Just the tip

I was doing some community tree planting this morning with my kids, and while we were waiting around, I started nibbling on some of the new growth that was coming in on the spruce trees.  If you look around at the conifers this timee of year, you're bound to see the new needles forming.  They are a totally different shade of green from the rest of the tree, and a much softer texture:

By now, my kids are completely used to me eating random plants and things growing all over the place, and they usually want to try stuff too.  These spruce tips were a huge hit however.  And well they should be - they're delicious.  Plus they're much cheaper vitamins than the pills you buy at the local pharmacy.

Long ago I had heard the story of how Jacques Cartier's crew had reportedly cured the scurvy from their long sea voyage by drinking spuce tea, which they learned from the local Iroquois.  The practice of using evergreen tea or flavoured ale, rich in Vitamin C (as well as a whole bunch of other vitamins and minerals), apparently became popular among the British Royal Navy as well.  I use it throughout the year, especially in the winter, if I ever feel a cold coming on.  However, this is the best time of year because you can just eat the new needle growth as a convenient trailside snack, rather than having to boil the branches down into tea.  They taste sour and kind of lemony, with just a bit of a Christmas Tree undertone.

I think you can use basically any kind of coniferous evergreen.  I've tried fir and pine as well, but spruce seems to me the best.  The only kind you absolutely CANNOT use is Yew.  That shit is great for making bows, but it'll kill you five ways before you hit the ground if you eat it.  Luckily Yew is pretty distinctive looking and it'd be hard to confuse it for other coniferous trees.  I've also read that pregnant ladies shouldn't use spruce tea, which is probably good advice.  I think if you're pregnant, you probably shouldn't go around nibbling on random foliage anyway, but that's just me.

For athletes, the advantages of Vitamin C are huge, of course for preventing illness but also for it's antioxidant capacity in terms of muscle soreness and recovery.  Spuce and pine have FAR more Vitamin C than citrus fruits, as well as a pile of other vitamins and phytonutrients.  No sugar and none of the filler shit that you'd get in vitamin pills.  Give them a try. But remember, just the tip....

I'd tap that

I love trees. Not, as the title might suggest, in some sort of ‘unholy’ way (It’s actually quite ‘hole-y”, as you’ll soon learn), but I just love being around trees, the sound of their leaves, the way they look silhouetted against the evening sky.  But this time of year, I love them just a little bit more than usual, for the very utilitarian fact that they provide delicious sap.  Sure it came a little later than usual this year thanks to the brutal winter we’ve had, but my maple trees finally started running this past week.

I don’t have a huge woodlot or anything either, just a modest suburban corner lot with a grand total of 5 maple trees (I had 6 until a storm blew one down last fall, destroying some fence but thankfully narrowly missing both my kids’ playhouse and my boat trailer).  But on a day like today (around 6 degrees Celsius and sunny) the sap will be running out of those things like nobody’s business.  My method is to drill a hole in the south-facing side of the tree – I don’t think the height really matters all that much but I tend to make it about 2-3 feet off the ground.  I make them about 3 inches deep, and you could use a drill bit anywhere from about ¼ to ½ an inch.  I have an old hand crank drill that I inherited from my grandfather (which I like to use because it makes me feel like an old-time voyageur or something), but a regular power drill works fine too.   

The important thing is to drill the hole so that you can wedge the end of some plastic tubing firmly into the hole so that it stays there by friction.  I use just regular clear plastic tubing that you should be able to find for dirt cheap at any plumbing or hardware store.  I run each tube from the tree into the mouth of a 1.5 Litre wine bottle (Why do I have a tonne of empty 1.5 Litre wine bottles? Don’t you judge me!). Wine bottles work well because they’re narrow enough at the top that no bark and other shit from the tree will fall into your sap.  If there’s snow on the ground still, you can hold the bottle in place by wedging it in the snow (which has the added advantage of keeping the sap cool.  On a sunny day like today, that bottle will be full to the brim of sap by the time I get home from work.

Now for the interesting part.  You may be tempted to boil that shit down to make maple syrup.  Well don’t! Just drink it straight up.  I’ve been collecting sap for four years now.  The first year I collected massive amounts and froze it in my deep freeze.  Then one day we set up a propane cooker and poured it all into a big lobster pot and spend the day boiling it down.  It consumed almost an entire tank of propane to keep the sap bubbling away all day, and all of the stirring and monitoring the temperature to prevent burning proved to be more effort than the end product justified.  We ended up with about a Litre of syrup, and it was delicious.  But chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you aren’t shovelling down pancakes and waffles on the regular.  And if you are, you should really stop that you tubby bitch – that shit is bad for you.  Aside from using it as a glaze for grilled salmon or maybe sparingly in salad dressings, the uses of large quantities of maple syrup for the health conscious person, are somewhat limited.

But sap on the other hand…it’s nature’s Gatorade.  In the past three years, I’ve foregone the boiling down process and just drank the sap directly from the tree as an energy drink.

Sap from two different trees - notice the different colour

According to Nutrition Data (which I have no reason to doubt), one cup of maple syrup has 216 grams of carbohydrate (of which 192 grams are sugar).  When I boiled the sap down that year, I didn’t measure the ratio precisely (sap to syrup yield), but from what I’ve read, the usual ratio is about 40:1.  That is, you need 40 Litres of sap to yield one Litre of syrup.  That varies a bit through the season, and the species of tree (I’ve used Sugar Maple, Red Maple and even Manitoba Maple) but I suspect it’s roughly correct.  By that logic, a cup of straight-up sap would contain about 5 grams of sugar.  That’s only a teaspoon, which is a hell of a lot better than commercial energy drinks that probably contain 25-30 grams per cup.  It fits with the taste of the sap, which is like very mildly sweet water with a subtle treeish undertone (fellow Tolkien fans will get that one).  I don’t think it’s made me grow any taller or made my hair curlier, but it’s incredibly refreshing.  I haven’t been able to find a nutritional analysis of maple sap anywhere, but it stands to reason that it would have trace amounts of a bunch of vitamins and minerals as well.  I trust that more so than I do the manufactured ratios of electrolytes (mostly sodium) found in commercial drinks.  

According to this article, sap contains quite a bit of calcium, which might explain the folk belief that it was good for the bones.  I actually lived in South Korea for a little over a year between 2005-2006, but I was oblivious to the fact that this is the one place in the world where people seem to have a tradition of drinking maple sap. Whether the “good for bones” claims are true or not, it’s a delicious drink that I look forward to each spring.  I took about a Litre of it with me to my regular Monday evening basketball league this week.  We play for about 90 minutes, so I usually just drink water.  And I’m not going to lie that my energy levels are usually a bit lower towards the end of the night.  But this week, I was busting my ass down the court right until the end of the night.  I felt great, was grabbing more rebounds, felt lighter on my feet.  It could have been placebo…but then again maybe it was something in the water.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

                                          

- Dylan Thomas

Lean and Hungry

"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous"
                                    - Julius Caesar 

There’s a lot a buzz around fasting these days, at least in the health and fitness sphere.  Sites, programs and e-books such as Leangains, Eat Stop Eat, The Warrior Diet, etc. have been both applauded and criticized by fitness devotees.  I’m certainly not going to wade into any real debates on the topic (I’ll leave that to my betters).  Rather, I’d like to just briefly summarize my own personal experiences with fasting, for whatever their worth, and some of the things I’ve learned.

For about a year or so, I’ve been pretty consistently following a Leangains-style eating pattern – that is, I fast for about 16 hours of every day and eat only during an 8-hour window (usually for me that between about 2pm and 10pm).  I’m not militant about it, but I’d say that’s the case 95% of the time.  Now to understand what a difference this has been for me, you must understand where I came from.  Since about the age of 17 or so, I had always subscribed to the oft-held belief, disseminated by muscle magazines, mainstream health experts and common gym parlance, that one must eat regularly throughout the day to maintain a constant and efficient metabolism and to add muscle.  This was taken to extremes in my early twenties when I would eat 8-9 meals throughout the day and then wake myself up in the dead of night to scarf down a plate of roast beef and potatoes! It worked in terms of weight gain (i.e. I got north of 280 lbs) but, compared to now, my strength-to-weight ratio was shit.

Even once my quest to occupy my own zip code gradually diminished, I still subscribed wholesale to the prevailing dogma of eating every two or three hours (albeit smaller amounts) to ‘stoke the metabolic furnace’.  It’s a compelling analogy – that a person’s body essentially functions like a fireplace.  Put too much wood on at a time, or wait too long between adding logs, and the fire dies (and by extension, metabolic disaster ensues, resulting in fat gain and muscle loss).  

There’s only one small problem – the human body is infinitely more complex than a bloody fireplace!  Any attempt to reduce the multiplicity of overlapping processes and regulatory systems at play to some kind of simple mechanical clockwork is doomed to failure.  I stumbled upon this realization through a lot of reading on ancestral diets, paleo, primal, that kind of stuff.  It just doesn’t make sense that the human species could have survived and thrived throughout our prehistory by sticking to a rigid, eat-every-three-hours style of feeding.  Ours is a history of feasts and famines, both short and long term.  Is it really conceivable that ancient hunters on the savannah were stopping midway through stalking a gazelle to quickly down a protein smoothie or grab a handful of almonds from a Tupperware container?  No dammit, they just went hungry until they eventually caught the gazelle, dragged its ass back to camp, butchered it, and then had a big party (likely gorging themselves until they fell asleep) and then got up and did it all again next year.  There was no, “Sorry Lothar, I’d really love to go hunting with you today but I really need to stoke my metabolism first with a hearty breakfast of steel-cut oatmeal.”  If you were that guy, you probably didn’t want to turn your back on all your buddies with the pointy sticks.

Now this is all anecdotal of course.  I’m no more an anthropologist than I am an exercise physiologist, but I can tell you what the benefits of intermittent fasting have been for me:

• I get hungry less in the mid-morning.  When I used to eat a solid breakfast (and I’m talking substantial stuff like eggs, dairy, oatmeal, etc. – not the typical bagel or muffin bullshit that some people call breakfast), I’d inevitably be starving again by 10am.  I still wake up hungry now, but I find that if I can push past that initial 15 minutes of hunger, it subsides and I don’t even think about food throughout most of the morning.  I find this also results in a higher degree of focus at work.

• I can maintain a slightly lower bodyfat percentage, with minimal effort.  I haven’t reached any kind of completely shredded levels like many have on Leangains or similar programs, but I’m a bit more cut than I was in the past on a more frequent, yet stricter, eating pattern.  Certainly I worry less, when I do eat, about specific macronutrient ratios and stuff like that, and yet the results are slightly better from a body composition point of view.  Muscle certainly hasn’t melted away (as some fear will happen if you skip a meal).

• My eating window coincides well with a noon-hour workout (I almost said lunch hour there!  See how like conditioned little lab rats we’ve become).  As I mentioned in a previous post, I like to get my workouts in wherever possible, and this often includes the typical midday break in a traditional workday.  There a lot of pretty solid evidence out there for the fat loss benefits of training while fasted, as well as the advantages of a substantial post-workout meal for muscle growth.  Since I usually eat my first meal of the day around 2pm, at which point I usually am famished, I can use this as a post-workout gorge-fest.

• It works well with a busy family.  Like many parents, mornings with two young children are a shit-show.  My wife and I can spend our time getting a healthy breakfast for them (no, I don’t force my dietary predilections on my kids, especially since it seems logical that babies and children would need much more stable, consistent nourishment) and enjoying their company, rather than scrambling to feed ourselves too.

• It provides a daily dose of humility.  So many of us exist in such a well-fed, indulged state most of the time, never experiencing genuine hunger.  It’s easy to forget that huge numbers of people throughout the world (let alone in our own country) go without food on a daily basis, involuntarily.  I have the supreme luxury of not having to worry where my next meal is coming from, but at least a daily experience of hunger, voluntary and minimal as it is, serves as a reminder that not everyone is so fortunate.

• It makes food taste better.  Connected to the last point, I suspect that much of the reason why people often turn to over-sweetened, over-salted foods is that a lack of true hunger has effectively deadened and desensitized our societal taste buds to simple food and simple flavours.  I’m not sure who coined the phrase “Hunger is the best sauce”, but it’s strikingly true.  After 16 hours without food, a simple apple tastes infinitely better than a sickeningly sweet pastry would after just a short time.

• I think it ultimately means spending less money on food, due to a gradual caloric deficit over the long term.  This seems a propos to the whole Hobofit gestalt.  Simpler, less money, better results – not to mention not worrying about stopping to mix up a protein shake the next time you have to chase down a passing boxcar.

 

UPDATE: Sardine? Hold the estrogen

Some of you may have read my post from a while ago extolling the virtues of sardines.  I had mentioned that the one downside of sardines was that the can linings likely have bisphenol-A in them, which is a xeno-estrogen and an endocrine disruptor. 

Well, thankfully, I already have two beautiful kids, who I’m sure would still love me even if the chemicals in daddy’s sardines cause him to develop boobs.  However, for those who still hope to procreate further, I stumbled across a BPA-free option:

Now these aren’t cheap.  I think they cost me about $3.50 a can, which is about 2.5 – 3 times the price of conventionally-packaged ones.  The ‘hobo’ cache might be a little diminished by that fact.  But, in the grand scheme of things, they’re still a pretty economical and healthy meal.

Now I recommend that, if you do go this route, you turn it into a nice upscale experience.  Put on a tie, light a couple of candles, get out the nice napkins.  I like to throw on a little Vivaldi and repeat over and over to myself what a special little snowflake I am. 

Bon appetite!

Putting the 'organ' in organic

I’m hoping to win a few converts here to the wonderful world of organ meats.  Now I like prime rib and tenderloin as much as the next guy, but there’s a whole lot more to an animal than what gets packaged and sold at Costco.  Now I never grew up eating a lot of organ meats.  My mother would cook liver once in a blue moon because she figured it was healthy, but I don’t think either of us liked it all that much.  But lately, I’ve been experimenting a lot with cooking other organs (heart, sweetbreads, tongue, etc.) and have found that they’re not ‘offal’ at all, but can be quite good.  Here are some reasons to give it a try:

1. They’re packed full of nutrients, vitamins, minerals and amino acids. 

In many cases, they’re much more nutrient-dense than more traditional cuts of meat.  Perhaps this is why they were held in such high esteem in the diets of many traditional cultures, and why predatory animals tend to eat the livers and organs of their prey first.  Here’s a good article outlining some of the particular nutritional strengths of various forms of offal, over at Mark's Daily Apple.

There’s also a good article over at the Weston A. Price Foundation, that talks about some of the, admittedly anecdotal, evidence behind organ meat consumption from a fitness/health perspective.  Bucking the bodybuilding trend in the 1980s toward low-fat everything, bodybuilder Ron Kosloff said, speaking about his grandparents’ longevity on a fat-heavy diet, “What astounded me most was their farmhand who went by the name of Indian Joe. When I first saw him he looked in his 40s and was incredibly cut and muscular. He looked like Conan. I was shocked when I found out he was well into his 70s. Indian Joe lived to 115 years of age and ate nothing but meat, glands and intestines!"

2. They’re soooo cheap!

I prefer to buy meat that’s grass-fed and local, whenever possible.  That means shopping mostly at farmer’s markets, CSAs, etc. rather than the supermarket.  But that certainly gets pricey.  While I have absolutely no issue supporting farmers who are using good, sustainable practices, treating their livestock well, by paying a premium for their product, that doesn’t prevent me from capitalizing on the law of supply and demand.  The fact is that demand for organ meats is quite low, so the prices are always very low.  In some ways it seems that farmers are just trying to get rid of this stuff at cost.  I almost feel bad about paying so little.  I mean, check out some of the prices I’ve paid recently for livers, hearts and tongues.  Keep in mind that this is organic, pastured, locally-produced meat – cheaper than the worst processed shit (hotdogs, etc.) you’d find in a grocery store:

Are you kidding me?!  These are big chunks of meat (enough for at least two meals) for under one dollar!

3. Properly prepared, they can be really delicious

I’d recommend the following book for recipes, called Odd Bits.  Some of the recipes in it are labour intensive, but I’ve made a few that are quite easy (I’m no chef!).  And of course there are a tonne of excellent recipes on the internet at various Paleo/Primal sites, as well as more traditional cooking sites.

Just last weekend, I made a recipe for tongue tacos that I found over on the Crossfit main page a couple weeks ago.  They turned out phenomenal!  Made with pineapple, and served in lettuce leaves, the slow-cooked tongue had the consistency of pulled pork when it was finished. It was my first attempt at cooking tongue (I know, technically a muscle and not an organ), and I’ve since made other good recipes with it as well - like this batch of green curried beef tongue earlier this evening.

Heart is really versatile and can be prepared like a lot of other lean meats.   I made Moroccan heart kabobs (based on a recipe in Odd Bits) a couple of months ago that turned out really well.

Sweetbreads (pancreas) are really quite good.  I’ve only cooked them a couple of times, stir-fried with green vegetables and spices, and they end up taking on a very similar texture to General Tao’s chicken.

Liver is tricky, as it has a tendency to dry out.  I’ve had the most success with grilling it quickly with a bunch of onions, garlic and pancetta/bacon for extra fat.  I eat it quite often (because of availability) but am still trying to come up with the best way to do it.

There are many other options of course.  I always order tripe when I’m out for Chinese dim sum, but haven’t ever tried cooking it at home.  I love both haggis and blood sausages as well, but have yet to try making my own.  I hope to change that in the near future.

The final point that could be made, in addition to the aforementioned cost-savings and nutritional benefits, is that eating organ meats is sustainable (in the whole ‘snout to tail’ sense of making use of the whole animal).  I always think it’s important to remember that the animal you’re eating gave its life for you (not exactly voluntarily, but nonetheless!).  I’m cognisant of this, not just as a hunter and a fisherman, but also as a consumer.  In some small part it seems that eating organ meats is a gesture, amidst a culture that is quite often wasteful, in support of a more mindful and measured approach to eating that takes into account the ecosystem and food chain that supports us.

And if anyone objects to eating organs on the basis of “they’re gross” or “I can’t get past the idea of it” kind of garbage, just remember that bacon is pig’s ass.  I bet you like bacon, don’t you? (It’s pretty much the best thing ever)  If you don’t, we can't be friends anymore.  I’m sorry.