Welcome to Day 5 of Hanukkah, an eight-day holiday which commemorates the time in Jerusalem a couple thousand years ago when the Brothers Maccabee led the Jews to take their temple back from the enemy, beat back oppressors and stuff like that. And then there's the miracle. The whole Hanukkah megillah, if you will, is that while the Jews only had a day's worth of lamp oil for the temple light, through some miracle, it lasted eight -- a miracle of sustainability.
Miracles are great. But we can't count on them. Too bad, because it's going to take a miracle for us to sustain ourselves going forward. All over the world, we're busy pumping our dwindling oil supply into beef production. According to Standford University study, global meat production has tripled in the past three decades, and will keep the pace going in order to keep up with mankind's insatiable desire to eat animals.
Back in the Maccabees' day, the food that fed the world wasn't meat, it was barley. A complex carb before anyone knew or cared about such things, barley goes back some 6,000 years and is one of our first cultivated crops.
Sometimes called the poor man's wheat, it's cheap and easy to grow. An acre's yield of barley feeds a lot more people than an acre feedlot for cattle, is kinder to the environment than raising livestock, and more humane besides. It allows us to feed ourselves without eating up our resources. It allows us to be sustainable And it makes us look good as a civilization. In Near a Thousand Tables, a cultural history of food, author Felipe Fernandez-Armesto calls the cultivation of barley and other grains "among the most spectacular achievements of humankind." Not bad.
It's hard to imagine future food historians will say the same thing about the way we produce food now.
There's no putting the genii back in the bottle, there's no going back in time to an all-agrarian world. But returning to growing more sustainable food, like barley, wouldn't hurt. Usually labelled pearled barley -- barley with part of its fibrous hull stripped away -- it's in your market along with the dried beans and grains. A pound of barley costs just a buck or two, has an almost meaty chew, a subtly nutty taste and fills the belly -- lots of bellies, actually.
Barley's heartier than rice, but just as versatile and its texture gives it a certain stylishness. Russians traditionally serve mushroom barley soup at Hanukah. It also makes a rich risotto, works as a pilaf with your favorite vegetables or as a grainy main course salad. You can even bake with it. Barley flour (ground barley) makes for a denser loaf than wheat flour, but barley bread's been around since the Maccabees -- and they did all right.
I'm not saying swapping barley for beef is going to save the world. But it might be one of a number of actions that leads us back to a more sustainable path. Besides, barley has a way of bringing everyone together -- it's what beer is made from, after all. It's a big player in the Old Testament's Book of Ruth, and in the New Testament, barley feeds 5,000 people in John 6. In these divisive days, it's a grain even Jews and Christians can agree on. That alone makes barley a natural miracle.
Barley With Tapenade
Barley is filling and comforting besides, with a chewy, density even carnivores can sink their teeth into. Here the goodness of the grain gets played up with tapenade, a sexy black olive paste.
1-1/2 cups barley
3-1/2 cups vegetable broth or water.
1/3 cup tapenade*
1/4 cup white wine
3 cloves garlic
1 onion
1/2 pint whole grape tomatoes or 1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, cut in half
8 ounces mushrooms
2 cups spinach
1 large handful parsley
salt and pepper
In a large pot, bring broth or water to boil over high heat. Add barley and cover, reduce heat to simmer. Cook for 45 minutes, until barley is tender and most liquid is absorbed.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 425. Chop onion and garlic, then spread them on rimmed baking sheet or in a roasting pan. Add tomatoes. Mix in 2 tablespoons of the tapenade and roast for 30 minutes. Stirring occasionally.
Remove sheet from oven. Add spinach gently add handfuls of spinach to barley, so that it wilts. Add tomato and onions, vegetables to barley and stir in remaining tapenade and wine.
Add chopped parsley, season with salt and pepper.
Serves 6.
*black olive paste available in most gourmet food stores and some supermarkets
www.getskinnygovegan.blogspot.com
you know that raising a cow takes a huge amount of land, right? land for crops, land for housing the cow (in barbaric conditions), land for its rotting manure and the filthy run-off from the slaughterhouse....
it is much more efficient, in terms of land and water usage, to raise soy or barley or other protein-rich legumes instead of raising food for cows
also, the burps and farts of modern-fed cows and pigs are a huge part of the damage we're doing to the environment; they are not designed for the feed we give them, and they produce far more methane now than they did 100 years ago, per animal....
Few regions can support large-scale plant cultivation all year long. Many regions can't support any large-scale plant cultivation. By comparison, most regions can support livestock farming on a large-scale.
There is also evidence that grazing ruminents improves the land. Perhaps you'll find these articles interesting. This is from Mother Earth News.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Grass-Fed-Meat-Benefits.aspx
These articles describe how grazing large ruminents can turn deserts green.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/Greener_Pastures/
http://www.fastcompany.com/1655491/plan-to-turn-deserts-green-wins-2010-buckminster-fuller-challenge
Here's an interesting take on livestock and air pollution.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-08-07-debunking-meat-climate-change-myth/
This study found that dairy cows produce half the amount of air pollution that was previous estimated. (We can assume the same applies to beef cattle.)
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=7263
As for how much land is required to raise one steer, I believe the answer is one acre. Besides, it's not like cattle are the only source for meat.
"Nothing will benefit mankind and our chances for survival more than the evolution to a vegetarian diet." Albert Einstein
A pound of mutton bones should be enough to make a nice pot of soup, it has a strong flavour. Throw in an onion, carrot & celery for the stock with a bay leaf, a clove of garlic and some thyme and rosemary since it goes so well with mutton. Fish them out when the stock is done and pick apart the meat to go back into the pot, skim fat (personally I leave it in for flavour & the rustic touch). Then add barley to start cooking while you chop up carrots and mushrooms to throw in. Add a little tomato paste or canned crushed tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Cook until tender and you're done.
I make lentil soup every week with basically the same plan and using either a stewing chicken or beef marrow bones. You can vary the veggies too, chopped watercress and beets is tasty.
It's good to be a hunter...
Happy Holiday cooking, Ellen!
It is a complete fallacy that an entirely plant based diet will save the environment, in fact, it is quite the contrary.
The Jewish diet during biblical times also included meat, although not daily, and fish as well as dairy. It was not completely plant based.
As far as the next generation goes, while I will forego certain items such as over fished sea food a diet that truly cares for the next generation will have sustainable plants and animals in it.
The earth cannot be saved if it is covered in crops.
The original assessment indicated cattle raising produced more methane than worldwide transportation because too many factors were not counted in the transport figures. Accurate assessments are needed if we ever hope to get anywhere.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/23/veggie_planet_saver_scheme_rubbished/
http://ilriclippings.wordpress.com/tag/livestocks-long-shadow/
Also, rice production produces more methane than cows and yet no one ever suggests we stop producing rice.
http://www.ghgonline.org/methanerice.htm
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1953751,00.html