A springtime sustainable soup

This weekend the farmer's market will open in our town. I don't anticipate there will be many fresh vegetables yet, but I'll be there to purchase a few plants, to greet the organic meat man, and perhaps to buy some good cheese.

I feel a tremendous rush of optimism this time of year; spring is definitely my favorite season.

With the sunshine comes all the little spring wildflowers, morel mushrooms, and dreams of garden bounty to come. Not that I am a skilled gardener. I am trying to learn as much as I can about permaculture, a term coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, referring to permanent agriculture--growing practices adapted to the unique growing conditions and mix of plants found in the existing landscape. Our backyard is populated chiefly by black locust trees, considered a pest in many parts of the country. Our trees are about 70 years old. They wait until June to leaf out, have small leaves that do not need to be raked, and delightfully fragrant flowers. To implement permaculture in our yard, I'll be gradually adding perennial plants, especially edibles, that take advantage of the unique qualities of our particular site.

Last year I planted some asparagus on the edge of our yard, theorizing that the late leafing black locust would permit the asparagus to get the early sun it needs. This year, I am trying to nurture an apple tree that also grows beneath the canopy of the black locust. I pruned the apple tree, and hung a homemade moth catcher in its branches. The following ingredient are mixed in a plastic milk jug: 2 cups of water, a banana peel, 1 cup vinegar, and 1/3 cup black molasses. I cut a 2" hole in the jug and hung it in the tree. This brew is supposed to have a fermented smell that will attract the moths that afflict the early blossoming apples.

The other thing that is coming up all over is garlic mustard. I've written about garlic mustard before. It is another invasive plant that has millions of seeds. The spring seedlings grow quickly and crowd out the native plants. It is very difficult to eradicate once it gets established. The plant has gained a foothold in our neighborhood, the seeds no doubt carried by the prolific deer who live around here.

I think about garlic mustard a lot; for some reason it seems to capture the dilemmas of the changes we humans have wrought on the landscape. I had heard that garlic mustard was edible but found the raw leaves bitter. This afternoon I boiled some garlic mustard leaves in chicken broth for 15 minutes, and found the taste quite palatable.

So, I present herewith a recipe for Kielbasa and garlic mustard soup, which we will have tonight. I'll update this blog with our reactions to the recipe. As I picked the leaves for my garlic mustard I went through the field of growing plants with my grass clippers and snipped off the little white flowers. Next year's crop of garlic mustard will be prolific enough without letting all the plants blossom.

A Springtime Sustainable Soup

Kielbasa & Garlic Mustard Soup

Ingredients
1 19 oz. can Cannellini beans
1 14 oz. can chicken broth
12 ounces turkey kielbasa
1 medium onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp. hot chili sauce
½ lb. potatoes, sliced
½ lb. cabbage, thinly sliced
3 cups fresh garlic mustard leaves, washed and sliced coarsely

Directions:
Place chicken broth, beans, onion, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and chili sauce in a pot. Simmer covered, for 25 minutes. Add to the pot the potatoes, cabbage and garlic mustard. Simmer, covered for 25 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Options: substitute kale, spinach or collard greens for the garlic mustard.

Here are some more recipes for garlic mustard, which I found on a website called Prodigal Gardens. I would like to see a nutritional analysis of garlic mustard. According to Wisconsin herbalist Rose Barlow, "Mustards provide lots of calcium, potassium, and vitamin B & B2. Research has shown that all mustards, even commercial ones like broccoli, contain concentrated substances which help prevent cancer, including isothiocynates, beta carotene, vitamin C, and fiber."

Happy spring!

To Mom for Christmas

I don't design a Christmas card every year, but this year I did. The image is of a gift tag that reads: "To Mom". The "from" line is hidden by a leaf of garlic mustard, growing here in Minnesota, in the month of December.

I am probably one of the few people to regularly blog about garlic mustard, as I did in this early post. When a friend spent a half hour ranting about her efforts to eradicate garlic mustard from her backyard, it got my attention. The plant had been invisible to me until I started looking for it, then I started to see it everywhere in the woods that I love. The reason that it is currently growing in the woods, even though it is December, is that the plant produces seeds so profusely that they begin to sprout after several days of sunshine. Instead of having our normal cold December, we've had a mild month, with cycles of warm and cool, but not all that cold.

If I was hungry, I could be picking these attractive rosettes, and sauteing them as one would do with other fresh greens you find in the springtime. I haven't tried cooking garlic mustard greens, yet I surely will one of these days. Garlic mustard is an invasive plant that grows rapidly and squeezes out other native species of plants.

The Christmas card is dedicated to moms everywhere, especially Mother Earth, who certainly needs some better gifts from humans than she has received in the last 10,000 years or so. Humans have been doing what comes naturally for a long time. Wherever human populations grow and become successful, soils have declined, and edible and non-edible species have become extinct. We are similar to garlic mustard in that we reduce species diversity. So I would argue that we should regard garlic mustard as something of a kindred spirit. Like humans, garlic mustard flourishes when we have mild winters.

My hope during this holiday season is that the Christian/Christmas message of caring for all creation filters down to members of the Christian flocks. I am somewhat encouraged by the news that congregations around Minnesota have been learning together about the effects of global warming and steps that could be taken to work with local communities to improve ecological health and sustainability. Congregations Caring for Creation is a Minnesota-based coalition of churches who are studying creation care and social justice. My own congregation is inviting others to watch a screening of Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, on January 7. Coincidentally, the screening date coincides with Epiphany, the day the eastern Churches celebrated the birth of Christ.

Here's hoping that parishioners, with or without Al Gore's help, experience some epiphanies about global warming and creation care. All of us, Mother Earth included, could use the spiritual help.