SIMPLY SUPER

By Francesca Arniotes

It’s planting time at last! Living down the hill, the kids are eating from their gardens already. But at 9,000 feet, things don’t go into the ground until the first week of June.  Mostly seeds, because all the good bedding plants are gone by the time we’re ready for them, we wait weeks for sprouts, eat the thinnings we pull and then wait some more. What we get in any given year is up to serendipity, even for the kids due to bunnies and hail, but it’s all a gift and we geekily share photos of our miraculous daily harvests via text. 

Vegetables are exciting food, to be enjoyed raw and crunchy or cooked tender and silky. So many shades of green. And reds, yellows, purple, orange. Fruits, too: strawberries and raspberries for us up on the mountain and apples, grapes, pears and peaches down below. There’s so much nutrition packed into plants, especially those of the brassica family like cabbages, kale, collards, rapini and mustards, brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower.  Vegetables provide vitamins, minerals, fiber and antioxidants that benefit gut and colon health, blood sugar regulation, the immune system, skin and cognition. Countless studies have shown that a diet high in vegetables decreases risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancers, even age-related macular degeneration. The variety of vegetables we have available not only keeps mealtime interesting, but different colors provide different vitamins, so eat a rainbow! The most nutrient-dense vegetables are sweet potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes, garlic, onions, beets including the leaves, cauliflower, asparagus, bell peppers, turnips and their greens, kale, mushrooms, broccoli including stems and leaves, carrots, radishes and cabbage. Swap our proportions of starches and veggies and we slim down and feel more energized.

I have a story that proves the power of eating vegetables. A friend of mine was in the PeaceCorps about 20 years ago, working in Senegal. At the time, HIV was ravaging the continent. In Senegal, the HIV rate was low, but that meant that the stigma associated with having HIV was very high. Most hospitals require families of patients to bring them their meals and so patients  were provided only one meal a day, a plate of oily rice. Because of the stigma of having HIV, family members didn’t want to be associated and so didn’t bring food or the patients didn’t even tell family members that they were sick. Without proper nutrition, the patients were unable to tolerate the HIV medications and most died, leaving children orphaned, work abandonded, village life upended. My friend had an idea and asked permission to turn the ground around the hospital into a garden. They sourced some seeds and began growing produce for the hospital which then added heaps of fresh vegetables to patients’ plates of rice. The extra nutrition made patients strong enough for the medicines to be effective and they got better. Vegetables changing lives.

That’s what I wanted to tell you about eating vegetables, but I’d also like you to know the rest of my friend’s story. That something so simple could be so immediately impactful, changing the entire purview of the hospital by adding vegetables to meals sparked the idea of Developments in Gardening. My friend saw a way to create a program that might alleviate the need for aid to marginalized people – the elderly, disabled, malnourished children, women in abusive relationships, HIV, even displaced forest dwellers: by giving them the tools, training and resources to plant gardens and grow produce to improve their own nutrition and even to be able to sell surpluses, empowering them in new ways and keeping the impact of that first dramatic endeavor of the hospital garden going indefinitely. It’s the classic “give a man a fish” vs. “teach a man to fish” story. Next year, DIG will celebrate 20 years of facilitating regenerative gardening projects in communities in Kenya, Uganda and Senegal. Teaching agriculture, ecology and business skills to the most vulnerable populations has lifted hundreds of people out of poverty and malnutrition and then taught them to teach others. If you’d like to learn more about DIG, please visit  <www.dig.org>. 

It’s planting time, as we do and have done in our family forever. We love vegetables. How wonderful that eating them can change people’s lives.

We didn’t know that planting a garden wasn’t a universal value.  How wonderful that teaching people how can change the world. 

Vegetables “Ripadella”  for all greens and brassicas

Cut everything the same size to cook evenly. Bring water to a boil in a 2-inch deep skillet, add some salt and the vegetable. Cook to halfway as done as you want. Drain water, put veg in serving bowl, cover with a plate and allow it to steam until it is to your liking. Cover the bottom of the skillet with extra virgin olive oil and add 1 or 2 garlic cloves, chopped or smashed. Add a pinch of red pepper flakes if desired. Turn heat to low and cook the garlic until fragrant, soft and waxy. Do not brown! Add the drained vegetable and mix well with the garlic oil. Add salt to taste. Return to the serving bowl, scraping in all the oil and garlic. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Roasted Beets Greek Style

Wrap beets in foil and roast in 400-degree oven for 1 hour or until tender. When cool enough to handle, slip skins off. Cook sliced onion and chopped garlic in olive oil over low heat. Toss into chopped beets. Dress with olive oil, fresh lemon juice and salt. Add crumbled Feta cheese and walnuts. Serve at room temperature.