“When did eating naturally become alternative?”
It was a weekend to rest and study homesteading arts in a place not unlike the Prairie house only I would not do laundry or cook or even make my bed. I left my laptop and chose instead to take a notebook and a pen.
I’d miss Sam and the pet menagerie. I would only slightly cross paths with my brother and nephew who were stopping by for a visit. Sam agreed to take care of them all. I packed a duffle bag and left.
Within 30 minutes I turned into the gravel drive, the one marked by a chicken painted on corrugated tin announcing the MS Modern Homestead near Starkville. There in the middle of the circular driveway were four large Kune Kune pigs with piglets. The front steps led to a carved door where a note invited, “Come in and find a bed. Your host will arrive at 4:30 p.m.”
Wandering throughout the two-level house I saw what had been large walk-in closets were now filled with bunk beds. Most bedrooms had a double bed and a side of bunk beds. I grabbed a double.
Soon our room was filled by my step-daughter and Anna Claire, an adventurous MSU graduate student and Ninna, originally from India and whom I had met 20 years ago. It was like summer camp and cooking school all in one.
A tour of the grounds revealed gardens of vegetables and herbs and an orchard. There were chickens, pigs, and rabbits, contraptions for watering and an array of solar panels. It was not pristine; it looked like people lived and worked there.
Marion Sansing was our instructor. She was delightfully German and proficient in her skills. I took 23 pages of notes. My head swam with instructions on making yogurt, butter, bone meal, hummus, kombucha, tepache, beverages with sumac berries, concocting smoothies, fermenting, foraging for wild food, baking bread, cooking granola, making condiments like mayonnaise, mustard, ranch dressing and hot sauce; how to use every part of the plant or animal resulting in the “continuous kitchen,” using traditional food preservation methods-freezing, drying, canning, how to shop the “perimeter” of the grocery store and avoid processed foods. How to “render” fats (Grandma would have loved that.) and making pie crust with tallow. We were provided with local spring water, from the ground. It was pointed out that home water filters also remove good minerals.
There was more — seeds, nuts, and beans are supposed to be soaked before eating. Nature provides a protective coating that humans find difficult to digest. Fresh eggs do not have to be refrigerated for 21 days if you don’t wash them.
On cooking utensils — plastics leach into your food. Teflon at high temperatures emits gases that can kill a canary, wood is good.
We dined on gourmet meals, visited with each other and received the most encouraging advice: “Start where you are, do what you can, use what you have.”
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