How to Use Foraged Veggies to Extend Your Oatmeal – Without the Blood Sugar Spike
This year I have been more mobile than usual. I am very close to location-independent. I am extremely thankful to friends and family that have let me stay with or house-sit for them while I work through this time of transition (Ed. note: Perpend is on a monastic journey to become and Orthodox monk). This location Independence has brought about many re-evaluations of thoughts and words we use. “Foraging” is one of those words I have been rethinking.
On the podcast we have talked about foraging as something done in the woods or forests. I have talked about making the bulk of my salads from weeds found around the yard as an extension on foraging. I have had some success in getting mustard greens and arugula to go native and reseed itself. The hardest part of that is keeping them from getting mowed down before the seed is ready for spreading. So far those are all foraging as a skill – knowing the plants in your area, where they grow and when they are ready for harvest. Some people keep detailed maps of fruit berries and fruit trees along walking trails, urban parks and backyards. That is all well and good, but how can we start to move foraging from a skill to a mindset? That is what I would like to talk about today. I don’t have a neatly summarized way to go about skill to mindset adoption as of yet, but I might have a couple of anecdotal stories that can give us a couple hints.
My Thriving Journey
Early this spring I was in Alaska starting plants. On my travels since then, I have helped plan, weed, and care for gardens in West Virginia, New Mexico, Kansas and Missouri. Several times I had a place to stay and could eat whatever I could harvest from the garden or find in the cupboards in exchange for housesitting. As both Shudra and Scott pointed out to me, this was a true foraging experience. Plant and weed in one garden, harvest in another. Heading to a garden to harvest that zucchini that should be ready today, only to have my mind wandering, but then remembering that was the garden I was caring or 2 days ago, not this one. So everyday became “what is in this garden and how can I best use it for meals today?”. Even though it was a backyard garden for me it was like foraging in the woods, so the rules that define foraging got hazy. It was definitely not a (Permaculture) zone 5 area, but it was a zone 5 to me; an area I was in only a few weeks a year. Sometimes even areas I had not been in previously. That got me thinking that a big part of making the transition to Thriving is removing the rules we create.
A big part of making the transition to Thriving is removing the rules we create.
Perpend
Foraging happens somewhere other than home. We never stop to think about the expression “foraging in the cabinets”. My Grandmother used to ask my grandfather all the time “What are you foraging around in the cabinets for?” Grandpa would reply with something like “I thought I saw a can a peanuts in here somewhere”. Grandma would of course begin exact instructions to where they could be found. Then direct him to bring the “something special” from the second drawer down on the right side of the pantry as well. As Grandma pointed out, “because it is not polite to have a snack and not get something for your grandchildren.” But I am getting lost in memory lane…back to foraging. That exchange can be similar to any foragers past or present discussing if something is ready for harvest. “Did you see the apples down by the lake? I think they will be ready in a couple weeks.” “Which lake? where at? I was looking at the pears over by the creek.”
The thought is that searching for food is foraging. When that search for food doesn’t primarily involve stopping at the grocery store, things get interesting. You cook from what you have. Having stayed in almost a dozen different places this year I can say with a good deal of certainty that you will surely find either rice or oatmeal in any pantry. Just like almost all American gardens will have a tomato plant. For me this adventure started with oatmeal being in plentiful supply. Let’s look at some of the rules we create around oatmeal.
Oatmeal – you are heading for a crash!
Oatmeal is for breakfast and usually is eaten with a ton of fruit and sugar. A few of us have expanded out to savory oatmeal and just eat it with a bit of salt. Either way these are preparing for a diabetic or pre-diabetic crash. Most of the time we save ourselves from making a complete fool of ourselves in the mid-morning meeting but have a snack bar to stave off the brain fog. This left me with the question: how did peasants get through a hard-days work on such food? I know that if I eat oatmeal and spend my Saturday gardening I am soon hungry again. Having had a diabetic parent and grandparents I knew that adding protein to high carb foods slows digestion and doesn’t spike blood sugar as high. So the natural combination is bacon or sausage with oatmeal. Hardly peasant food of the past. So I hit the interwebs looking for oatmeal recipes, porridge recipes, medieval peasant porridge etc.
I found a couple interesting sites and something called pottage. Here is a link:
Pottage is interesting, it is basically a stew to which a grain is added. Most of the modern versions get overly complicated and specific, but the idea of the past was it was whatever had been cooking in the pot plus what had just been gathered. A combination of turnips, rutabagas, beets, carrots, parsnips, onion, leeks, and whatever greens or herb that were to hand. Porridge is made from whatever grain grew well locally oats, wheat, rye, barely. (If you want more, I will leave it up to you to get lost in the wormhole of internet opinion and modern takes on what ancient people did or did not do). For me I decided to exit there, because as interesting as I found putting leftover oatmeal into a drawer for later most blog posts just mention it then go into explaining all the different types of oatmeal. My patience for such things is waning these days. I mean, a long ferment of oats sliced and toasted sounds delicious but was so commonplace in Scotland that no one seems to have left us detailed instructions. Anyway, that was the perfect place to leave off and begin to experiment with what was at hand. I am a lazy writer and didn’t document all the experiments. So the pictures here are from my experiments and only representative of the greater whole.
My first few experiments were all based on my sister’s pantry and fridge. They were all simple like adding peanut butter and spinach. But then I mixed it up, with bell peppers, apples, berries, greens of all sorts as available. What I have found is that simply adding 2-3 vegetables to the mix changes how the oatmeal digests and fuels me longer. I am often not able to eat again until dinner. At one point I ate all the oatmeal at my sister’s house. I went on the weekly shopping trip to get some more. At Natural Grocers in the bulk package aisle, I found rolled rye and barley. I also noticed the oats of every variety are a bit cheaper here than the cardboard cans in the cereal aisles. I started mixing rye barley and oats together; each gain more flavor together than on their own. They all work similarly and with vegetables and it is a hardy meal. At this point I can say I have thrown all recipes and rules out the window, being the eccentric fool that I am I have even throughout the baby with the bath water. I don’t measure anything anymore, not the water not the grains. Ok, I pour the salt into the palm of my hand before adding, well because even a fool needs to watch his salt intake.
Do you measure? Transforming a recipe into a cooking technique
Before we get deeper into how I combined garden foraging to the pantry foraging, it would be good to talk cooking technique. When a recipe transforms into a technique for cooking similar items, cooking has become more of mindset than a skill; a tool to be applied that comes with confidence. Confidence comes from repeated experience, some of them good, some of them bad. This simple process of testing the information over and over transforms it into knowledge. The knowledge from experience applied over and over becomes a skill. Abstracting from the skills a protocol for approaching something is how a mindset emerges.
Rather than a recipe for cooking porridge and pottage, I now have something more like a protocol. Protocols are great, most people call them routines or habits. Writers have routines that help them get past the blank page and serve to help them fight through writers’ block. This is something that homesteaders should explore more – what do when you feel like giving up. Anyway, thoughts for another time.
Porridge vs. Pottage
Porridge is mostly grains, while pottage is grans plus vegetables. Or, better yet, adding grains to an existing pot of stew.
The porridge protocol is to simply boil some water in a small pan. Once it reaches a boil, pour in your grains, and add a bit of salt. Return it to a simmer. Turn it off and let it sit covered. If I am adding greens I stir them in, cut the heat and let them wilt while the grains hydrate and soften. For steel cut oats or other coarse grains, use a little more water and 10 mins or so of sitting. Six months in now, I no longer measure – I go by sight and add a bit of water if it looks too dry. I got to that point by following the directions on the packages. I think it is something like 1/4 cup oats to ¾ cups of water with a teaspoon of salt. If I am in a fully awake state, then I might toast the oats in the pan before boiling the water.
The Pottage Protocol
My protocol for pottage is similar except that it gets all shifted around depending on what vegetables I am adding. If I want a stew, then I also increase the water. For example, onions and peppers are best sautéed a bit, then add the grains and toast. Then add any root vegetables and water. This time the water needs to submerge everything. It simmers longer. Stirring causes more of the starches to create a creamy broth. Similar to risotto and repeatedly adding the broth slowly and stirring. So that is another way to approach it is to make a broth with all the vegetables, then slowly add that broth to the grains stirring and creating that creamy starchy goodness. Then add the vegetables at the end.
Foraging and harvesting from the garden to add to my pottage
As spring gave way to summer, people began wanting to take family vacations. But they had pets, chickens and gardens to take care of, so I got offers to house-sit. With the free run of gardens to harvest I had green beans and peppers with a side of tomatoes on toast. I learned kale needs a little longer time or to be cut into smaller pieces. Fresh basil and thyme in oatmeal takes the flavor profile in a completely different direction. Sliced cherry tomatoes are a nice topper for that. Any of those can also be done with rice or a combination of grains. You also have moved oatmeal type grains to as any-time-of-day meal. I recently had oatmeal with dry beans. I cooked the dry beans as usual for another meal but added the leftovers to some oatmeal in the morning. It was quite complementary. I added some bay leaf, but I could see some salsa or hot sauce to go a different direction. The protein and fiber in the beans help extend out the release of sugars into the blood stream. An interesting option for all those prepper supplies – stored beans and oatmeal! Zucchini is best sautéed a bit and set aside while the rest cooks and add at the end. Another benefit is these are all one pot meals. That means one pot, one bowl and a bit of utensils to clean up. When cleanup is simple the next meal is so much easier to start because you actually did clean up from the last one.
Use the abundance around you – forage some Thriving through simple living
As I explore more and more perennial vegetables and milpa gardening techniques this style of meal prep removes a lot of fretting over how I will use the produce; as I move even farther away from recipes it has gotten easier to just try. Everyone – gardener, homesteader, hiker or weekend adventurer can use this and other examples to move away from a written script. That is all a recipe, it is in the end a script for how the cooking is done.
As you get to mindsets and protocols you prevent a lot of the noise in your head. Noise that asks “what if the supply line get cut? What if the grid goes down?” Instead, you know you can use the abundance around you. I think taking a week or a few days a month and just living off the pantry and the garden gives you the confidence to escape that noise in your head. That anxiety sometimes paralyzes you. Gardening and foraging help you because it is hard to stay stagnant in your thoughts with your body moving. The creativity involved in figuring out how to prepare the food is a healthy way to provide novelty to your life. Instead of the self-focused social media scrolling. It helps to not post every meal and experiment to social media and blogs.
Life is richer without the noise. Mindsets over recipes, #SkillsOverStuff is the path. #GetStuffDone (GSD) takes information to knowledge through experience. It all adds up to Thriving regardless of what life throws your way. Confront the fears head on, don’t give into imagined worse case scenarios, get out and live a little. Forage some Thriving through simple living.
