There are a lot of reasons to buy another gardening book: maybe it discusses a variety that most books forget; maybe it offers some unique tips on how to grow your favorites. But when you’ve already got shelves full of gardening books, the real reason to buy yet another one is when it is, as Simon Rickard’s “Heirloom Vegetables” is, not only both of these things but above all, a beautiful book filled with beautiful stories about heirloom produce.

“The main purpose of this book is to tell some of the interesting stories about heirloom vegetables,” Rickard writes on one of the first pages of “Heirloom Vegetables.” “As in all good stories, the plot jumps around a bit.”

So begins a journey into the world of vegetables — and people — because, as Rickard says, “Vegetables are human creations.”

That may be a tough pill to swallow for those of us who like thinking of nature as what happens when humans aren’t sticking our fingers in it, but Rickard’s point of view is both intriguing and truthful.

In its first chapter, the book delves into a lengthy definition of what, exactly, an heirloom vegetable is — and what it isn’t: “‘Pure’ and untouched by the hand of man.”

“Heirloom vegetables are entirely the work of human hands,” he writes. “True, nature originally created the prototypes of vegetables, but humans have spent thousands of years customizing them and pimping them up.”

Throughout the chapters of his book, Rickard details several examples of this customization. Each chapter focuses on an overarching family — peas or nightshades or gourds — and explores not only the ‘pure,’ original incarnation of some of our favorite veggies, but also the varieties that were carefully tended to by our ancestors, the farmers and gardeners who were able to seize genetic opportunities to make vegetables work for them.

“Our ancestors found the one weird potato plant with extra large tubers growing in the field of wildlings, and kept its tubers back to see what would happen,” Rickard writes. “They noticed the strange new grain with large, non-shattering seed heads, and saved its seed for next year.”

Through his prose, the reader learns how and where these varieties were created, what they taste like, and how they have been further modified to create new and exciting sub-varieties. The journey of their creation is one defined by a sustainable relationship, a back-and-forth, a give-and-take that has defined most of our relationship with vegetables, up until the modern industrialization of agriculture. It is this element of our relationship with vegetables that Rickard seeks to nourish with these stories, and it is an intriguing approach in the current media climate, where a completely different sort of genetic modification is gracing headlines more often than not.

The book is much more than a simple gardening guide, though it does offer a few tips for sustaining Rickard’s favorite heirloom varieties. This is, above all, a book for a lover of plants and vegetables, for those who seek to discover their history, and for those who are intrigued by the relationship that humans and vegetables have sustained for centuries.

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Image care of Penguin Books

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“Why should the edible biodiversity I found at the market become a subject for a book by a sociologist and not just ingredients for a pleasurable dinner?”

This sentence from the introduction of “Edible Memory” from Jennifer A. Jordan is the perfect starting point for this intricate yet very readable anthropological study of heirloom foods.

Jordan, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, begins her book by outlining an experience that so many of us have had: encountering heirloom foods as an adult. Her introduction on the definition of what she calls “edible memory” explores food memories both old and new — from the Twinkies of childhood to the heirloom tomatoes whose cultural memory is far more extensive, yet whose individual memory may not be so well forged.

In fact, this idea of cultural versus individual edible memory is examined at length. How, for instance, did tomatoes come to be seen as Italian when they are natively grown in South America? Why has America become associated with apples? These questions and more are explored over the course of six specific chapters dedicated to different foods and ideas.

The first three chapters explore three foods that are frequently considered to be heirloom — tomatoes, apples and root vegetables. These chapters explore the history of these foods up to and including their current heirloom nature and how they earned this label. This historic exploration of foods that have become commonplace offers interesting points of reflection for anyone who has paid more for an heirloom tomato in recent years.

The book also devotes chapters to  two other themes: that of the “mobile vegetable” and that of that delicate line between local and exotic. The first discusses the globalization of produce, though not in any way the average shopper may be thinking of it. Jordan delves, for example, into the history of cassava and its place in the slave trade, the development of a taste for pepper in Spain and Hungary after it was imported from the colonies and the East.

The last chapter explores the loss of such local fruits as plums, often used for plum brandy throughout the world and which used to cover much of California’s Santa Clara Valley, only to be replaced by tract homes. These local losses are contrasted with the increased popularity of imports like tropical fruits, which very rarely receive an heirloom label, no matter how culturally or historically significant they may be.

In each chapter, Jordan poses particularly poignant questions regarding, for example, the trajectory of heirloom tomatoes from nonexistent to something so popular that they are out of the financial purview of the very farmers who grow them, to a nearly over-used, bland and unexciting omnipresence on the market. These questions demand that we ask our own questions about our foodie habits — why do we choose the foods we choose, and how rooted are these foods in our own memories? Jordan’s brief personal introductions to each chapter keep the reader rooted in the personal nature of food memory.

The book concludes with a particularly poignant and poetic image of the durability of fruit trees, their edible memory ensconced in the soil — and a warning against romanticizing foods, especially heirloom foods, something we’re all wont to do. The study encourages learning more about the heirloom foods we’ve come to love, but it also paints an appetizing picture of the memories some of us would rather forget: the Kraft Dinners or Devil Dogs of our youth.

Jordan proposes that we advocate for change in the food world, for the forging of new cultural culinary memories all while conserving the permanence and importance, if not the contemporariness, of our personal food memories.

“Edible Memory“ is available via the University of Chicago Press.

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Image care of the University of Chicago Press

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The elusive perfect tomato. Even among varieties of heirloom tomatoes, not every bite is as worthy as it could be. As worthy as we want it. After all, we call them love apples for a reason. Expectations are high.

To the lucky few who find those delicious rarities where acid and sweetness are in perfect balance, texture is juicy but firm, flavor is strong but just mild enough, preservation is key. And with heirloom tomatoes only around for that short blip of summer (it always goes too fast, doesn’t it?) saying farewell can be painful.

While we can’t keep perfect summer heirloom tomato varieties fresh year-round, we can have the next best thing: dried tomatoes. These aren’t your store-bought-soaked-in-oil-and-salt variety. These are slow-dried at home, from your favorite batch of heirlooms.

Oven-dried Heirloom Tomatoes

Makes about one pint

Ingredients

7 -8 lbs firm ripe heirlooms
2 teaspoons sea salt
optional: one teaspoon (each or any) fresh dried herbs: basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, parsley

Directions

De-stem tomatoes and cut into quarters (for smaller tomatoes, simply cut in half, but generally, heirlooms are on the large side).

Lay the tomatoes cut side up on a non-stick cookie sheet (or oil a regular cookie sheet). But avoid an aluminum sheet as this will react with the acids in the tomato and compromise the flavor.

Mix the salt with any of the dried herbs and sprinkle the mixture atop the tomatoes.

With the oven door slightly opened to allow the moisture out, bake at 170°F (or 200° if that’s the lowest setting your oven allows) for approximately 3 hours.

Remove the tomatoes and gently flip to the other side. Put the tomatoes back in for another 3 hours with the door open. Repeat the process until dry. Note this can take up to 12 hours before the tomatoes are completely dried.

You want to avoid letting them become crisp or burned, so you need to watch them, especially in the last half of the drying process. Which means, start this early, perhaps on a slow weekend when you’re savoring the last of summer’s long, warm days.

Some tomatoes will dry faster than others; it’s okay to remove those.

You can store them in an airtight jar in the refrigerator.

Serve with lots of fresh olive oil on salads and sandwiches, in pasta and pizza dishes, or simply enjoy them by themselves.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Images: (top) Chiot’s run, kulinarno

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If you’re still chuckling from the weirdest of 2008’s green building designs, pop some popcorn and pull up a chair before you check out the Dragonfly – it’s a 600-meter-tall wing-shaped skyscraper filled with self-sufficient offices and vertical gardens. Would you be happy to see this against the Manhattan skyline?

New Zealand comedian Mike King has been talking green for a while now, yet that didn’t keep him promoting the pork industry – until he broke into a pig farm with animal activists and saw things for himself. “If I had known this was going on I would never have supported this.” Read the full story at Stuff.

Another summer, another tide of sunscreen attacking man and beast alike – unless you go for the new wave of eco-friendly versions. Check out Alternative Consumer’s recommendations, and have a look at our own.

If you work in the heirloom tomato industry, you’ll be fuming after Scientific American’s Brendan Borrell described heirlooms as “feeble and inbred” in an article that implied these strains of fruit were fatally flawed and needed a genetic band-aid. A blistering response wasn’t long in coming, prompting Mr. Borrell to take back a few of his ill-chosen words. You can read our Vanessa‘s thoughts on the subject at Civil Eats.

How about this for inflammatory? Writer and activist Michael Pollan is so concerned about food from mass-commercialized agriculture that he advises us to avoid all food we’ve seen advertised. Pioneering or paranoid? Read his argument at AlterNet and decide for yourself.

When people look at wind turbines, they make a lazy association: spinning blades = bird-killing machines = worse than traditional power. The problem, argues Benjamin Sovacool at Scitizen, is that few of us see first-hand the damage mining and acid rain does to our feathered friends, and out of sight means out of mind. Wind turbines have a ways to go, it’s true, but the conventional energy industry kills far more birds.

For the fellas out there who like to explore themselves – I mean figuratively, for pity’s sake – there’s a new magazine on that very topic, called Masc. Top tip? Funny is hot.

Some things shouldn’t be so small – stamp-sized cellphone manufacturers, I’m talking to you. In the same category is bonkers Brit Perry Watkins, who has turned a children’s ride into the world’s smallest road-legal automobile. Parking should be a cinch, although beware of being crushed under the wheels of passing bicycles. A unique concept, we dearly hope.

If you clicked on our popular TOMS vegan shoe giveaway and are now finding that standard footwear no longer measures up, hot-foot it to Greenopia where Katherine has listed the top eco-sneakers on the market today and gives advice on where to donate your shoes when they’re falling off your feet.

He’s walked 1,200 miles to raise awareness for the plight of homeless children. He’s about to walk the 600 miles from Atlanta to Washington. And he’s 11 years old. A kind of philanthropic Karl Bushby, Zach Bonner is a fund-raising walking machine, and you can read his story at MSNBC.

As someone who once got a chili seed in one of his eyes, I can attest that making hot sauce is dangerous. You need to know exactly what you’re doing, so we reckon you can’t go far wrong with Aleta’s comprehensive guide at Omnomicon. Although – is there a greener alternative to vinyl gloves?

We know that organic is the way to go in principle. But what about practice? Enough of “should”: is organic better? Chelsea Green‘s Makenna Goodman isn’t so sure. Have we been robbed by companies willfully misusing the loosely-defined organic label? Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm thinks Goodman’s aim is a little off: the real problem is the food system that small-scale farming challenges. Where do you weigh in?

If you’re wondering what the force of nature known as Bette Midler is up to these days, you don’t live in New York. She’s been tackling the city’s legendary garbage problems, and her New York Restoration Project has stumped up $38 million for good causes – not the first time she’s set such an inspiring example. Respect to the lady with the voice that parts your hair.

So, modular house-building is convenient, adaptive to the environment and oh-so-very-cool. But did you realise that you could knock a prefab together in just 8 days? It takes me that long to put up a shelf, let alone a house.

Finally, a dumb but impressively brave act of environmental terrorism. Just imagine if their timing had been off.

Image: Sleeping Bear

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