Being Prepared

I was a Girl Scout. From Brownies through Seniors, I went camping, earned badges, volunteered, traveled, and learned many basics that have followed me throughout life. Even today I continue to live by the Girl Scout motto, Be Prepared.

It seems like lately we’ve been collectively beaten up by one emergency or another. We’ve been hit with a pandemic, insurrection, snowstorms, ice storms, and now the nation is experiencing a massive polar vortex reaching to the Gulf of Mexico leaving millions without electricity and heat. As much as we may feel like things are getting worse, the truth is there have always been disasters. What is happening is we are getting worse at being prepared.

I’m not talking about emergency systems on a national, state, or local level, but at the family and personal level. Between social media and major news outlets I’ve been flabbergasted by the reports of how many were unprepared at the most basic level. As another snowstorm bears down on the region, I want to devote this week’s Dishing the Dirt to simple steps we can all take to mitigate any hardships we might encounter due to weather related or manmade events. Planning to be prepared is simple. It will give you peace of mind and might even save your life.

Electricity. We pay for it. It’s not gift or a right, but a service. We are not entitled to an electric source 24/7/365 (unless you have the foresight to install personal solar or wind and even that’s not a 100% given). Travel to remote parts of the globe and you might encounter societies who only have access to electricity a few hours intermittently and do fine. We’ve become spoiled by the lights always on paradigm. But things like big floods, high winds, fires, accidents, and ice can bring down power lines causing outages lasting from minutes to months.

There is zero excuse to be caught unprepared for weather related events. Just about every mobile weather app offers the ability to receive alerts. Additionally, many local governments offer alert services through both text and email. My phone has been chirping every few hours with updates from Montgomery County’s Emergency Alert Service that is hooked into the National Weather Service. For those who eschew smart phone technology, television and radio also broadcast emergency weather alerts which often start twenty-four hours in advance—plenty of time for a bread, milk & toilet paper run.

Living in California for twenty years, emergency preparedness was second nature thanks to a geology professor who made his students build Earthquake Kits for a lab project. I still have mine and have pulled it out a couple times over the years when the power has gone out. This year I finally upgraded the Radio Shack Weather Cube for an emergency radio with a crank and solar charger that can also charge USB devices (like a phone) and has a powerful LED flashlight. It was $30. Isn’t that worth it instead of having to go outside to your car to charge your phone in the middle of an ice storm, hurricane, or blizzard?

Disasters by their own nature cause discomfort. Emergency rations for a few days aren’t meant to be Michelin starred MREs, but enough sustenance to get by. Think peanut butter and jelly, granola bars—anything that doesn’t require refrigeration. Toss in a chocolate bar or two as a treat. Have on hand at least a gallon of water per person in your household per day for drinking. Similarly, I like to fill a few five-gallon buckets ahead of weather events for basic sanitation.

Many fears are centered on keeping warm in the event the loss of electricity leads to no heat. It’s much safer to pile on layers and snuggle under blankets than it is to try to heat your living space by methods that could lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. That means never, ever use charcoal, camp stoves and generators inside your home.

Getting through a weather-related emergency is mostly common sense. It’s asking yourself, “What do I need for the next few days?” and making certain you have it. Some of my must-have items include a bag of salt or ice melt for around my doors so when I do venture out I don’t fall. Many of the items on an Emergency Kit list are everyday items for me as a farmer—flashlights, headlamps, heavy gloves and boots, a sharp knife, and basic tools. During potential disaster events my workload seems to double, but for most folks they’re going to need something other than their mobile phones to pass the time. Break out the board games, a good book, a deck of cards, a cribbage board, dominos, an origami book, and colored paper.

Most importantly, look out for those around you. Check in with your neighbors, especially those who are elderly, infirmed, or who live alone.

Emergency preparedness is not about if, but about when. Paying attention now will reap the benefits when disruptions occur.

About Those Carrots

Carrots. They are one of the heavy hitters when it comes to everything from classic culinary endeavors to quick snacks. A common denominator across a variety of bases, be it the Louisiana holy trinity of carrots, onions and bell peppers or a French mirepoix of carrots, onions, and celery. Carrots versatility lands them in soups and stews, roasted, juiced, steamed, boiled, baked, and grilled.

A root vegetable in the family Apiaceae, along with parsnips, fennel, cilantro, celery, parsley, dill, cumin, lovage and other aromatic flowering plants with tap roots, the plants are identified by their hollow stems and umbels which are the flat-topped cluster of flowers. Native to Central Asia and Europe but first cultivated in Persia, carrots come in a variety of colors including orange, purple, red, yellow, black, and white. Originally grown for their leaves and seeds, the root of the carrot was not mentioned as a food source until the first century A.D. by the Romans. By the 8^th century A.D., cultivated carrots had spread throughout Asia and Europe. European settlers brought carrots to America. Today over 40 million tons of carrots are harvested annually throughout the world.

Why are carrots and their cousins so popular? Let’s see, easy to grow, tasty, versatile, stores well, and extremely nutritious. One large carrot supplies the daily recommendation for Vitamin A through the metabolization of beta carotene—the compound that gives vegetables their brilliant colors.

Right now at the market, colorful bags of carrots call my name as I think about all the ways I can use them. On particularly cold days I like to crank the oven to 500 degrees and roast a whole pan of carrots sliced lengthwise and drizzled with olive oil. They’re great warm and cold. Puree a few in a cup or two of hot broth and you’ve got a quick and easy soup. Go ahead, drop a dollop of crème fraiche on top.

Despite having weekly access to carrots, right before the seasonal vegetable vendors leave for the year I begin hoarding the big orange field carrots for winter storage. They’ll last for months in the refrigerator, always at the ready for a big pot of comfort food like red beans and rice or a classic like Espagnole.

Did you know that the tops of carrots can also be eaten? Although not routinely used as a food source, the lacey leaves can be added to salads or cooked, similar to using parsley, fennel, or cilantro as a flavoring.

What about baby carrots? Like baby back ribs and Cornish game hens, those uniformly shaped nubs are a figment of the industrial food complex trying to salvage what was once waste. Prior to the creation of a machine that would turn broken and misshapen carrots into bite sized snacks, farmers could lose as much as 70% of their crop due to the lack of uniformity. Today, baby carrots are the most popular item sold in American grocery store produce isles. But if you ask your farmer at the market for baby carrots, you’re going to be given a banded bunch of true young carrots that will look just like a large carrot only smaller and often come from thinning the rows so the vegetable can grow bigger without crowding.

A big fan of carrots are moms, especially those with babies. Pureed carrots might be your first thought, but over the years I’ve watched many teething babies get handed a cold carrot to gnaw on—no plastic, no chemicals, no expensive remedy, just organic goodness that can be composted after it has fallen on the floor or been licked by the dog one too many times.

And speaking of dogs, carrots make great snacks for them, too!

Of course winter wouldn’t be winter without at least one snowman. While Frosty may have had a button nose, most snowmen sport a carrot to be more environmentally PC. Plus, the little critters get a treat when the temperatures turn winter’s effigy into a puddle.

One of the most ingenuous uses of carrots I’ve ever seen, though, was not in the kitchen, but on a long, empty highway in the Central Valley of California where I was working in a very remote canyon. Finding the turnoff for the dirt road back through the nondescript sage scrub was a big problem for everyone until one morning when the crew was having breakfast at a small diner several miles away. A tractor trailer full of bright orange carrots pulled into the parking lot, the trucker stopping for breakfast. My boss walked over and offered to buy the man’s meal if he’d do a favor. We all left together, the truck following us to the turn-off where he stopped his truck and shoveled out what must have been a hundred pounds of carrots on to the road. He backed his rig up crushing the vegetables on to the pavement creating a huge orange splotch. Those carrots were still there almost a year later.  The power of carrots.

Turnip the Beet

Are we talking about veggies or music? Both!

Now that the weather is warming up music returns to the markets. I’ve missed the tunes drifting throughout the tents on Sunday, but even I recognize how difficult it is to strum guitars, banjos, basses and mandolins when you can’t feel your fingers. A little bluegrass and a lot of vegetables makes for a great market.

Old time music aside, we are in the last gasp of winter which means lots of great root vegetables and early spring greens. Last week an exasperated spouse who had been sent to the market to shop asked me which stand had tomatoes. After a lengthy lecture on seasonality he admitted he’ll just go to the grocery store rather than admit defeat. I suggested he try turnips or beets.

“No, I want something we can eat raw in a salad,” he countered.

It was all I could do not to refute his excuse, but my face must have said it all because he dashed away before I could go on.

So for this week’s Dishing the Dirt we’re going to discuss why greens and root vegetables abound in late winter. Yes, technically it is still winter. Earlier this week when temperatures crept up into the high 60’s causing magnolia buds to swell and daffodils to burst open in an explosion of yellow (I even caught some cherry trees in DC flowering!), we were given a brief taste of the coming weeks. However, this morning when I left for errands there was enough ice on my windshield to warrant scraping in order to drive. Winter is still here.

Tomatoes, nor any other heat-loving plants such as squashes, peppers, eggplants and most fruits would stand for this type of weather. Their expansive leaves would wilt in deference to the frost and eventually die. Nothing would ripen.

But last year starting in late summer, our farmers planted cold-hardy vegetables to harvest throughout the winter and early spring. There are many plants which are not killed by cold temperatures, including my favorite—kalettes. Sure, they grow much slower than warm-weather plants, but they’re still producing. The hardiest of vegetables can survive heavy frost with air temperatures below 28 degrees. This includes spinach, onions, leeks, rutabaga, rhubarb, kohlrabi, kale, cabbage, radishes, mustards, broccoli and turnips. Others such as carrots, parsnips, chards, cauliflower and cabbage will survive in the 28-32-degree range.  They can all withstand snow as the fluffy white stuff that has be AWOL this winter acts as insulation from cold air.

More damaging to winter vegetables than cold is wetness. To protect many of these crops from too much rain, farmers use hoop houses and low tunnels {knee-high greenhouses}.

But back to the salad conundrum of my customer. I never got to tell him that beets and turnips can be eaten raw, actually, you can eat the whole darn plant! A single cup of turnip greens delivers the highest calcium content per gram than any vegetable or fruit and is easily substituted in any recipe that calls for a heavier braising green such as spinach, kale, chard or mustard. The same goes for beet greens.

Too often I’ve received a sneer of disdain when suggesting turnips and beets as most folks think of plain boiled vegetables when they are mentioned. I think of delightful dishes like roasted root vegetables and borscht.

Last week Twin Springs had a huge box of big ol’ parsnips, another one of those odd veggies devoid of pigment but full of flavor. Think of it as a starchier carrot although it’s in the parsley family. Bon Appetit offers 19 different ways to prepare parsnips, including raw! Those recipes should more than carry you through spring until winter vegetable season is over and warm weather produce arrives.

And for those of you who prefer tomatoes on your salads, fear not. The last few weeks I’ve seen hot house cucumbers beginning to arrive at the market which means the tomatoes are not far behind.