Lavender flowers at the Silver Fox Lavender Farm's stand at the Capital City Public Market in Boise

[HOST INTRO] There’s a little lavender renaissance going on.  This herb the Romans revered is gaining popularity here in America.  There are lavender festivals, new lavender products and a growing realization that lavender is great to cook with.  In this installment of the Market & Garden report, correspondent Guy Hand looks into this new-found love of lavender.

(Mascall) We’re at the Capital City downtown market and I sell lavender.

(Hand) Amy Mascall stands under a lavender blue sign, she’s surrounded by lavender plants and products, and she’s dressed in lavender-colored cloths.

Amy Mascall at her farm stand

(Mascall) We are the Silver Fox Lavender Farm in Emmett.  (Hand) And how long have you been growing lavender?  (Mascall) I’ve been growing lavender for about 15 years.  We’ve been doing it commercially for about five.  And it’s enjoyable.

(Hand) Lavender is kind of amazing.  A lavender farm in full bloom is stunningly, fragrantly beautiful.  It’s why lavender festivals have become so popular.

(Mascall) I think that’s been the key element for lavender growth is that people get to go out and experience the farm.   You see the plant, you enjoy it, you smell it, you see see the field, you enjoy that, we hang it to dry it, that’s enjoyable to look at.  You can eat it while you’re looking at the plants.  It’s just an enjoyable thing in all areas.

Sachets and other lavender products

(Hand) And do you know a little bit about the history of lavender?  (Mascall): The history of lavender goes back to biblical times.  The Romans used it in everything, in their baths and their linens, actually called the people who did their laundry in ancient Rome, they called them the lavenders.   Anybody that had any money of any value smelled like lavender.  (Hand) Really? I had no idea.

(Hand) Mascall says lavender is used in tons of different ways.

(Mascall) We make about everything you can imagine that has to do with lavender.  We make sachets and soaps and lotions and any culinary item that you can manufacture with lavender.

(Hand) I think a lot of people know of lavender as a fragrance and an oil, but not as something that you can actually cook with.  (Mascall) Lavender is all edible.  However some kinds of lavender have a camphor taste and they aren’t very enjoyable.  A Hidcote or a Munstead, maybe a Royal Velvet, some like that are a very good choice.  And a Munstead is very good because the foliage is also edible.

A lavender wreath at the Silver Fox Lavender Farm stand

(Mascall) My favorite way to use it, which most people do not is that you grind it with a poblano pepper and it has a lot of bite to it, it’s hot, it’s got an interesting taste.  It’s used regularly in chocolate and with lemon and lemon bread and cookies and anything with a sugar.  Lavender lemonade is a big hit on our farm.

(Hand) You can also make lavender margaritas, mojitos and ice cream. At her farmers’ market stand, Amy Mascall has plants, recipes and lots of other lavender products.

(Lavender music fading up) (Hand) For Edible Idaho’s Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

A few lavender links:

Here’s an article on making lavender smoothies and other drinks with herbs.

Cooking with lavender

Lavender margaritas, ice cream and more

Sign at the Monastery of St. Gertrude's annual raspberry festival

(HOST INTRO) On August 1st, The Monastery of St. Gertrude, north of Grangeville, held its 18th annual raspberry festival.  This year’s festival was dedicated to Sister Wilma Schlangen, the festival’s original inspiration and most devoted raspberry picker.  Sister Wilma died this spring at the age of 94.  In tribute, we revisit an Edible Idaho episode where correspondent Guy Hand meets Sister Wilma, at 91 still faithfully working in the Monastery’s raspberry patch.

(Crowd sounds)  (Martha Kehoff) We have raspberry wine, raspberry salsa, we have raspberry poppy seed dressing, raspberry mustard, raspberry grilling sauce . . .

(Hand) The sisters of St. Gertrude are famous for their raspberries and here at their annual August raspberry festival, it’s easy to see why.

(Martha Kehoff). . . then we have raspberry carmel corn which is made here at the monastery and raspberry jam that’s made here at the monastery.

(Hand) Festival volunteer Darla Anglen (ain-glen)-Whitley says the raspberry festival has grown into a major event.

The raspberry patch behind the monastery at St. Gertrude's.

(Whitley) Usually around 1500 to 2000 people are here for six hours of craziness.  (Hand) Do they come from all around?  (Whitley) They do; they come from Montana, Washington; we’ve had people from foreign countries, they just see the sign from out on the highway and drive in to see what a raspberry festival is. (Laughing)

Crowd sounds fading to wind, bells, and the nun’s singing . . .

(Hand) As important as the raspberry festival is to St. Gertrude’s, the celebration is only the most outward display of the deep inner connection the sisters have to food and faith.  Dr. Susan Swetnam, food scholar and professor at Idaho State University, is here at St. Gertrude’s studying that connection.

(Swetnam) Someone was telling me this morning that . . . each monastery seems to be known to the others for something, these are the intellectual ones or these are the people who do this or that . . . and these are informally known as the group of Benedictine sisters most closely tied to the land. . . .

(Hand) Dr Swetnam has learned that the Monastary—which the sisters helped build near the town of Cottonwood nearly a hundred years ago—was once almost self sufficient.

One of the silver buckets the nuns use to pick raspberries

(Swetnam) In the old days, they kept their own cattle and pigs, chickens, honey bees, you name it, they did it.  I even heard a story today, and had the recipe, for making beet wine.

(Hand) Swetnam says gardening fits perfectly with the Benedictine belief in simplicity, hospitality, and self sufficiency.  The sisters see their abundant raspberry harvest, for example, as proof of God’s love.

(Swetnam) So here are these sisters and they’re just drowning in raspberries, there are still raspberries on the table at Christmas and Easter and feast days and people’s birthdays.  You’ll walk in there in the middle of a blizzard in February or January and there will be bowls of these beautiful red raspberries.  That’s a lovely deal.

(Rustling of vines) (Sister Katie Cooper) See, all these haven’t even gotten ripe yet.  There’s only one here, but look how big that treasure is.  Mmm Hmmm.

(Hand) It’s 5:30 in the morning and over the Camas prairie, the eastern horizon is still just a soft, pre-dawn blush.  But Sister Katie Cooper is already picking raspberries, dropping her fruit into a small silver bucket.

Sister Katie Cooper picking raspberries at dawn with Sister Wilma Schlangen in the background

(Sister Katie Cooper) And I like to come out early in the morning.  It’s quiet and I can just thank God for the day and the beautiful things of nature.  I really enjoy it.

(Hand) Sister Katie sweeps her berry-stained hands outward, as if embracing this pastel landscape of prairie, pine trees, and garden.

(Sister Katie Cooper) When we were in the full season, I would get three gallons easily on this row.   (Hand) Someone mentioned that at the raspberry festival that they went through 13 five gallon buckets of raspberries.  (Sister Katie Cooper) Right, they did, yes.  We always try to get twenty.  Sister Wilma, who has really been doing this for years and years likes to get 25 gallon buckets.

(Hand) Sister Wilma Schlangen (shlong en), who another sister describes as “the great elder,” is working her own row of raspberries.

(Hand)  Good morning (whispering).  (Sister Wilma) Oh, Good morning (laughing).  You were out here early, huh?  . . . Look how many are on . . .

(Hand) Sister Wilma is 91.  She arrived at St. Gertrude’s in 1937 and she’s been gardening ever since.

(Sister Wilma Schlangen) . . . Some people get a back ache.  You know you just get a backache from stooping.  But then Jesus didn’t have it easy either (laughing).  So you have to do a little penance here and there (laughing).

Sister Wilma Schlangen, at 91, standing in front of the raspberry patch she tended for decades

(Hand) Sister Wilma has no plans to stop picking raspberries

(Sister Wilma Schlangen) God gives us all those berries.  We should pick ‘em.

(Hand) A good deal shorter than her raspberry canes, Sister Wilma dives into a tangled forest of leaves, then reemerges a moment later holding a bright red raspberry—and a beatific smile.

(Sister Wilma Schlangen) I do this in the name of Jesus and every berry I pick you know I’ll offer up as an act of love.

(Hand) Sister Wilma says food and faith have a lot in common.  At the Monastery of St. Gertrude, the two are tied together like raspberry canes to a trellis.

(Rustling sounds) (Sister Wilma) Some nice big ones . . .

(Hand) Sister Wilma drops another raspberry into her bucket, then she bows her head, as if in supplication, and plunges, again, into her patch of raspberries.

(Sister Wilma Schlangen) That’s a nice big one (plop).  They like to hide.

(Hand) For Edible Idaho and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

All last summer, Sister Wilma Schlangen picked raspberries.  She passed away on February 1st of this year.

Detail of Garden O' Feedin' sign

[HOST INTRO] Religions frequently struggle to find a balance between the spiritual and material world.  To some people Heaven and Earth often seem at odds.  Today, though, many faith-based organizations are finding that balance . . . in the garden.

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand looks at churches that believe good soil can nurture the human soul.

(Sunday service sounds)  (Hand) A Sunday service at an evangelical church, like the Treasure Valley’s Vineyard Christian Fellowship, isn’t the first place I’d go for a story on gardening. There are multiple video screens, a massive stage full of musicians and a sermon I assume will focus on Judgement Day more than top soil. But my assumptions falter as soon as I meet pastor Tri Robinson.

Sign in Garden o' Feedin' garden

(Robinson) There is a stereotype, that came out of primarily out of the 70’s.  And it basically said it’s all going to burn anyway, so why should we care.  As a result of that, evangelical Christians became sort of known to be anti-environmentalists.

(Hand) Pastor Robinson, a former ecology major and a high school biology teacher, grew increasingly uncomfortable with that stereotype.  So one day he pulled out his Bible.

(Robinson) And I studied for about six months through the scriptures, being a good evangelical, and realized somehow we were totally missing God’s council.  So I preached a series of sermons why Christians should care for the environment and got standing ovations in my church.  I had never had that in all the time I had been preaching, but it started something here.

(Hand) What it started was a kind of evangelical environmentalism — and in 1998 a garden, what the congregation christened the Garden O’ Feedin’.

(Robinson) It all sort of came together.  Our organic garden was an expression of our attitude towards creation in many ways.  We realized we could actually connect these two worlds, especially when it came to our responsibility to the poor.

(Hand) To that end, all the produce harvested from the church’s garden is given to the disadvantaged, for free.  Gardener and church member Sharmin Reynolds is working the dirt on a sunny Saturday.

Church gardener Sharmin Reynolds

(Reynolds)  The food is grown for for one, the people in our own congregation that are in need of help, but it is grown for the people that come to the food bank.  And out here under this arbor we set up what we call a farmers‘ market.  None of the food is for sale, it’s given to the people who come out from the food bank.

(Hand)  The Garden O’ Feedin’ started as six raised beds, but, as Reynolds says, “with God’s help and a lot of compost” the garden has grown.

(Reynolds) Last year we produced over 31,000 pounds of food on two thirds of an acre, which is amazing.

(Hand) Word of this little organic garden soon spread. (Film soundtrack: It’s Saturday morning at the Boise Vineyard Church in Idaho . . . )  The Christian Broadcast Network did a TV show on the garden; So did Bill Moyer’s.  Environmental writer Bill McKibben even wrote a glowing article.  As a result, more churches say they’re seeing the spiritual value of good soil.

(Goodwin) In fact one of the local reporters called us the food church.

Garden O' Feedin' worker

(Hand) That’s pastor Craig Goodwin of the Millwood Presbyterian Church in Spokane.  His congregation just broke ground on their own community garden.  Goodwin thinks the blending of faith and food is natural.

(Goodwin) If you look at the biblical story, food is just a thread that you can kind of pull throughout the whole thing whether it’s the manna in the wilderness or Jesus gathering the disciples around the table or our central metaphor in our sanctuary is a communion table.  It is a table with food on it for gathering around.

(Hand)  But Goodwin sees food as more than Biblical metaphor.

(Goodwin) I’ve had to say to people that I’m not just using this as a carrot to kind of lead people along to somehow hopefully get involved with spiritual things, that I’m really concerned with real carrots in the world and that somehow God in my understanding and Jesus is redeeming all things and food is a big part of that.

(Hand) Pastor Goodwin says that of the dozen or so community gardens in Spokane, over half have faith-based groups involved. Nationally, new gardens — whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist — are popping up all over.

(Sound of praying in garden): All right shall we bow?  Father, we just thank you . . . (Hand) Back at the Vineyard Fellowship garden, workers are holding hands in a circle, praying.  Sharmin Reynolds finds faith-based gardening a perfect blend of the spiritual and the practical.

(Reynolds) With the economy the way that it is right now, people like myself all of a sudden have found themselves without a job, no way to support their family, no way to feed their family and they’re terrified, they’re embarrassed, they feel terrible.  And honestly we’ve got some of our very best workers from that situation because we offer them the opportunity to come out and work in the garden.  If you come out and work in the garden, you can feed your family.

(Hand) Reynolds says there’s no expectation that those new gardeners join the church.

Kid's in the Garden

(Reynolds) You have people that come that probably won’t go to church.  It feels just a little too boxed in for them.  But they’ll come out here and they’ll commune with people out here.  And there’s a lot of healing that goes on out here.  There’s a lot to be said for dirt.  It’s good for you (laughing).

(Hand) Writer Wendell Berry says of dirt: “It is impossible to contemplate the life of the soil without seeing it as analogous to the life of the spirit.”  Or as Sharmin Reynolds would say “Gardens feed the soul as well as the belly.”

(Hand)  In Garden City, Idaho, I’m Guy Hand.

Photo by Paulette Phlipot

More and more people are getting directly involved in food. Growing it, cooking it, even blogging about it. Some are going still further: plunging — literally — into the meat of the matter.

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand visits a class where every student wields a knife — and the desire to learn the fading art of butchery.

Download the script for this Edible Idaho radio show.

Lava Lake Lamb’s website: http://www.lavalakelamb.com/

From the New York Times: Young Butchers Gain Rock Star Status

From the Oregonian: Conscious carnivores, ethical butchers are changing food culture

And here’s an article on former vegetarian and current Portland, Or. butcher Berlin Reed. He calls himself an ethical omnivorism and theorizes an environmentally friendly future for meat.

Video & photos for this story are provided by Idaho photographer Paulette Phlipot:

Click here for Paulette’s Video of Hailey Butchery Class or check out the photos below:

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Laura McCandlish for NPR

Forests filled with chestnuts once covered some 200 million acres of America.  Thoreau called them the “boundless chestnut woods” and they stretched from Maine to Florida.  As Oregon freelance writer Laura McCandlish says in an article published yesterday on the NPR website:

“Durable “cradle to coffin” chestnut timber built our communities, and our cuisine (particularly that of the Cherokee Indians, who revered this “bread tree”) relied on the starchy nutmeat. But by the mid-20th century, a fungal blight from Asia obliterated 4 billion of the indigenous East Coast trees. The American chestnut practically disappeared overnight.”

Due to that blight, McCandlish says most of the fresh chestnuts we roast during the holidays now come from Italy, China or Korea.  But that’s changing — at least on a small scale.

American breeders have been working for decades to create blight resistant varieties of chestnuts and although there are obstacles to making American chestnuts as common as they once were, small orchardists are having success — even in the Northwest.

McCandlish says “here in the Northwest, organic, local chestnuts are for sale at farmers markets and food co-ops through December.”

Peggy Paul, Photo by Katherine Jones / Idaho Statesman

In Idaho, local chestnuts are available thanks, in part, to the “Chestnut Lady.”  A profile in today’s Idaho Statesman attributes Peggy Paul (and her husband Jim) for planting a 500-tree chestnut orchard near Nampa about 15 years ago, creating the biggest chestnut farm in the Treasure Valley.

“We’re bringing them back,” says Peggy Paul, ” … so our children and our children’s children can talk about them.”

But how to prepare chestnuts?  Both the NPR and Statesman articles offer recipes.

P.S. Rachael Daigle at the Boise Weekly tells me “the new City Peanut Shop on Bannock [in Boise] has been roasting chestnuts from Horseshoe Bend. They also plan to start roasting from a street cart in the near future.”

Truffle Dog Training Seminar 2009

Wanna teach Rover to fetch something more delectable than the daily paper?  How about a truffle hunting class?

For the first time, a two-day seminar on truffle dog training is being offered as part of the annual Oregon Truffle Festival in late January near Eugene. Here’s what the Truffle Festival website says:

“That truffles, the grandest of delicacies, depend on pigs and dogs for their harvest lies at the heart of their mystique, but until now that part of their charm could be experienced only in the hills of southern Europe. We are delighted therefore to present OTF’s first annual Truffle Dog Training Seminar, the only event of its kind in North America.

The Truffle Dog Training Seminar is a unique opportunity not only to observe the handling and training of skilled truffle dogs, but to introduce your own dog to the scent of both Oregon and French black truffles. This two day event begins in the classroom, with lectures on canine scent detection and the fundamentals of scent training . . . On the second day, participants have a one of a kind opportunity to engage in an authentic hunt for wild truffles in their natural habitat, untouched by human hands.”

The training is open to just 12 lucky dogs.

If you’d prefer to eat truffles rather than hunt for them, the Oregon Truffle Festival is packed with opportunities. Along with educational workshops and grower’s forums, the “Grand Truffle Dinner” is a five course meal spiked with plenty of Oregon’s native winter white and black truffles — all paired with Oregon wines.

For those who can’t make the January 29th to 31st Truffle Festival, I can offer an Edible Idaho radio show on one man’s attempt to bring truffles to southern Idaho: It’s called Truffle Fever

Basque men cleaning leeks for Basque blood sausage

Tis the season for holiday feasting.  But some celebratory foods can be a little hard to swallow.

Like blood sausage.

Made from the blood of freshly killed animals, it’s not exactly a holiday favorite.  So why have people flocked every November for over a half century to the Boise Basque Center . . . to eat blood sausage?

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand bites into the mysterious allure of Basque blood sausage.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Photo by Guy Hand

Thanks to Chris Oates at TreasuredValley.com, who pointed this study out to me, here are some additional and very interesting statistics to expand on the recent NPR story I did called “The Arugula Wars” on the question of whether conservatives and liberals eat differently.   According to the report, they certainly do.

Here’s a summary of the findings:

• The data in this report shows a consistent pattern for conservatives to trend towards “homey”, familiar, comfort foods and meat-heavy options. They are more likely than liberals to indulge in fast food and enjoy splurges like cheeseburgers, hot dogs, deep dish pizza and sugar soda. Their idea of international food is a “mainstream” option such as Italian.
• Liberals are more likely to be adventuresome eaters, choosing international options such as Japanese or Thai. They eat fast food less frequently than conservatives, and when they do splurge on fast food they have a tendency to favor specialty, regional chains. Liberals are more likely to be vegetarians and to choose healthier options such as whole grain bread, darker greens of lettuce, and more frequent servings of fruit.

And here are some responses to the report’s questionnaire:

• Style of kitchen: Conservatives are twice as likely to choose a country-style kitchen.  Liberals prefer modern-style kitchens.
• Lunch: Conservatives prefer pizza and mac & cheese.  Liberals prefer Thai or Indian food.
• Dinner: Conservatives prefer fried chicken, meatloaf or steak.  Liberals prefer green curry, Ethiopian dishes and veggie burgers.
• Fast food restaurants: Conservatives said they were 63% more likely to eat at one “at least a few times per week.”  Liberals said they were 92% more likely to eat at one “rarely or never.”
• Cheese varieties: Conservatives said they like Velveeta and colby.  Liberals said they like brie.
• Vegetarian? 3% of conservatives polled were vegetarian or vegan.  11% of liberals polled were vegetarian or vegan.
• Pizza toppings: 73% of conservatives were more likely to say “meat, and lots of it.”  87% of liberals were more likely to say “veggies only.”
• Portion size and presentation: 26% of conservatives said they were more likely to prefer “bigger portion, plainly arranged.”  40% of liberals were more likely to prefer “smaller portion, artfully presented and garnished.”

I found this response intriguing:

• When shown a picture of an apple corer: 71% of conservatives were more likely to both have one and use it.  Liberals were 15% more likely to “have no clue” what this is.

And, of course, the most compelling question:

• Iceberg or arugula?: Conservatives were 55% more likely to prefer iceberg.  Liberals were more than twice as likely to prefer arugula.

“How Food Preferences Vary by Political Ideology” is a report by the website Hunch looking at differences in food choices made by self-described conservatives and liberals.  Data was collected from some 64,000 people between April 2009 and November 2009.

Hunter Todd Hoffman heads downhill in the direction of sounds made by a small elk herd. Photo by Doug Nadvornick/N3

Every five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service counts how many Americans hunt. That number has fallen steadily since the 1970s, even in the rural West. Some of the decline is due to demographics; more people live in cities and they’re less likely to hunt. But while the number is going down, the hunting tradition remains strong in rural states like Idaho. Recently, Inland Northwest Correspondent Doug Nadvornick spent a day in the field with a fourth-generation Idaho hunter.

Click for the full story and audio

BELLINGHAM, WA - Wild Pacific Seafood co-owner Stephanie Hopkinson watches the family’s albacore tuna come off the canning line. Photo By Tom Banse

You’ve heard of micro-breweries. How about “micro-canneries?” They specialize in locally-caught, hand-packed albacore and salmon. A growing number of commercial fishing families are choosing to can their catch themselves. They can’t begin to compete with supermarket prices. But some of the custom-canned fish is reaching farmers markets, mail order catalogs, food co-ops, and the internet. Correspondent Tom Banse reports from Bellingham.

Click for the full story and audio