential source is fossil fuels.

But an article about Honda’s new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle led me to a link about research at several universities which has discovered several different methods to generate hydrogen gas using only bacteria or algae and biodegradable materials, primarily materials our society considers waste.  This new research would provide a truly sustainable source for energy, one which biologically converts the energy of the sun into a form of fuel that doesn’t produce any pollution when burned.  In addition, fuel cell vehicles will have the capability to generate electricity for their owners’ homes during the night.  And the potential also exists for people to combine solar panels with micro-hydrogen generators for the home, so that everyone could be using the sun to produce their own fuel.

Now if we could only apply ecological principles and biology towards improving mass transportation...Because even if everyone is driving a hydrogen vehicle, we’d have to pave the whole world for 6 billion people to be able to commute to work everyday in their own cars.

IN YOUR BOXES
As is our tradition here at Terra Firma, we follow up Thanksgiving week’s carbohydrate heavy box with one that emphasizes the leafier vegetables.  And in a happy coincidence, Mother Nature has given us four nights of frost since last Monday.  We don’t like frost much certain times of year, since it kills summer vegetables.  But in the winter, moderate frost softens the leaves of kale, cabbage, radicchio and other greens, and makes them sweeter.

One exception to this rule is Arugula, which is never sweet.  It doesn’t like hot OR cold weather much, preferring fall and spring to winter.  You might notice that some of the arugula in your boxes this week has a pink or reddish stem.  The spicy flavor of arugula makes it a good combination with the Gold Beets that are also in your boxes today.  These are just as sweet as red beets, but with a milder flavor and no bleeding of color.  The leaves are almost as sweet and tender as Chard, (which we will finally begin harvesting next week) but with even more nutrients.  Be sure to cut the greens off the beets before storing them in the fridge, as it will keep them fresh longer.

Escarole is a member of the chicory family, like frisee endive and radicchio.   When it is really hot, these vegetables are all quite bitter, when it is cold they are less so.  The other factor that makes escarole more flavorful is blanching, the process by which the leaves in the center of the head are protected from the sun by the outer leaves and eventually turn white.  We have been waiting for some cold weather to pick the first escarole, which has gotten quite large and well blanched due to the warm fall.  Escarole can be eaten raw, but most people will prefer it lightly cooked, when it takes on a texture somewhere between lettuce and cooking greens.  Try sautéing it with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and white beans.

As always, you can find recipes for all the greens in today’s boxes in our newsletter archive, which is fully searchable.

Thanks,
    Pablito
 

Please make sure to include your account name, the one on the sign off sheet & on the box, in every correspondance to Valerie

Recipes............................

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