Welcome, People Readers

If you've arrived at this site from People magazine, you probably have an interest in starting a food garden or learning more about how to grow your own food. You may also be wondering what's behind the name "Slow Cook."

I guess you could say I am part of a growing movement in this country that rejects industrialized food in favor of food that is produced more sustainably. That encompasses a lot. It means favoring foods that are grown locally without pesticides and chemical fertilizers and without traveling long distances at the expense of enormous amounts of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. It just so happens that the sustainable foods we prefer--grown in a planet-friendly manner and prepared with loving care--are also tastier and more nutritious. And if you grow them yourself, they're a whole lot cheaper as well.

That makes our approach the opposite of "fast food." And that makes us slow.

Food gardening can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it. If you are just starting, I suggest you take the easy approach. Don't try to do too much at first. Don't go overboard with many different varieties of things. Stick with the fruits and vegetables your family likes to eat most and learn how to grow those. You can always add things later. Gardening is a never ending learning process, even for people who've been doing it for years. If you have children, you will be creating wonderful memories--and good eating habits--that will last a lifetime.

To get you started, I've assembled links to several other web sites that I think will be helpful. At those sites, you may very well find yet more links. In today's world, gardeners spend quite a lot of time cruising around the internet for ideas and information. We also have a wonderful and vast community of fellow gardeners and cooks to share with. (Who knows? You may end up starting your own blog to memorialize your gardening efforts.) And do feel free to cruise around this website and use the search feature.

If you don't have your own yard to garden in, don't despair. You can grow many things in pots even on an apartment balcony. Perhaps there is a community garden in your area, or maybe you would like to start one. Check with your local parks and recreation authority. With more and more people seeking to join community gardens there are often waiting lists. Some erstwhile gardeners are seeking out vacant lots. Others are enlisting the back yards of neighbors to form communal arrangements. And there is a growing movement to establish gardens in schools, where we can connect kids to nature and teach them the benefits of growing our own food.

You might begin by watching this series of short film clips on how to start a garden. Some other good internet sources include Kitchen Gardeners International, Revive the Victory Garden and Vegetable Gardener. There are also several worthwhile gardening forums at Garden Web where you can pose questions to other gardeners who are only to glad to help.

I've also asked some of my fellow food gardening bloggers to share their thoughts on starting a new garden. Take a look at what Sylvie's doing at Rappahanock Cook & Kitch Gardener, or El at Fast Grow the Weeds, Emily at Eat Close to Home, or Michele at Garden Rant.

There are also many excellent books on the market for gardeners of all levels. In fact, your local librarian may be one of your best sources on the subject. And by all means take a look around your neighborhood for the gardener who quietly grows prize-winning tomatoes. She'll gladly talk your ear off if you introduce yourself. And even if you can't get a plot at the local community garden this year, there's nothing to say you can't hang out there and ask questions.

And for all you established kitchen gardeners and urban farmers and homesteaders with blogs, write up your thoughts on starting a garden and send me an e-mail with a link. I post all the links here for the next week.

Good luck, and happy gardening!

Read more great stories about how were are taking back our food system at Fight Back Fridays.

Food Prices: Is There Really Anything to Debate?

Got an e-mail from a PR type today wanting me to post something about a debate over on the Economist magazine's website, the proposition being: "There is an upside for humanity in the rise of food prices."

To which my initial response would have to be, YOU'RE BLEEPING KIDDING, RIGHT?

Only a group of over-fed economists with too much time on their hands could actually consider this a question worthy of debate. We can't take them seriously, otherwise we'd have to charge them with crimes against humanity. But this is precisely the kind of question that the Economist--which views an ever- expanding economy as a kind of white man's birthright--can actually discuss with a straight face.

I suppose you could say that rising food prices are a good thing, just as you could say the end of subsistence farming is a good thing, or that the end of family farms is a good thing, or that the commoditization of basic food stuffs is a good thing, or that putting the world's supply of food into a handful of huge international corporations is a good thing, or that fouling the air and water with artificial fertilizers and feedlot runoff is a good thing, or that denying farmers the right to save seeds is a good thing, or that replacing natural foods with industrially processed foods is a good thing, or that turning food crops into motor fuel is a good thing, or that allowing agribusiness to dictate government policy is a good thing, or that bankrupting Third World nations and turning them into food importers instead of self-sufficient food growers is a good thing.

All this and more has come to pass under the guise of freeing world trade, growing the international economy and improving the global standard of living. Increasingly it becomes clear that the only people who really stand to benefit are the ones who think the question is worthy of debate.

So I guess that would be a, No.

Photo: Woman making mud pies in Haiti in response to skyrocketing food prices.

Thank You, Nurse

The Slow Cook has been named to something called "100 Food Blogs to Inspire Your Healthy Eating," sponsored by Nursing School Search.com.

I am ashamed to say I had never heard of this organization before. It sounds like a place you go to find a nursing school. Among other benefits, however, is a listing of food blogs that leads you here.

But wait. Listen to what they say about The Slow Cook under the "Green Eating" category: "While this food blog isn’t all about super healthy choices, it does encourage readers to reject fast food and more processed foods by taking back control of the food we eat and the pace of our own lives."

What? Not super healthy? I wonder if they're referring to my wife's uncontrolable cheese nachos habit. Or if they just don't like unhomogenized whole milk, grass-fed Delmonico steaks or home-made pork sausage. I wonder if these nurses are some of those "Diet Dictocrats" Sally Fallon talks about. (There's a separate category for raw and macrobiotic. Yuck.)

Anyway, we are thrilled to see The Slow Cook included with some of our favorite food blogging pals, Bonnie at Ethicurean, Charlotte at Great Big Vegetable Challenge, Christa at Calendula and Concrete, Beth at Figs, Bay, Wine, Joanna at Joanna's Food.

We're in The Washington Post

The Washington Post this weekend ran a feature in its Sunday Source section on gardening in containers. They asked me, the kitchen gardener, to come up with a design for for an edible container scheme.

Gardening in containers is a great idea if you are short of space or want to be able to move your plants from one place to another. And if you can grow it in the ground, you can grow it in a pot. You can have an entire salad garden on your back deck. Containers are also good for tender plants that need to be taken in during the winter.

The Post reporter interviewed me for almost an hour on a range of gardening issues. You won't find much of that in the text, although several experts weigh in with good advice.

The one item we took strong exception to was the advice to feed container plants with a certain commercial product containing artificial fertilizers. We don't use artificial fertilizers, preferring things like compost, fish emulsion or alfalfa meal. Also peat moss, most of it harvested in bogs in Canada, is considered an unsustainable product. Look for potting mixes that contain alternatives.

Once you get to the story, you can find my container design by clicking on "Tailor-Made Gardens," then choose number 2. Take a look at all the designs. They're all very interesting. The reporter, Dan Zack, spent a lot of time on this and did a good job.