Non-Native Americans have lived for generations with a terrible handicap when it comes to understanding the first inhabitants of the land we are all walking on today. Hampered by biased and inaccurate cultural myths and poor or utterly incorrect public school education, our vague beliefs about the story of Indian Country have obscured the truth and denied us the privilege of operating in daily life from a position of comprehension. The American People, as a whole, have been thinking and acting in the absence of good information and this has created a tragic situation in which Americans have not only frequently been guilty of stereotyping or discriminating against Native Peoples, but have also been denied the vision of a past, the understanding of which, could dictate a future that heals our troubled Earth.

The 2 Natives We’ve Been Shown
As non-Natives, we have historically been the recipients of two erroneous depictions of Native Americans.

1) The Murderous Savage. This is the character depicted in the Westerns – amoral, bloodthirsty and terrifying. Campfire stories, books and movies paint a picture of crazed, small bands of wandering killers who run amok and murder, just for the fun of it.

2) The Noble Savage. This is the champion of the environmental movement of the 20th century – the character who is so removed from the practicalities of life that he leaves no mark whatsoever on the land. This image has been convincingly used to convey the idea that only untouched land is inherently good and right.

Both characters are fictitious, and we can be extremely grateful for the more accurate picture that has begun to emerge of the Native Peoples of the landmasses known as North, Central and South America. Hopefully, many people have by now begun to understand that the majority of documented violent encounters between Natives and Americans were rooted in terrible assaults on indigenous peoples by the newcomers – conquistadores, colonists, pioneers, gold miners, missionaries, etc. Native People fought because their lives were at stake. I think many people have been exposed to the truth about this in modern times.

But the facts that are still almost totally unknown and untaught relate to that second character – the Noble Savage who leaves no mark on the land. This popular misconception is finally being overturned by American scholars who are spending their lives seeking information that may bring real enlightenment to us all. I am very grateful for the work of these scholars who have taught me that, far from not interacting with the Earth, the majority of Native Peoples were farmers…in fact, they were the most gifted farmers the world may ever have known. The South American Rainforest, the woods of the East, the lands of the Southwest, the Yucatan Peninsula – these were the enormous gardens of the earliest peoples and what the Europeans mistook for ‘nature’ was, in fact, agriculture on a scale that was simply too huge for them to recognize.

Forestry practices ensured that the most fruitful trees got the most space and sun. Acres of orchards were tended with wisdom. Miles and miles of poor soil was aerated with broken pottery and enriched with ash. The food crops that now feed the whole world (corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, potatoes, manioc, peppers, onions, etc.) were cultivated and hybridized by farmers of almost incomprehensible skill. Vast irrigation systems brought water to deserts. Prairies were burned over to create ideal conditions for game hunting. Roads spanned the Andes and crisscrossed the North. And towns and cities equal to or larger than those of Europe dotted the continents. And, as it is now believed, these towns and cities contained a population larger than that of Europe.

What Happened?
The heartbreaking story that has emerged in this journey of American scholarship is that disease preceded the European invasion of the Americas. For many generations, schools taught that the ‘Indians’ were overwhelmed by European technology (horses and weapons), but the scenario just didn’t add up when examined more closely. Finally, in the 1960s, a man named Henry F. Dobyns put the pieces together. Just before, or just after any party of Europeans hit the shores of North or South America, Native cities and towns were abruptly depopulated. This phenomenon happened again and again, and suddenly, it became clear that the invasion of the continents ’succeeded’ not because of technology, but because of disease. It is now widely believed that the continents lost 95% of their population to small pox, measles and other infectious diseases. 95%. Those catching a first glimpse of non-depopulated areas were staggered by the number of people living here, but always, within a short time, all the people abruptly ‘disappeared’. The almost incomprehensible loss of life is now being called the the greatest disaster of mankind.

How, then, did we go from the initial European understanding of a incredibly densely populated land to the Hollywood myth of a few, sparse tribes roaming an empty environment? Basically, Americans forgot. It can be convincingly argued that guilt made it pleasant to forget that European invasion destroyed 95% of the people living in the ‘New World’, but whatever the reason, it was forgotten that the continents were once so thickly peopled. The truth about this is starting to be told, at last.

The human tragedy is truly unspeakable. The loss of life is something I can hardly imagine. But there is another part to the story that I believe it is so important we understand: the loss of skills. The giant garden that was the world of the Native Peoples was created and maintained with skills we have not only lost, but that few people understand ever existed. The land that Europeans thought was untouched by man was so successfully tended that it looked natural. It was laden with food, abundant in wild birds, animals, fish, frogs, insects…everything we would think of today as a dream healthy ecosystem.

When I look at the deadly choice of the United States to ‘manage’ forests with pesticide, to subsidize the very factory farms which ensure we will be sickened by zoonotic diseases like swine flu, when I look at a culture of mono-skilled workers who do not know how to feed themselves and are systematically made dependent on designated ‘experts’ to provide foodstuffs, I am so struck with the wrong turn that was made. The polar opposite of America looking so good we’d mistake it for ‘nature’, our lands are polluted with chemicals, fouled by monocropping and now under siege by the assault of genetically modified organisms that are turning trees and plants into alien life forms, never before seen on earth. Far from us being like the Native peoples who so stunned the Europeans with their amazing health and vigor (qualities unknown to those from the disease-ridden ‘Old World’), American peoples are plagued with the diseases that come from poor diet and close association with confined animals. Life isn’t a contest, certainly, but the emergent picture of the real ‘Old World’, the old world that was created and cultivated by early Peoples of these continents was in almost every way a winner.

The Ideal
Are we supposed to ‘mess with Mother Nature?’ That’s the question that has served as the background for much environmentally-oriented debate over the past century. With their hearts in the right place, many modern Americans have argued that healthy environments are those untouched by man. Our National Parks are one outcome of this train of thought, creating museums of ecosystems in the hopes that we can keep things ‘the same’ in perpetuity. But, I have begun to see that these thoughts are pointing us all in the wrong direction. There is a better way to live than setting aside small pieces of land so that they cannot be ’spoiled’ by man, all the while turning the rest of the continents into toxic wastelands that bring disease and death to all of their inhabitants. The lives of the First Peoples, which are only now beginning to be explored and considered, are beginning to set us an example which, if followed, could get us out of the mess we are in.

Imagine, if you can, a system of local and regional trade in your part of the continent. Everyone you know is a farmer or forester of some kind. You have a private garden for the majority of your family’s meals, and tougher crops like grain are grown in cooperatives with your neighbors. The conifers in your area are being carefully tended so the ones that produce the most pinenuts get the best places in the forests, while the orchards of mixed fruit trees provide a bounty of fresh fruit for everyone in season. I’m a vegan and don’t eat meat, but if yours is a hunting community, your grasslands are kept ideal for grazing animals and your streams are kept clean so that fish are abundant. No one has swine flu, because all of the animals you eat are wild…they don’t live in your house, passing their diseases to you and they aren’t living in close confinement with one another, passing diseases amongst themselves in the way of the modern factory farm. You live in a land of meadows, fields, bodies of water, orchards and forests so beautiful that they look like a verdant National Park, but the secret is, they produce so much food for your well-organized region that no one is hungry.

In point of fact, I am describing a system equivalent to that of the Inca empire of 500 years ago. Mountains, jungles, hills, valleys and coastline were all brought into a single system that produced enough food for people to eradicate the specter of hunger from that civilization. In my own ideal scenario, I would grant more autonomy to individuals, and rather than the system working on the principle of imperial might, it would work on a system of trade. Trade networks that stretched from Canada to South America once existed here, and because footwork provided the means of conveyance, rather than fossil fuel, modern people yet again made the mistake of seeing the lands as somehow untouched by the hand of man. Goods could be transported over thousands of miles without destroying the Earth’s ability to keep supporting plant growth or keep supplying clean water and air to for the support of life.

The trick would be to view our present landscape with new eyes…new eyes informed by the new understanding of how millions of Native peoples once lived abundantly here while keeping the lands looking like that thing we call ‘Nature’ instead of a dump. It isn’t wrong to ‘mess with Mother Nature,” I’ve concluded. We are set upon this Earth with the duty of finding a way to feed ourselves and survive. The majority of the peoples we call ‘Indians’ accomplished this by farming, secure in the knowledge inherent in most of their lifeways that a higher power had made this land for them to inhabit and care for. Christian traditions have the same teaching, in fact, but the European response to this teaching has lately been to exploit and destroy the precious lands rather than tend them with love and skill. The Native Peoples had the skills that fooled Europeans into thinking the Americas were a wilderness. More than anything else, I would love to see modern people of all ethnic backgrounds now seek out the echos of the wisdom that was lost and gratefully embrace it as the key to our future survival.

Thanksgiving is the one time of the year in the United States when many Americans may give some fleeting thought to old stories about Indians helping European settlers. Our myths about the first Thanksgiving are mostly made-up and fail to tell the whole story of those first contacts between natives and invaders. Nonetheless, it is a cultural practice to associate this November holiday with Native Peoples, albeit in a rather strange way.

I would like to offer a prayer that, this Thanksgiving, people begin to reach for the knowledge that lay long hidden from them about the real story of these lands. Maybe we can begin to hold a new idea in our minds – an idea that humans can live in such a way that we make the Earth beautiful while living well. We live in a world of conflicting messages – guilty messages about overpopulation and the destructiveness of mankind. The old and true stories can teach us something different; that mankind can shape his world in a healthy way that makes it possible for his species to continue to dwell here for generations. The old ones who loved this land best are pointing the way.

Like To Learn More?
I highly recommend reading the wonderful, wise book 1491 by Charles C. Mann for its revelatory depiction of pre-Columbian life in North and South America. This book will change your whole conception of the brilliant farmers and foresters who once made these lands the most fruitful and beautiful on Earth. It is time we really understood this and stopped teaching false myths to generations of Americans. This book is an excellent starting point for the new education we need.

How happy I am to have met my major sewing goal of 2009 – sewing 2 warm, organic winter coats for my husband and myself. This was a big project, but not beyond the capabilities of anyone who knows how to use a sewing machine. Coats are one of those items of clothing you may assume you just have to buy ready-made, but when you’re stuck with that belief, your chances of finding an organic coat are pretty limited. If cruelty-free is also on your garment checklist, your choices for store-bought winter coats are even slimmer. By deciding to sew your own organic men’s or women’s coat, you’ve taken the power of choice and ability back into your own hands, and I hope this latest article in the Reskills column of VeganReader will help to inspire you to take total charge of your winter wardrobe!

Why Would You Want An Organic Coat?
There are three good arguments for opting for organic clothing whenever you can.

Organic For You
The pesticides, sizing chemicals and other toxins applied to conventional fabric and garments are terrible for your health. In the wintertime, our immune systems are working their hardest to fight off the colds and flu bugs of the cold season. The last thing your body needs is to be further burdened with trying to fight off poisoning every time you put your winter coat on. By choosing organic clothing, you are reducing the toxins you are inhaling and that are being absorbed by your body’s largest organ – your skin.

Organic For Farmers And Weavers
Conventional cotton fields use 10 times the amount of pesticides used in conventional culture of food crops. Farmworkers die every year from pesticide exposure. The deadly cycle of exposure continues through fabric mills and garment assembly factories where workers are poisoned by the pesticide residues on the cotton, as well as toxic treatments applied to fabrics to make them wrinkle-proof, fire-resistant, etc. By choosing to buy organic cloth or clothing, you are protecting innocent, hardworking people from disease and death. Of prime importance is the fact that choosing organic means saying NO! to GMO cotton. Genetically modified cotton (also called BT cotton) has been forced upon the poorest farmers in some of the poorest places in the world (India, South America, etc.) by the multinational GMO corporation, Monsanto. Epidemics of farmer suicide have resulted wherever BT Cotton has been foisted on the farmers who become the indentured servants of the corporation, forbidden to save seed from the crops they grow, legally bound to pay for new seed each year, in total opposition to the traditions of seed saving that help farm families survive. GMO crops contaminate Organic crops, causing them to mutate into things never before seen on Earth. If for no other reason than this, choosing organic fabrics and garments is important to the future of us all.

Organic For Your Habitat
Pesticides and chemical fertilizers ruin your water, foul your air and are associated with a host of diseases…everything from Autism to Cancer. The toxic practices of conventional agriculture poison and kill wildlife and make our habitat a place of suffering rather than a hub of life. It’s up to us to make the change back to the organic growing practices that have reigned since the dawn of agriculture and up until the time when the first chemicals were put on our precious lands in the 20th century. By choosing organic fabric and clothing, we can be the change we need to see in the world, in hopes of keeping our world a healthy blue and green planet.

Why Would You Want A Vegan Coat?

Far be it from me to say a word against the ancestors and the modern indigenous people who have traditionally used the skin, hair and fur of animals to make clothing for themselves. I would never criticize the lifeways of others. But living in America means having a choice…a choice not to make animals give up their lives or their autonomy for our benefit. Animals suffer and die in the system that uses them for wool, fur and leather clothing and their lives are ruled by imprisonment. They have not consented to be used in this way by Americans and those seeking to lead lives of compassion can make the choice to opt out of a system that does not recognize the rights of our fellow beings to live their lives as they see fit, without having to show a profit to mankind.

Once you make this choice, the choice vegans make not to wear animal products, you are confronted with a dilemma. Cruelty- free summer clothing is no problem. You can make all the dresses, shirts and pants you need out of organic cotton calico or linen and be perfectly comfortable. But vegan winter clothing? That’s a tougher nut to crack. You may be tempted to turn to synthetics like polar fleece for layers of warmth, but most synthetics are very unpleasant to wear and many are based on the fossil fuels (oil) which we are all trying to move away from. So, how can you sew a winter coat that is truly warm, but meets your ethical requirements for both compassion and organic culture?

How I Made These Organic Coats
I took two approaches – one for the men’s coat and one for the women’s coat and both have yielded really warm garments.

My handmade organic men’s coat consists of 2 layers. The outer layer was made of an organic cotton sateen sheet. The inner layer (which you can see on the collar and cuffs) is an organic cotton blanket. The coat is actually reversible, with a shawl collar and two buttons. The overall style is along the lines of a raincoat, but that thick, organic woven cotton blanket makes it really cozy and my husband loves it.

For the organic women’s coat, three layers were used. The outer later is the same organic cotton sateen sheet material used in the men’s coat and the innermost layer is an organic cotton flannel sheet in taupe. These 2 layers enclose a layer of quilt batting. I assembled ’sandwiches’ of these three fabrics for each of the main pieces of the coat – the fronts, back and sleeves and then quilted them before assembling the coat. I then quilted the coat in double rows of horizontal stripes and used scraps from the same organic cotton blanket to give the collar and cuffs that ‘wooly’ barn jacket look. I did the quilting on my sewing machine. I used another quilting technique to finish the hem, applying bias stripping to bind the edge of it. It’s a mid-calf length coat with four buttons. I decided I wanted to add an extra bit of design to my coat, and sewed two strips of blue and white organic cotton sateen (taken from the gift bag my sheets and blanket came in) together and then applied them to the coat a few inches above the hem. Finally, I appliqued two pelicans to the coat, turning my design elements into an image of sea birds circling above the ocean and surf. I think this gives a totally unique, seaworthy look to this special organic coat. It’s warm, comfortable and wonderful to wear!

I want to make special mention of the buttons I used on these coats. I buy American-made products whenever possible and I was totally thrilled to discover WoodButtons.com – a domestic company that has been making gorgeous buttons and toggles in Brooklyn, NY since 1939. These buttons are really something special and the customer service I encountered at WoodButtons.com was incredibly helpful, personable and friendly. If you love to sew, you are going to love the wide selection of beautiful wooden buttons these folks offer and the lovely, chevron design on the buttons I ordered adds such a fine finishing touch to my 2 organic coats.

My organic sheets and blanket for the project were purchased from another company I enjoy supporting: Coyuchi. Their cotton sateen and flannel sheets are fabulous for sewing with, their slightly glossy sheen lending that polished look to a project that you readily associate with coats, jackets and windbreakers. I really appreciate that this company gives me an option for buying large pieces of organic fabric to work with and I thought the ‘espresso’ color line used in this project resulted in really professional, classy looking coats.

For my husband’s coat, I attempted to work with a coat pattern. I wasn’t happy with the pattern, so I won’t link to it here. I ended up having to come up with my own solutions for it. For my own coat, I worked loosely with a large men’s shirt pattern, but making up a lot of it as I went along. If you are handy with sewing, chances are you can turn a shirt pattern you already own into a coat, if you remember that coats need to be much roomier than shirts in order to provide the ease of movement that makes a coat comfortable to wear. If you are just getting into sewing, you will be best off working with an actual coat pattern and following the directions carefully.

The Pride Of Gaining Skills
How much harder is it to sew a coat than it is to sew a shirt? Just a little bit. It takes some extra thought and planning to figure out how you will handle the layers of fabric you’ll be working with to get the desired warmth. How long did it take to make these coats? The Organic Men’s Coat took me 3 days to complete (three afternoons and evenings of sewing). The Organic Women’s Coat took 4 days. My husband helped me with the cutting of the fabrics – he’s a master with a rotary cutter!

How about the cost? I calculate that I spent about $150 on each coat. Is that a good deal? When I consider that I’ve got 2 organic, vegan coats that are not hurting my planet, farmers, weavers or myself and that my family will be wearing these coats for the next 10 years, I think I’ve gotten a great deal. And, when I look at the few mass-manufactured organic coats out there that are likely of inferior quality and see that they are selling for as much as $300 each or more, the deal looks even better. Finally, when I consider that I not only got to put my love into the project, but came out of it with the confidence that I have the skills to clothe my loved ones with coats that will offer real protection from winter cold, I am totally pleased.

You can gain these skills! Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t sew a coat. In just a week, I made two of them and I’m by no means a professional seamstress. As human beings, we are dependent on clothing for our survival in the winter, but that doesn’t mean we have to be dependent on Macy’s. We can learn to depend on ourselves for these basic needs of life and we can take real pride in the discovery that, with a little work and love, we can provide for our families abundantly!

Whether you love to munch organic sunflowers seeds or treat your backyard birds to them, if you have a sunny spot, you can grow your own sunflowers every year and will find real joy in doing so. Our variety of choice is the Tarahumara Sunflower – an heirloom plant with really special qualities and a most interesting conjectured history.

Sunflowers are a Native American food and have been cultivated in the Americas for at least 3000 years. It is believed that the strain of sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) being sold as Tarahumara Sunflower Seed were native sunflowers which eventually came to be grown in the care of Mennonite peoples in Canada before making their way south to the Tarahumara people of Northern Mexico where they have now been cultivated for several generations. Like most Native American food crops, good seed has traveled from Peru to Ontario, from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, adapting to new terrains, changing slowly into new strains via natural hybridization and coming to be a staple in widely separated regions of the continents. Sunflowers are truly a gift to us and were so important to the early Incas and Aztecs that they were used to symbolize solar gods in works of religious art. Best of all for today’s home farmers, sunflowers are truly a snap to grow and provide valuable, nutritious food for our families.

What’s Special About Tarahumara Sunflower Seeds?
First of all, the shells are white! This is really striking to the eye at harvest time, and though the seeds of our Tarahumara Sunflowers are somewhat smaller than what you may be used to seeing in commercial and conventional sunflower seeds, their flavor is exceptionally fresh, sweet and tasty.

The leaves are a bright spring green and the stalks reach about 7′-8′ in height on our farm. Each stalk produces a single seed head. The seed heads end up being about 8 inches across, densely packed with seeds. These are smaller flowers than those mammoth disks you may think of when you envision edible sunflower seed plants. They look a bit more like the ornamental hybrids (which, frankly, I find a less-than-great development away from the real sunflowers which so generously produce food for humans and birds) and their petals are an exquisite bright gold against the blue summer sky.

I can certainly understand why the Tarahumara people love this variety of sunflowers and it adds to my happiness in growing them when I think of those wonderful mountain people who think nothing of running a hundred miles at a stretch in bare feet. They are very special people and this is a really special crop for the home farmer to grow.

How To Plant And Grow Tarahumara Sunflowers
After the last danger of frost has passed in the spring, find a spot in the garden or on the family farm with good sunlight. At least 3/4 of a day of sunlight is optimal for their growth. Hoe up the earth to soften it and work in some organic compost. Remember, you are going to be eating these seeds so do not use chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides or anything else artificial or toxic in your garden or on your farm. It is not necessary to do this if you are taking good care of your land and by growing your food organically, you can be sure you are serving up health and not sickness to yourself and your family.

Make a little hill of earth and poke three holes in it – the depth of the second joint of a woman’s finger or about 1 inch – and put a seed in each hole. Because not all the seeds will sprout in most cases, you are planting 3 to ensure that at least one sunflower comes up in each hill. This is the teaching of the Hidatsa Indians as described in Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, one of the finest books ever published on the subject of Native American farming. Make your hills about 1 foot apart. Cover over the seeds and water thoroughly.

In about 1-2 weeks you should see lovely green sprouts coming up. One of the super things about Tarahumara Sunflowers is that, unlike some varieties, they are not water hogs. They are considered fairly drought tolerant. Keep their hills evenly moist until they sprout and are a couple inches tall. Then, you can water less. I would say that once the plants are established, we water ours every few weeks during the heat of summer in Northern California and once the petals fall, we stop watering all together to let the seeds dry.

Tarahumara Sunflowers have slender stalks but should need no staking unless you live in a really windy place. They really take care of themselves if you have provided good soil and good sun. How nice!

When To Harvest Tarahumara Sunflowers
I find it a little confusing that the seed packets I’ve seen for Tarahumara Sunflowers give a days-to-maturity estimate of 85-100 days. I think this is intended to describe when the plants are in bloom, not when they are ready for harvest. In our experience, if you plant your sunflowers in early-mid April, they will be ready for harvest in late September or early October. This is more like 175 days or something between 5-6 months from sowing time to harvest time.

You will know when your sunflower seeds are ready to harvest when all the petals have dropped, the heads are hanging forward and the backs of the heads have turned yellowish. Simply cut off each head with a few inches of stem.

Some people find that they don’t get to reap what they sow when it comes to sunflowers because their feathered friends come early to the feast and quickly clean the seed heads out. It is good to plant extra so that you can help support our dwindling wild bird populations, but you can also reserve as many heads as your family needs by loosely tying a piece of bird netting over each head once the petals have fallen. This will keep the seeds safe for you.

How To Dry The Sunflower Seeds After Harvest
This is very easy. The method described in Buffalo Bird Woman involved setting the sunflowers face-down on the roof of the house for 4 days and nights, unprotected in any way. If a storm was coming, they would be brought inside, but otherwise they were just left out to dry a bit. Unfortunately, our roofs have toxic chemicals on them in most parts of the country and drying our seed on the ground was out because we get heavy sea mists and dew on the grass here. My method involves setting all the heads face down on a wood table in front of a window I keep open during all hours except for when our family is asleep. Within a week, the heads are nice and dry and ready to thresh.

How To Thresh The Sunflower Seeds
If you are dealing with a really large harvest, you may need to do this outside, beating the heads with a stick and using winnowing baskets to separate the seeds from the chaff. Our farm and family is small and the threshing can be done more simply. My husband and I sit down at either end of a cookie sheet. I take each sunflower seed head and bend it backward to loosen the seed and then use my fingers to push the seeds from their bed in the seed head, onto the cookie sheet. There, my husband works to separate the beautiful white seeds from the golden brown husks and other chaff that falls as I loosen the seed. We gather up the ‘debris’ to be added to the compost pile. Once the heads have all been threshed, we pick through all the seeds a second time, removing anything that shouldn’t be there and making sure there are no moldy seeds or anything unwanted. Each head yields about 1/2 cup of seed or more and your finished seeds will look like this:

How To Roast And Store The Sunflower Seeds
Raw sunflower seeds are exceptionally good and can be eaten out of hand. If you’re only familiar with pre-cracked sunflower seeds, the way you crack a sunflower seed’s shell is to place it sideways between your top and bottom front teeth. Come down lightly with your teeth and the shell will pop open so you can pry out the seed meat. That’s how the birds do it, too! Raw sunflower seeds are a wonderful addition to salads, granola, trail mix, baked goods and can even be blended up into sunflower seed butter – like peanut butter but with a really different flavor.

Roasted sunflower seeds are another satisfying snack. Gentle toasting brings out their nuttiness but it’s really important not to over-toast them and this can happen in the blink of an eye if you get distracted. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Spread sunflower seeds (in their shells) on a baking sheet. Toast for about 5 minutes. Take them out and sample one. The shells should still be white. Are the grey seeds inside turning just barely golden? If so, they are done. If not, put them back in for a couple more minutes and sample again. If your seeds turn brown or black, they are burnt and should be thrown in the compost pile. Eating burnt seeds is bad for your health. This is why it is so important to devote seed-roasting time solely to that task so that you can pull the seeds out of the oven at just the right moment. You can sprinkle them with a little salt if you like.

Whether raw or roasted, in the shell or out of the shell, sunflower seeds store best if refrigerated. I’m a big fan of the luxury of refrigeration for all seeds and nuts as this cuts down the chance of the harvest going rancid. Eating rancid seeds and nuts is even worse for you than eating burnt ones. I like to store my sunflower seeds in glass mason jars in the fridge. Roasted seeds should be eaten within a couple of months if kept refrigerated. Raw ones will keep much longer. Make sure your jars and lids are utterly clean and utterly dry. Moisture can cause the seeds to rot. If you ever discover that your seeds taste off, bitter or strange, they have gone rancid and should be put in the compost pile – not eaten.

The Nutritional Gifts Of Sunflower Seeds
Sunflower Seeds are a wonderful source of protein, vitamins E, B1 and B5, zinc, magnesium, fiber and healthy fats. These are things that scientists tell us, but I rely more on the wisdom of thousands of years of my American Indian ancestors growing sunflowers as a healthful and satisfying staple crop. It’s good to understand both ways of looking at the foods we eat, but I will always trust long tradition over modern scientific data when it comes to staple household foods for my family.

One fact you need to know: the nutritious content of any crop you grow is largely dependent on the care you give to the plants. Good, organic soil and traditional, chemical-free farming methods will produce more nutritious foods than the chemically-dependent agribusiness tactics of trying to substitute lab chemicals for time-honored growing practices. Numerous studies have proven this, no matter what the FDA may say about all foods being the same, no matter how they are grown. Take care of the land and the plants that grow on it will take care of your needs.

Don’t forget to save some of the seed you harvest for next year’s planting! Store in a dry, dark place until next spring and honor your Tarahumara Sunflowers of this year by ensuring that their descendants can grow again next year. This is why it is so important to plant heirloom seed wherever you can. The Tarahumara Sunflower is an heirloom plant and, unlike commercial hybrids or the wicked scandal of genetically modified seeds, the seeds you harvest from heirloom plants will produce more of the same plants next year. Saving seeds is a powerful way to keep heritage crops alive and to improve the self-sufficiency of your family farm.

What Else Can You Do With Tarahumara Sunflowers?
On our farm, our plants are our friends. We spend time with them every day, watching them grow, singing to them, asking them to reach for the sky, thanking them for providing us with such delicious, healthy food. I see proofs of the loving element of life on earth in the fact that I can plant just 1 sunflower seed and come away with my cup half-full of them. Noticing this makes me feel loved by this world and helps me to see how the plants take care not only of me, but of so many other kinds of animals. We treat our plants with the respect we sense they merit, and their final resting place is in our compost pile, where the husks of their spirits can slowly feed the future. It keeps them within the circle of life and I sense that they appreciate this consideration.

While I am so joyful at harvest time, I confess I feel sad seeing crops end their growing phase and sometimes I like to prolong my celebration of them by beautifying my home with them before they eventually make their way to the compost pile. Pictured here is a little harvest decoration I made of a stalk and ear of our corn, a dried Tarahumara Sunflower seed head and a remnant of orange fabric. It’s just a simple thing, showing that I am glad that fall is here and that I appreciate my plants and this is a nice way to keep home good and cozy in a natural, pleasant way. You could find other nice ways to use your finished sunflowers in dried arrangements, wreaths and special touches that bring warmth to the house and celebrate the harvest. My mother told me she recently saw a craft store selling miniature bales of hay for $10 each. Take a look around your farm and you will see that ‘designer home decor’ for fall is free for the taking and feels a lot more personal because you grew it yourself.

In addition to decorating with and composting the finished sunflower plants, fresh sunflower petals can be eaten in salads or used to make a lovely yellow watercolor paint or a dye for fabric. Seed can be collected and used to fill birdfeeders with the highest quality, organic birdseed you could possibly acquire.

While they are growing, Tarahumara Sunflowers create a living screen, providing shade and privacy on the homestead. Eat your lunch outdoors at their feet. They draw honeybees and other vital insects to the farm and they add great beauty to the landscape. They can be interplanted with other food crops or with flowers and their presence in your garden connects you with thousands of years of American history. A nutritional powerhouse and a joy to grow – sunflowers deserve a place of honor on our family farms. We really appreciate them, and would love to hear any sunflower stories, tips or recipes you’d like to share. We value your knowledge.

Here in the Reskills column of VeganReader, I am advocating that men and women consider learning to sew some of their own clothes. Sewing for yourself or your loved ones is not only a very pleasant way to spend time, it also increases your sense of being an able person – someone who knows how to clothe people, rather than being wholly dependent upon designated, faraway ‘experts’ for this matter of survival.

Today, I’m sharing my latest sewing project with you – a quilted organic vest that is vegan and extremely warm for the chilly fall and winter days that have suddenly arrived here. I’d like to spend a moment addressing an issue that can be really problematic for vegans, whether they are trying to sew or simply purchase warm clothing. I hope to help you learn to dress in a way that is both toasty warm and cruelty free.

As you know, humans living in cold regions historically wore the skins of animals to protect them from the elements. Our species has evolved as though all of us live in some temperate zone at a pleasant 70 degrees year-round, regardless of the fact that humans have become naturalized in nearly every type of climate and terrain the world has to offer. Humans took the fur, feathers and hides of more appropriately-garbed creatures in order to survive in cold places, and eventually, they domesticated sheep in order to have a constant and reliable source of insulating animal wool.

Vegans eschew the practice of wearing animal products. This rules out leather, silk and wool. This choice is made out of compassionate beliefs that do not support a system which takes control of animal lives in order to benefit man. Vegans believe that animals should be free to live out their own lives without needing to show a profit to people. In addition to this, some people cannot wear wool because they are allergic to it.

So, where do these philosophies and allergies leave people who live in places where fall and winter are chilly? Generally, they end up purchasing synthetic fiber warm clothing. Textiles like acrylic, nylon, rayon and polar fleece make up the majority of the materials you will find used in non-wool sweaters, vests, coats, hats, scarves and pants in American department stores. Synthetic textiles tend to make up the majority of most fabric stores’ inventory, too.

What’s Wrong With Synthetic Fabrics?
From an ecological standpoint, the fact that many synthetic fabrics are made of petroleum and plastics does not make them winners. When it comes to personal comfort, synthetic fabrics are really unpleasant to wear. They aren’t nice to touch and they don’t let our skin breathe, often causing excessive perspiration. The rubbery-ness of lycra pants and uncomfortable fuzziness of acrylic sweaters really make my skin crawl and the fact that these types of textiles make up the bulk of what is available in the U.S. is one of the main reasons I decided to learn to sew.

Just as my decision to go vegan 20 years ago taught me that the Earth lavishly provides for everything I could need to eat, without my having to steal from or kill other animals, my quest for a natural fiber wardrobe has shown me that plants can take care of my needs for both coverage and warmth. My new organic vest is a really good example of this.

How I Made This Vegan, Organic Vest

My vest is made of 2 layers of organic cotton sateen with cotton quilt batting between them. I have sewn all of my family’s quits and simple quilting is a super secret you can discover if you are looking for vegan and eco-friendly ways to make warm winter clothing.

Quilting is an ancient art, believed to have originated in China, and it’s simply the practice of putting a layer of warm fiber between two layers of fabric and then stitching through the three layers in order to make them cushion-y and thick.

You can take any button up shirt pattern and make a warm winter vest like this from it. The only alteration you’ll need to make is to make the armholes a little bit bigger/deeper so that shirt or sweater sleeves can fit through them comfortably when you wear the vest. I would also suggest that you make the vest 1 to 2 sizes larger than your normal shirt size so that it can accommodate whatever layers you are wearing underneath it.

Cut each pattern piece in the shirt/vest 3 times – twice out of your fabric and once out of your cotton quilt batting. Most shirts consist of 3 main parts – the back piece and the two front pieces that button together. I created each of the 3 pieces separately, sewing the fabric layers and quilting layer together around the edges. I then quilted each of the 3 main pieces in a simple diamond pattern on my sewing machine (I don’t have a fancy quilting machine) before joining the 3 pieces together into the finished garment.

My shirt pattern came with a rounded collar. I sewed this last, quilted it in smaller diamonds and attached it to the shirt. Finally, I hand sewed the button holes and sewed on some simple wooden buttons I happened to have in my sewing box.

The Organic Fabrics I Used
Organic fabrics remain few and far between, despite how much so many of us would love to sew with them exclusively. My solution was to purchase an organic, cotton, sateen bed sheet from Coyuchi – a noteworthy company that vends organic bedding and baby garments.

Expensive? Kind of, but I look at it this way. I not only made a whole vest out of a single sheet, but I have fabric left over that I will definitely be putting to use for other projects. The sheet cost about $50. I would certainly pay that much for a store-bought organic vest that will last me for decades and I certainly couldn’t find one with this kind of handmade quality.

And if I think beyond my own clothing budget to the fact that Coyuchi’s organic bed sheets not only protect my health but the health of the people who grow and weave the cotton, that price tag takes on an even more appealing shine. It takes so much work to farm cotton, harvest it, make it into thread and then cloth. If I can make a truly warm basic piece for my winter wardrobe out of this and even have remnants left over for future projects, I think I’m coming out of the deal rather well. Do you agree?

The organic cotton sateen has the sheen to it you may associate with quilted vests and jackets, but it comes from natural cotton – not viscose or nylon or some other uncomfortable synthetic fiber. The finished garment has a subtle, handsome glow to it.

The Design Of My Vest

In addition to making the plain vest out of a single brown organic sheet from Coyuchi, I used the organic gift bags my purchase came in to create a beautiful design on the vest. I had purchased a couple of items when I visited a Coyuchi outlet and one came with a celadon and white bag and the other came with a raspberry and white bag.

From these small pieces of fabric, I created my own added design element for the vest. I sewed together three stripes of the fabric, applied them to the outside front pieces of the vest (before I had attached them to the batting or backing) and then I appliqued two additional pieces onto this: the bear and the mountain. This mountain shape is a Pan-Indian symbol and bears are very important animals to me. I call this design “Bears Go To Mountains”. Once I had done the applique work, which simply means sewing around the raw edges of the bear and the mountain so that they don’t fray, I was ready to layer the fabrics and batting for the three main pieces, stitch them together, quilt them and then assemble the vest.

That Sounds Like A Lot Of Work
This project took me two evenings of sewing. My husband, who wields a rotary cutter like no one else in the world, assisted me. We had a very sociable, happy time together making this warm winter garment for me. Just 2 evenings of enjoyment have resulted in a vest that I will be wearing for years to come.

You Can Sew A Vest Like This
While I wouldn’t recommend this as your very first sewing project, I believe that anyone with a bit of sewing experience could easily make a vest like this. There is nothing complicated about it and chances are, you can make it from a shirt pattern you already have on hand if you have some sewing patterns at home. If not, you could buy a pattern specifically meant for a vest, or just buy any simple button-up shirt pattern and make the 2 adjustments I’ve outlined above.

I cannot believe how wonderfully warm this vest is over a long sleeved shirt or sweater. It provides an added layer of insulation over the chest while leaving the arms very free to move about. I think this is a really perfect fall garment and will be great under a coat when the snow starts falling.

You could make your vest even warmer by finding a source for organic cotton flannel, organic cotton corduroy or organic cotton velvet. All of these fabrics would be warmer than simple sateen, and could certainly produce a very fine garment.

What I Love Most About This Vest

• It’s organic
• It’s made out of a bed sheet – how creative is that?
• I got to create my own design for it that has a special meaning to me
• It’s vegan and cruelty-free
• It’s really warm

Sewing for yourself or your dear ones says a lot about the importance you give to human health, comfort and happiness. When you find a way to sew organic garments, you are making an even more powerful declaration of care for yourself, your family, farmers and the planet. This is a wonderful, positive thing to do and it’s my hope that we will be seeing more organic fabric choices in the coming years.

I hope you have enjoyed this article about my latest sewing project and that it has inspired you to sew something great. My next goal is to sew organic winter coats for my family. I’m assembling my materials right now. This is going to be a really big, exciting project. Please check back soon!

If you grew up drinking cow’s milk and are perhaps are looking for an Almond Milk Recipe right now because you or a loved one has been diagnosed with an allergy, or because you are building a more ecologically-sound and compassionate diet, you are going to love almond milk. We use rice milk for an every day milk. But almond milk is special. It is the cream of the non-dairy milks…incredibly rich with healthy fats and so sweet and good to taste.

Why Make Your Own Almond Milk
Almond milk is sold commercially, but it cannot compare in taste or freshness to homemade and because only a few nuts are needed to make a small recipe of almond milk, making your own almond milk will represent a financial savings for most families. Best of all, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve achieved something really vital – the skills you need to do for yourself and your loved ones. That’s an accomplishment that no one can put a price tag on.

In making almond milk, please do use only organic almonds. In your quest for satisfying recipes that give you a chance to improve your self-sufficiency, you don’t want the deadly pesticides in your glass that are sprayed on conventional almond orchards. Nothing appetizing about that! By choosing to make organic almond milk, you will know that you are serving up health, and not sickness, to your loved ones.

The making of nut milks is neither new nor faddish. Nut milks have been beloved in Europe, Asia and the Americas for centuries, and I always think of a passage I once read in a history of New England in which some very thirsty travelers are given a glass of hickory nut milk by a woodsman. The author claims he had never tasted anything so delicious in his life and I can certainly believe him. So, just remember, though the National Dairy Council may have spent billions of dollars over the past century trying to convince Americans that the only milk on the planet comes from cows, history points at a much more diverse take on the tasty milks humans can enjoy and make themselves, right in their own kitchens.

My Almond Milk Recipe For The Creamiest Milk In The World!

It’s important that I preface this with a note that our family only makes almond milk on demand. Unlike rice milk, which we make a week’s supply of at a time, we make almond milk only when we want it, for special recipes. The following recipe makes 2 cups of milk, but if you’d like to make more, you can double or triple the recipe. If the milk isn’t to be consumed right away, you must refrigerate it. I wouldn’t advise keeping the milk for more than a week, but to be honest, because of the way we instantly consume every last drop of almond milk we make here on the farm, I do not know the exact amount of time a larger batch of almond milk would remain good-tasting in the fridge. You can experiment and see what works for your family.

Almond Milk Ingredients and Equipment

• 1/3 C. Raw Organic Almonds
• 2 C. Water
• A pot
• A blender
• A mesh strainer

And that’s it!

Step 1 – Blanching The Almonds
You can make almond milk without this step if you’re really in a rush, but the skins of the nuts will give a slightly bitter, strong taste to the finished almond milk that isn’t totally pleasing. Blanching only takes a couple of minutes, and the end result will be a very white milk with a pure, sweet taste.

Bring about 1 cup of water to a boil in your pot. Drop in your almonds. Let them boil for about 3 minutes and then pour everything through your metal mesh strainer so that the water pours out and you’re left with just the almonds. Pour the almonds out onto a plate and let them rest for a few minutes until they are cool enough to touch with your hands.

Once the almonds have cooled a bit, simply rub off their papery skins and discard the skins. That’s all there is to blanching and the end result is the lovely, creamy nut meats, ready to be turned into almond milk.

Step 2 – Making Almond Milk
Put the blanched nuts and 2 cups of fresh water into your electric blender. *Make sure you put the lid on. Blend them until you’ve crushed as many of the nuts as you can and the milk is creamy white and thick. You may have to stop and start the blender, picking it up off the base and shaking it from time to time, as the nuts can get stuck under the blades.

I want to note here that if you use more water/less water or more nuts/less nuts, you can control the exact creaminess of the milk. A higher proportion of water produces a thinner milk, and a higher proportion of nuts produces a thicker one. My proportions in this almond milk recipe results in a milk that I feel is just about right, but you can experiment. The truth is, I no longer measure the nuts and water when I make almond milk. I just make as much as I need at the moment.

What you end up with is the pulverized almonds at the bottom of the blender and the water having been turned into a rich milk. *You don’t have to throw the nuts out. We’ll return to this in a minute.

Step 3 – Straining The Almond Milk
Holding your metal mesh strainer over a receptacle – a jar, a bowl or wide-mouthed container of some kind, simply pour the milk through the strainer. Set the pulverized nuts aside. You can strain the milk twice if you want to be sure you’ve gotten out all of the little particles of nuts, but I only strain once. There are fancy bags and other devices for straining nut milks, but we don’t have these around our house and any fine-gauge mesh strainer seems to do the job just fine.

And that’s it. You now have homemade almond milk! It could hardly be easier to make.

What Is This Almond Milk Recipe Good For?
Almond milk is delicious in hot beverages like tea and makes an exceptionally rich cup of hot chocolate. It is wonderful over hot or cold cereals. Using almond milk in pudding and baked goods recipes results in really superior dishes and it adds a subtle, but certainly not overpowering, taste of nuttiness to any recipe in which it’s included. And, of course, almond milk is quite tasty plain, just as it is, but it’s because of its richness that I tend to use it as an ingredient in other recipes rather than as my typical daily beverage.

I know that many of our readers are very conscientious about waste. They will try this recipe and then find themselves with a lovely batch of almond milk…but also with the leftover chopped up nuts. What can be done with those wet, pulverized nuts? In order to answer that question, I’d like to share with you another simple recipe that is so exquisitely good, you’d think it came from some fancy, gourmet restaurant, to the tune of $15 a plate! I hope you’ll give this a try the next time you’re making almond milk and your family would like something sweet after supper.

Blackberry Almond Cobbler with Ginger Lime Almond Milk Ice Cream
I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of this elegant and super easy dessert to share. The blackberries are just finishing up in the back field and my family always gobbles this treat up before I think to photograph it. Just follow the instructions and it’s bound to turn out right. And it uses up both the milk and the nuts in the almond milk recipe, so this a no-waste dessert you can feel very good about. The following recipe is not only vegan, but it is also gluten-free. This serves 2. Increase the recipe for a larger family.

Ingredients
- A batch of the almond milk recipe above.
- 1 C. Organic Rice Flour
- 2 C. Blackberries (or blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, whatever you have)
- 1/3 C. Maple Syrup for the berry mixture
- 1/4 C. Maple Syrup for the ice cream
- Juice of 1 organic lime
- 1/2 T. dried ginger powder
- 1 T. Organic Sunflower Oil
- Shake of salt
- Ice

Step 1 – Making the Almond Milk Ice Cream
Take your finished almond milk and put it in the blender with the 1/4 Maple Syrup, the lime juice, ginger, a tiny sprinkle of salt and the organic sunflower oil. Add 4-5 ice cubes. Blend until the ice is crushed. Taste. If it’s not quite citrus-y enough you can add a little lemon juice for an even more refreshing taste. I like to do this, but it isn’t essential if you don’t have a lemon. If it’s not sweet enough, blend in a little more syrup. You don’t want it too sweet. It’s supposed to be light and snappy to contrast with the syrupy fruit.

Pour the blended mixture into a wide-mouthed, shallow container. I like to use a glass pie dish but you could use a wide shallow bowl or a rimmed platter. *Do not use a metal receptacle or it may react badly with the citrus juice. Glass or ceramic is best. Set it in the freezer.

While you are doing the other steps in this recipe, return to the freezer every 15 minutes or so to see if the ice cream has formed crystals. When it has, use a spoon and stir the mixture in a circular motion so that you keep it granular and so that it doesn’t simply harden into one big flat lump. The stirring also keeps the juice from separating from the milk. If you’ve ever eaten a granita, snow cone or shaved ice, you will know what the granular texture is that you’re looking for here. It’s not smooth like traditional ice cream. It’s much icier than that, and it is so good! Keep stirring the mixture from time to time while you make the rest of the dessert.

Step 2 – Baking the Cobbler Biscuits
Mix the wet, pulverized almonds (left over from making almond milk) with the cup of rice flour. Add a sprinkle of salt and gently stir the mixture together. Plop out onto a baking sheet in rough circles about 3 inches in diameter. Bake in the oven at 375 degrees until the bottoms are turning golden brown. The tops will still be pale. Remove from the oven and set aside.

Step 3 – Making the Berry Filling
While your cobbler biscuits are baking, wash your berries and put them in a pot with a couple of drops of water and the 1/3 C. maple syrup. If you are using strawberries, do slice them. But, any other berry can be cooked whole. Bring almost to a boil and then turn down to simmer. Stir frequently until the berries have disintegrated in the syrup and the mixture has thickened slightly. What you are doing is cooking off the excess water in the berries. This tends to take no more than about 10-15 minutes over low heat. Don’t forget to stir!

Assembling Your Dessert
Spoon the berry mixture equally into the bowls. Lay the biscuits on top of this. Is the ice cream all icy and ready? Put a big scoop on top of each dessert. For real gourmet flair, add a sprig of fresh spearmint to the top of each. Beautiful! Serve.

You will love the nutty pastry that is made with the leftover almonds from the milk, and the bright taste of the granita-like ice cream. This dessert provides a wonderful contrast to a meal that is heavy or starchy. It’s so light and fruity and fresh tasting. And, it’s truly a fine way to use up the almonds. This dessert contains no gluten, no animal products and no unhealthy fats. It’s simply natural goodness and one of the loveliest ways I know of to celebrate summer berries.

Reskilling Feels So Good
The Reskills section of Vegan Reader aims to help you reclaim the living skills that your people all had in previous generations. Whether you want to sew your own clothes, grow your own food or cook nutritionally superior meals from scratch, we absolutely believe that you can acquire the skills you need for a more able, powerful life. Something as simple as trying an Almond Milk Recipe can be your first act of taking pride in doing for yourself. It really feels good to know you can make your own delicious milk whenever you want it!

I hope you will give our Almond Milk Recipe a try and that it serves your family well as a healthy beverage and as an ingredient in inspired homemade dishes. Please let me know how it works for you!

There are children in America who have never held a piece of whole fruit in their hands. There are families in America who spend nearly all or all of their food budget money on boxes, cans and jars – processed foods filled with additives, preservatives, fragrances, colors, pesticides, genetically modified ingredients and precious little nutritious food.

There are so many people in the United States who are now too many generations removed from the preparation of simple foods and a wholesome diet that they are living without the survival skills of knowing what to eat to satisfy hunger and nourish the body. This deficiency is astounding. Americans overeat their way to obesity, desperately seeking the satisfaction of a good, full feeling that they cannot get from processed foods and nearly all American authority has been given away regarding the foods our families eat. In cities and rural areas alike, our people are no longer growing or cooking their own whole foods. We have designated ‘experts’, living ’somewhere else’, to produce the sustenance on which our lives depend and our spirits, minds and bodies are paying the price of depression, ignorance and weakness for this trade.

On the continents of North and South America, with our soil, our water, our weather and our relative liberty, we should be enjoying the best eating in the world. Each of us should possess powerful, intimate knowledge about how to find or grow and prepare the most wonderful, healthful and delicious meals. We live in the midst of potential abundance that is ours for the taking if we only have the knowledge we need.

The cultivated forests, gardens and orchards of North, Central and South America were once the glory of these lands. The people who came to be called ‘Indians’ bred and cultured the key foods that have become some of the most popular and famous around the globe and it is my belief that knowledge and understanding of these exceptional foods is the secret to creating the best possible diet for the modern inhabitants of the Americas. With gratitude, we can come to know these whole foods that have supported life here for thousands and thousands of years. This article aims to be your introduction to the fabulous basic foods which can form the base of an eco-friendly, people-friendly diet for your family now and forever.

The Agricultural Line
For a moment, try to clear your mind of thoughts of modern cities, states, countries and borders. Picture the continents as mere land masses and imagine a line running diagonally roughly from what is now New England to what is now Baja California. Though there are exceptions to this idea, it is evident that for thousands of years, the people dwelling north of the line lived mainly by foraging and hunting.

This does not mean they didn’t work with the landscape. On the contrary, their hunting and forestry practices were extremely complex and skilled, ensuring that the woodlands had the best trees for their needs and that the wild animals were most abundant in the most convenient places. The people’s knowledge of terrain, weather and plants was so far beyond ours in modern times, it is baffling to realize what was lost as a result of the genocide…both lives and millennia of knowledge about how to live in America were destroyed. The people of America, both Indian and Non-Indian, have yet to recover from this loss of survival skills.

South of the line, we have the greatest horticulturists the world may ever have known. Generations of skilled farmers coaxed into existence the crops which have become the staples of civilizations the world over. The Italians could hardly imagine life without polenta, just as the Irish would be lost without potatoes and they owe it all to the early Americans who carefully selected and cultivated strains of these nutritional powerhouse plants over hundreds and thousands of years.

Because of the dense population of the United States and the concept of private ownership of lands, it is very difficult to live in modern times by hunting and gathering. The grains, greens, nuts, roots and seeds we might want are all behind fences. The eating traditions of the North are beyond most of us to replicate. South of the line, however, we can look for a sustainable lifestyle that absolutely works in the 21st century. We can look to places like ancient Mexico, Peru and New England for a model diet and a planet-friendly way of feeding ourselves. It worked for almost countless ages. It can work for us again.

Meet The Milpa
Milpa farming revolves around planting a mix of crops in combination. Maize rises toward the sun while beans entwine its strong stalks, filling the ground with much-needed nitrogen, and fast-growing squash vines thrive in the dappled spaces in between. Depending on the region, other crops such as sunflowers, avocados or tomatoes are planted. This brilliant method of farming made such excellent use of space and provided such complete nutrition that the concept of growing food this way came to be practiced nearly everywhere south of the line on our map. For thousands of years, milpa farms fed people and they can be planted today with equal success and equal benefits for human beings.

I do not believe that Americans can find a more healthful or incredibly delicious set of foods to locate, grow or cook than the key crops in the milpa and the greatest agricultural achievements of the earliest and wisest inhabitants of these lands. Now, we’re ready to take a new look at these incredible foods.

Maize (Corn)
So central to the diet and beliefs of American people is this plant that the Indians of Mexico often refer to themselves as corn walking. For early Americans in North, Central and South America, maize was the staff of life – the grain that enabled them to see a return of as much as 800 kernels for every kernel planted. At least 30 times more productive than most grain crops of non-Native-American origin, and capable of growing in nearly every type of soil and climate, maize has been the anchor of Native American diets since it was first cultivated some 12,000 or more years ago.

In Central and South America, myriad varieties of maize are still grown for flour, for the making of tortillas, tamales, porridges, stews, beverages and snacks. But, in the United States and Canada, the majority of corn is grown for factory animal feed and the manufacture of industrial products. Even when small farms or families grow corn, they are most likely to grow sweet corn instead of dent or flour corn because the skills of milling and processing these most nutritious corns into useful grain products have been lost. I believe that the day local mills reopen their doors would be one of the happiest days in America. Sweet corn is a wonderful treat, but the dishes you can make from corn flour, masa, polenta-milled corn can form the basis of a vibrant diet of almost unlimited variety.

From tacos, to tamale pie, to jonny cakes and puddings, maize is a blessing for which we can’t be thankful enough and it is so sacred to many Native peoples that it is an integral part of both cultural identity and spiritual practices. But corn is under attack now on these continents as a result of corporate desecration of the genes of corn. The spread of genetically modified corn is destroying our ancient maize landraces and making a new substance that is unfit for human beings or animals to eat. Wild geese will not settle in GMO corn fields and scientific literature cites this GMO corn as a carcinogen…corn that causes cancer instead of giving life.

All people who love corn must become educated about GMO contamination of this staple food source on which our health is so dependent and I urge you to purchase and grow only organic corn that is being protected from biotechnology by means of testing. For farm families wishing to grow either sweet or flour maize, I would suggest buying your seed from Fedco. Fedco is working to supply safe seed to people and I support them in this vital work, and I beg all American people to fight and ban genetic modification of our vital Native American Foods.

Beans
Human beings need protein to live, and there is no better or kinder source of it than dry beans. Take your pick of pinto beans, Anasazi beans, black beans, kidney beans, red beans and you will be drawing from a tradition that is thousands of years old. Evidence of bean cultivation in Peru dates back to at least 6500 BC and other evidence points to another ancient legacy of bean cultivation in Mexico. There are 4000 varieties of beans on record in the United States, alone, and your dinners will only be limited by the extent of your creativity when your meals include beans.

Our family’s favorite bean dish is the simple refritos – refried beans. We eat these almost every day, but we also love to incorporate beans into soups, stews and casseroles. Baked beans are a classic and if you mash them up cold the next day, they make a very toothsome sandwich spread. Some onion, some salt, some herbs – just a little imagination can turn plain beans into a feast for a hungry family.

I am always surprised by the needless trouble cookbooks make about cooking beans from scratch. If you can boil water, you can make beans. Some cooks insist that pre-soaking beans, draining off soaking water and other methods make beans more digestible. I have never really understood this, but it may be our family’s ancestry that prevents us having any little side effects from eating beans. All we do is wash them really well, sautee some onion in our big pot, put in the beans and water, cook them for a few hours and then eat them.

None of these other steps are necessary, as far as our own experience goes, but if, for some reason, you have experienced trouble with beans, I would suggest that you make a small pot of them and eat just a spoonful for the first few days…then eat at few spoonfuls. Work your way up to being able to enjoy a full serving of beans by giving your body time to get used to them. And, if these give you a little gas now and then, why should you worry? Everyone has some gas sometimes. That is certainly no reason to bar yourself from enjoying this superior source of protein and culinary joy!

Squash
If I believed in former lives, I would think I had once lived as a squash. No other vegetable seems to shine to me with such warmth and friendliness. When you grow squash, they are like little friends, getting bigger every day in the garden. Their colors and shapes make them like priceless works of art and their delicious, nutritious flesh adds such goodness to meals. Some researchers believe that squashes were the first plants ever cultivated by humankind in the Americas and signs of their presence date back at least 10,000 years in Mesoamerica. The squash has been a friend to man for time beyond recall.

In the United States, we can enjoy two main types of squash. Summer squashes like pattypans and crooknecks are so tender if they are picked when small that they need only a minute of sauteeing them to turn them into little slices of succulent flavor. I greet the arrival of the first summer squash each year with absolute rapture. Once again, I can make stir fries, soups, casseroles, savory pies and marinated dishes with the hearty substance that only squash can provide.

Grown all summer and picked in the fall, winter squash take care of us through the cold months of the year. Their storage qualities are exceptional and in the story of Buffalo Bird Woman great detail is given as to how the Hidatsa people dried rings of winter squash to feed their villages throughout the long winter days. Many Native Peoples extracted a rich, green oil from squash seeds…a favorite at the court of Montezuma.

Winter squashes come in a stunning variety. Try Lakotah squash, buttercup, acorn, pumpkin….each one’s flesh is different in texture and taste. Many cooks feel that winter squashes make a tastier pie than pumpkins do. My family’s favorite way to eat them is baked and either stuffed with a savory stuffing or dressed with my gingerbread dressing. I plan to post the recipe for that in the future and I think your family will stand up and cheer if they taste it!

Scientists and nutritionists praise squashes for their vitamin content, but for millenia, Native peoples have loved squashes simply for the good, full feeling of energy and satisfaction they provide when eaten.

Maize, beans and squash. These are the Native American triad of a healthy diet and our family eats them daily, in some exciting form our other. But this is not all. This base of three Native American Foods can be added to in all kinds of wonderful and delicious ways. Consider how you can enjoy the following:

Potatoes
In Scandinavia, it is said that the people don’t feel they’ve eaten a meal unless it included potatoes. They owe their appreciation for this mealy, steaming, filling happiness to the people of Peru who first cultivated some wild tubers at least 10,000 years ago and turned them into the potatoes countless nations love today. By the time the Incas were ruling Peru in the middle of the 1st millenium A.D., the Andes were ingeniously planted with nutritious potatoes on slopes that look too steep to even walk on.

Our family eats potatoes daily, in stews and soups, baked, boiled, hashed, fried. There is no comparable experience that I know of to eating the first, new potatoes of the year, boiled for mere minutes and simply dressed with a little oil, salt, pepper and parsley just seconds after being dug out of the earth. Potatoes are so easy to grow, I wish everyone could have this unforgettable experience, and the rest of the year, potatoes help us to feel healthy and strong by adding their mineral-rich, starchy bulk to our diet.

Sweet Potatoes (sometimes called Yams) are another blessing from the tropical regions of South America where they have been cultivated for at least 5000 years. We love to make a sweet sauce of peanuts and maple syrup (both Native American Foods), salt, pepper and warming spices to dress our baked sweet potatoes with. Prepared this way, they are almost like dessert but they make a very nutritious side dish to a meal. With some frijoles and a cup of really good homemade soup, you have a dinner fit to serve the most special company.

Sunflowers
This is a picture of the Tarahumara sunflowers we grew this year on our family farm. They are almost ready to harvest now and they have unusual white shells covering the nutritious, oily seeds. Buffalo Bird Woman, referenced above, tells of how the Hidatsa people of earlier times would make balls of ground sunflower meal to take along with them on journeys or out to the fields while working. If they began to feel fatigued, they would nibble their sunflower seed ball and feel wonderfully restored.

Scientists praise sunflower seeds for their oils and proteins. At least 3000 years ago, sunflowers were being cultivated in Mexico and were so beloved that they were used to represent solar gods in both Aztec and Inca art.

You can enjoy sunflowers raw or roasted. They can be added to stir fries, salads, and baked goods or ground into sunflower butter. When you look at beautiful yellow sunflowers, picture the sustaining energy contained in these good plants and how their seeds can help to feed your family in a healthy way.

Avocados
A good avocado is so delicious, it almost defies my powers of description. So rich, so creamy, so dense and filling and luxurious, an avocado is a unique gift to all American people. Avocados of many varieties grow wild in both Central and South America, but no one really knows when early peoples first began cultivating the trees. Pre-Inca pottery was made in the shapes of avocados to celebrate them and this teaches us how important these fruits have been for a very long time.

In the destruction caused by the arrival of the brutal conquistadores in the Americas from Europe, the traditional diet of Native Peoples was forever altered by the introduction of lard from pigs. Instead of relying on the squash seeds, sunflower seeds, avocados and other plants for healthy fats, inhabitants of North, Central and South America began eating more animal fats, a change scientists now see as an unhealthy one. If you are currently working towards a family diet with less unhealthy fats, consider these good plant sources as an ancient, time-tested alternative.

In addition to the guacamole most modern Americans know, avocados are traditionally used in soups, corn-based dishes like tacos, in salads and on sandwiches and even whipped up into desserts! USA-produced organic avocados are available between March-September every year and they are a truly valuable and incredibly sumptuous Native American food.

Tomatoes
Considering that this fruit is so widely used, it is surprising how little is know about the tomato’s origin. Small, green wild relations of the tomato grow in Peru and Aztec recipes for various kinds of tomato salsas indicate the provenance of this special Native American food, but it seems no one is quite sure who first began cultivating and hybridizing tomatoes in ancient times.

Tomatoes add a unique juiciness and tang to otherwise dry dishes and they are a beloved addition to stews, soups, sauces, salads, sandwiches and even desserts. Tomatoes are so easy to grow that I wish every family could have the experience of a fresh-picked tomato from the garden. It is nothing like the taste of tomatoes from supermarkets. Even natural foods stores have bland, mediocre tomatoes. If you can’t grow tomatoes yourself, buy them from the nearest farmer you can find, and make sure you buy only organic tomatoes.

During the summer and fall, our family eats tomatoes every day, and we like to freeze some for winter use. When you think of just how many world cuisines incorporate the tomato – Asian, Arabic, European, African – it is very important to remember that the fruits we enjoy came to us through the work of early peoples.

But, wait! There are even more Native American Foods
With corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, avocados and sunflower seeds, the bounty on our tables is already almost embarrassing. Literally hundreds and hundreds of delicious meals can be based on these ingredients, alone. But there is more to come! Consider how much extra appeal can be added to your meals when they include some of these delicious and traditional Native American Foods:

Sunchokes
Also called Sunroots or Jerusalem Artichokes, these interesting little tubers are native to North America. Likened to a potato in texture, sunchokes can be eaten cooked but I like them best thrown into a stir fry at just the last minute to warm them. If you would like a Native American substitute for the canned water chestnuts used in Chinese American cuisine, sunchokes are going to thrill you. I make dishes of snow peas and sunchoke ‘water chestnuts’ when the peas get ripe in the spring and they are so delicious. Sunchokes are only one of the hundreds of roots and tubers cultivated and picked wild by Native Americans as a staple food source.

Greens
I don’t feel well if I have to go too long without eating some kind of greens, whether fresh or briefly cooked. Early Americans harvested the leaves of too many kinds of plants to count in order to enjoy something good and green to eat. Wild spinaches like goosefoot are still greatly prized by many Native Peoples today. Whether you are picking wild greens or eating cultivated ones, you will enjoy the fresh, energetic feeling you get from including them frequently in your meals.

Grains, Nuts & Seeds
Amaranth and Quinoa have recently been making big news in health magazines as miracle grains. They have certainly been a staple for generations. Chia seeds are just beginning to catch on, too. And don’t forget hazelnuts, hickory nuts, walnuts and pinenuts – wonderful, delicious sources of proteins and fats. Most modern people do not have the knowledge needed to turn acorns into good food, but these skills can also be learned if you like. And don’t forget the peanuts! The peanut butter in your sandwich is a Native American food very familiar to most people in the United States today.

Fruits
Almost every region in the United States has its berries – blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, etc. When you add to this the native plums, persimmons, bananas, wild strawberries, grapes, prickly pears…the list of Native American foods really starts to get long!

Herbs & Others
I am always coming across American Indians singing nostalgic praises of wild onions. It’s easy to understand why. Truly, onions are an unsurpassed gift to cooking, whether they are wild or cultivated. Dishes often do not taste right without a little onion and you can use them liberally. There are Native American herbs, too, like Epazote, which is not well known outside the regions where it is grown. Using herbs in cooking brings out new flavors and adds to the subtlety and goodness of dishes. Beans and squash can become whole new kinds of foods, just by using different seasonings. Maybe you have also tried the delicious little green tomatillos in their papery husks that make the piquant salsa verde you love on Mexican restaurant food. Then there are all of the peppers – both hot ones and sweet ones that can bring incredible flavor to meals. I’m getting hungry now. How about you?

Well, don’t forget the maple syrup, the agave, the chocolate. Now you’ve got dinner and dessert, too!

Why A Native American Foods-based Diet Makes Sense For All Americans

I love homemade Chinese food and delight in an occasional Middle Eastern meal. With things like citrus fruits, garbanzo beans and sesame seeds being cultivated on the American continents, I see no reason not to enjoy these fine foods whenever I’d like to. One non-Native-American food – rice – has definitely become a staple in our home.

But, as much as I enjoy these other noble cuisines, nothing is so satisfying for me, walking on American soil, as eating the foods that are native to this piece of land. Native American foods require the smallest efforts and inputs to grown them because they are meant to grow here. Native American Foods require less transport than processed foods shipped into us from China or other countries outside the Americas. Native American Foods can be fit together like the pieces of a puzzle to create a diet that is always nutritious and always balanced.

In the United States, historians and other researchers have a bad habit of making it sound like Native Americans have vanished from the earth, tragically killed off by European invaders. While it is true that every part of North, Central and South America suffered incalculable loss of life due to unintentional disease and utterly intentional murder, indigenous peoples are very much alive today, whether they live in Montreal, San Francisco, Oaxaca or Lima. In some places, native traditions have not survived the genocide, but in others, the people called ‘Indians’ are still living and farming as they have for thousands of years. The American continents are blessed with a tremendous diversity of Native Peoples, but the history of these lands since the time of the conquistadores has been one of violence instead of one of learning how to love the lands.

Even now, Native Peoples on both continents are being disregarded, abused and killed by latecomers. When you do your research about GMOs, you will see farmers in Mexico, Ecuador and Peru talking with fear and pain in their eyes about ‘multinationals’ and ‘global trade’…much as I imagine the Iroquois sounded when they spoke of George Washington whom they called, ‘destroyer of towns.’

Rather than learning from America’s oldest inhabitants, latecomers ride roughshod over the gardens, the managed forests, the orchards and fields of the very people who know how to farm and eat best in this part of the world.

With so much talk of ecology and the green movement, maybe this is the time that our history will turn in a new direction. Maybe, instead of greed and hatred ruling the day, exchanges of knowledge can take precedent. Maybe, instead of an insane lust for gold, for uranium, for plastic, for oil, for whatever is the latest thing, all Americans can realize that food is the most important thing to know how to acquire and prepare. We can live without shiny metals. We cannot live without eating and if we want to be very green, we can look around the plot of continental rock on which we live for the foods that love to grow here.

On our farm, we sing to our plants. We dance around them when their first fruits are ready to be harvested. We ask their permission to take some of their goodness into ourselves. And, they always answer, “yes.” We are as happy as small children, every time we feel the love these plants show for us, especially when we think of the thousands of years of history spanning the growth of plants and people, side by side. We can be corn walking. We can be squash and beans and berries walking. We can have all these fine things without causing harm to ourselves, our fellow beings or our planet. We have it that good.

In future, I will be continuing to share some of my best recipes here on VeganReader, most of which are based largely on Native American ingredients. Just as Native Peoples have not disappeared, neither has the need to create disappeared. We are not limited to preparing foods exactly as our early peoples did. Traditional dishes are irreplaceable treasures, but we are alive, right now, with all of these terrific foods around us and can create new dishes that become classics in our families and may be passed along to future generations.

We can keep the celebration of these Native American Foods going strong by continuing to let them pass through our hands to nourish our dear ones in so many different ways. Don’t ever think that the celebration isn’t important. It was the way of life for the earliest inhabitants of this continent, and if we want health and happiness, it can be our way of life, too. Surely, the Earth will feel glad in our gladness.

The Unappetizing Truth About Store Bought Pickles
Where we live, there are only a couple of organic pickles available at the local natural foods stores and both of them contain that dreaded ingredient – natural flavors. Natural flavors are chemicals added to foods to trick your taste buds into thinking a food is tasty and ‘fresh’. IFF, International Flavors and Fragrances, is America’s biggest taste and smell chemical manufacturer. In their huge laboratory off the New Jersey Turnpike, the lab workers create the flavors and scents that are packed into everything from oven cleaner to pickle relish. The only difference between a natural flavor and an artificial flavor is that the ‘natural’ one must have, at some point, derived from a food, whereas the ‘artificial’ one can be from a purely chemical origin. There are no health benefits to eating chemical additives, but the inclusion of them in processed foods enables food corporations to mask the tastelessness of old, low quality food, fooling Americans into thinking that what they are eating is delicious.

Whole foods taste great naturally when they are grown with care and freshly prepared. No chemical additives required. It’s a huge disappointment to see Whole Foods 365 Brand Organic Pickles and Cascadian Farms Organic Pickles and Relishes resorting to the use of chemicals instead of quality ingredients in their pickle offerings and our family will not buy them. We prefer to make our own, anyway, and you’ll never have a crisper more flavorsome pickle than the one you’ve made yourself.

Quick Pickles Are A Cinch And A Super Summer Idea
Pickling was invented as a method of preserving foods through the cold winter months when fewer fresh choices are available, and the art of safe long-term pickling is a smart one for self-sufficient families to learn. There’s another type of pickle, however, that is meant to put pickles on the table just hours after picking the cucumbers off the vine or bringing them home from the farmers market. It’s hard to beat the refreshing iciness of fresh sliced cucumber, but for some meals, you absolutely yearn for the salty tang of pickles and if you know you’re going to be making such a meal that night, you can throw together a quick pickle recipe earlier in the day and have the pickles ready by the time the family is saying grace that evening! This is a summertime recipe meant to make the most of your local cucumber harvest and to be enjoyed right now. I hope you will try this quick pickle recipe and tell me how you like it.

My Scrumptious, Crisp Quick Pickle Recipe

Choosing Your Cucumbers
Loyal Vegan Reader readers will not be surprised to hear me saying that home-grown cucumbers of any variety are going to make the very best pickles, but your next best choice are the cucumbers grown by local farmers. Visit farm stands and farmers markets in the summer months and take your pick of the best of what’s in season. Cucumbers must be firm and unwrinkled. Don’t be afraid to ask the farmer when the cucumbers were picked. You will make the best pickles from cucumbers that were picked this morning, or at the very least, within the last 2-3 days.

Commercially-produced pickles are typically made with a single type of cucumber, but when you make quick pickles, you can use any type of cucumber you fancy.

Pickling Cucumbers

These are the relatively small, bumpy pickles typically used in commercial pickle production as well as home pickling. They have dense flesh and small seeds but yield a very juicy pickle. When pickled whole, these are the cucumbers that create the classic Kosher Dill, but in the quick pickling process, you’ll be slicing these into thin slices, more like bread and butter pickles. Pickling cucumbers are most people’s top choice for pickle recipes.

Lemon Cucumbers

While I love the bumpy little pickling cucumbers, lemon cucumbers are my favorite all-around cuke. About the size of a tennis ball, lemon cucumbers are an heirloom variety with a beautiful yellow skin and very high water content. The seeds are larger than those of the pickling cucumber. In terms of flavor, they are quite similar to any other type of cucumber, but their moist flesh makes them the most refreshing of them all, in my opinion. By thinly slicing lemon cucumbers in uniform rounds, you can make some truly great quick pickles.

Slicing Cucumbers

Slicers are the variety you are most likely to see in regular supermarkets. Oblong, large and with a dark green, smooth skin, slicing cucumbers are the ones you encounter at salad bars. Due to globalization of America’s food system, conventional supermarkets carry these fruits year-round, but they are simply not worth buying out of season. They have a nasty, bitter skin and not much else in their favor. During the summer months, however, slicing cucumbers are quite refreshing. Their flesh has a lower water content than that of the lemon and pickling cucumbers and they make nice large pickle slices in a quick pickle recipe. They are my 3rd choice for pickle making, but if all you can find are slicers, they will make fine quick pickles for dinner tonight.

In addition to this, there are the pale green Armenian cucumbers which look like flowers when sliced and there are European varieties, too. Don’t get stuck in a cucumber rut! It’s worth pickling just about any cucumber you can find.

Of Herbs and Spices
You can make quick pickles with nothing fancier than vinegar and salt, but a few extra touches will take your quick pickles from fine to fantastic. Our family votes for garlic dill pickles as best of all pickle varieties. Our typical pickle recipe includes a bunch of fresh dill, a few cloves of garlic, salt, black pepper and vinegar, but you can experiment with mustard seed, capers, chopped hot or sweet peppers and other spices. When you make your own pickles, it’s all up to you!

Choosing Vinegar For Quick Pickles
Pickles that are canned to last for many months have very specific requirements when it comes to the acidity of the vinegar needed to keep pickles safe and prevent bacteria from growing. With quick pickles, however, you have more leeway because they are eaten up quickly and the refrigerator keeps them safe. We like to experiment with our vinegars. You can try rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar and white vinegar to discover which one yields the type of acidity and flavor you prefer in your pickles.

What You Need
Winter storage pickle recipes call for large quantities of pickles, but because quick pickles are meant to be eaten within about 10 days, you really only need a few pickles to make enough for a family feast or two. Our recipe here has been ultra-simplified to provide a single 1 pint mason jar of pickles. You can scale the recipe up for more pickles if you’re feeding a crowd.

Do Buy Organic
The majority of pickles produced in the United States are so laden with pesticides, they ought to have skulls and cross bones on their labels. Don’t put poison on the family table. Buy organic cucumbers and make sure the vinegar, herbs and spices you use are organic, too. Where we live, even the commercial organic pickles don’t cut the mustard for us because of the addition of ‘natural flavors’. We want safe, chemical-free food to eat. What we don’t produce on our farm, we buy from our neighbors who are also committed to farming organically. Food is life, and we don’t know of anything more important to spend our time and money on than quality, safe food.

Basic Ingredients
The freshest cucumbers you can find (1 large slicer, 2 lemon cucumbers or 3 pickling cucumbers)
1 pint of vinegar
1 small bunch fresh dill
3 cloves coarsely chopped garlic
2 Tablespoons salt
A shake of black pepper

*Feel free to add your own secret ingredients.

5 Quick Steps To Quick Pickles
1. Take your largest pot and fill with water. Bring it to a boil.
2. Drop the mason jar and lid into the water and let boil for about 30 seconds. Remove.
3. Thoroughly wash the exterior of your cucumbers. Slice into uniform, thin rounds.
4. Places your dill, garlic, salt, pepper and any other herbs or spices in the jar. Put in cucumbers.
5. Pour vinegar in to cover the pickles and seal up with your lid.

That’s all there is to it! In about 4 hours, the pickles will be ready to eat and they just get better after a few days, too. We often consume a whole batch at a single dinner, but the pickles will stay good in the refrigerator for about 10 days if you’d like to make them last longer and aren’t quite as voracious about pickles as we are!

The Main Difference Between Quick Pickles And Traditional Pickle Recipes
Because traditional pickles sit for months or years in jars, their color tends to turn to that familiar olive green. They are perfectly safe if they’ve been canned in a sanitary manner, but their appearance is different than that of quick pickles. The skin of quick pickles retains its fresh green (or yellow in the case of lemon cucumber pickles) color and the flesh of each pickle will still be fairly white instead of olive hued. The taste is fresher and more immediate in its appeal, and we think of quick pickles more as a special type of marinated vegetable than an item meant for winter storage. Cucumbers are simply so succulent that they deserve to be enjoyed in as many ways as possible during their glorious summer season, don’t you think?

Please, give our quick pickle recipe a try. You’re about to discover that ‘natural flavors’ are simply not needed when the ingredients are fresh and the food is prepared with care and a good intention of providing something that is truly wholesome to eat. Feel great that you aren’t paying for a fancy label, gasoline-guzzling long range shipping and the deceptive tricks of commercially processed foods that have separated our society from the real taste of natural goodness.

Serving Suggestions
*Take your homemade refrigerator pickles on a picnic in the cooler. A snappy condiment for all to enjoy in the great outdoors.
*These quick pickles are a sublime addition to potato salad.
*Layer these crisp pickle slices on a vegan cheese sandwich for an incredible lunch.
*Make a real Southern supper with baked beans, sweet potatoes, greens, jonny cakes and a scintillating side dish of homemade pickles. They lend just the right sharp note to the menu!

Enjoy!

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Flickr Photo Credit For Slicing Cucumber Image

Whether you’ve voluntarily gone vegan, or are going dairy free on your doctor’s orders, cheese may be something you discover you really miss. I grew up eating cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese sandwiches. My mother and father bought the best they could afford for we children – no Velveeta or cheeze food for us. With some tomato and dill pickle and a little crisp lettuce, cheese sandwiches were daily fare in our house. Like many vegans, giving up meat was really no problem for me. 20 years later, I really have no cravings for it, but from time to time, I think of that simple cheese sandwich satisfaction and want to have the enjoyment of that again.

I’ve tried the soy, rice and almond based vegan cheese substitutes in the store. To me, they taste like rubber. My husband says he thinks they aren’t too bad, but he grew up eating American cheese singles, and so maybe the manufacturers of these vegan substitutes are having better success with taste buds that are attuned to that kind of semi-plastic-y product. So, the available processed imitation cheese products just don’t do it for me when I feel that cheese sandwich yearning coming over me, and maybe you’re in the same boat. If so, I invite you to give my vegan cheese recipe a try and see if it cuts the mustard for you!

My Gourmet Vegan Dairy Free Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:
1 C. Raw Organic Sesame Tahini (available at most natural foods stores near the peanut butter)
1/8 C. Organic Rice Vinegar
1/8 C. Organic Olive Oil
2 T. finely chopped fresh Organic Chives
1/2 t. fresh organic Thyme Leaves
1 medium sized sprig chopped Organic Dill Weed
1 heaping T. red star vegan formula Nutritional Yeast
Salt & Pepper to taste

Equipment
A knife to chop the herbs
A spoon to spoon up the tahini
A 16 ounce glass mason jar with lid

Directions
Chop your herbs and put them in the jar

Add vinegar and oil and whisk them up with the spoon

Whisk in salt and pepper (remember, conventional cheese has a lot of salt in it so be free with the salt in this recipe)

Add the tahini and nutritional yeast to the jar

Close lid tightly and shake vigorously for about half a minute, and that’s it!

Store your cheese in the refrigerator. You may need to shake it again before each use as the olive oil likes to separate from the tahini. The mixture will remain quite good for about a week – if it lasts that long in your house.

What Does This Homemade Vegan Cheese Taste Like?
That’s what I’d want to know first, too. There is something about the combination of the nutty sesame that’s in tahini, the tang of the sharp rice vinegar and the cheesiness of the nutritional yeast, with the addition of salt, that tastes quite a bit like cheddar cheese, but I find it’s not quite ‘enough’ on its own. Frankly, tahini is so delicious, it’s good all on its own, but we’re striving for a real cheesiness here and I find that the addition of the olive oil is very important, as it mimics the high fat content in conventional cheese (without the cholesterol!) Finally, the inclusion of fresh herbs makes the finished vegan cheese most akin to those herbed gourmet soft cheeses that people pay big money for and serve at parties.

In my childhood home, my family celebrated New Year’s with a selection of exciting crackers and cheeses and the herbed spreadable cheeses from Boursin and Alouette were our favorites – spread on a cracker with a little dab of ruby red currant jelly on top. My, we felt like we were living high! This dairy free cheese recipe comes closest to that type of cheese. In consistency, it is somewhat more thick-dip-like than cream-cheese-like, and it spreads beautifully.

Suggested Uses for this Vegan Cheese Recipe
I’ve already mentioned the utterly satisfying cheese sandwich, topped with your choice of pickles, pepperoncini, garden-fresh tomato, crisp lettuces, maybe hobbit-style with toasted bread and loads of sauteed mushrooms. Anything you once enjoyed on a cheese sandwich goes excellently with this dairy-free cheese recipe.

If you’re a dipping fan, try this with crackers, pita, tortilla chips or crunchy celery and carrots sticks. Totally delicious for a light snack.

Use as an additional topping on our gluten free vegan pizza recipe, added in the last minute of cooking the pizzas in the oven just to heat it slightly. No, like pretty much all vegan cheeses, it doesn’t melt into stringiness, but it’s pretty gooey just as it is – like conventional pizza cheese.

Try it in tacos and burritos or on nachos, loaded up with refried beans, brown rice, guacamole, tomatoes and chili peppers, salsa or whatever you fancy.

And, if you are one of those discriminating people who thinks that apple pie simply isn’t complete without a bit of cheese, spread a small amount of this vegan cheese on your next juicy spicy slice and you’ll let out a sigh of deepest satisfaction.

Reasons To Feel Really Good About Going Dairy-Free

For You
Of particular concern to elders, the 3 countries in the world with the highest dairy consumption – United States, Sweden, and Finland – are also the 3 countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis. Medical science has traditionally pushed for the consumption of dairy products as a way to get protein and calcium. In modern times, numerous respected medical studies have revealed that the high amount of protien in animal products actually causes limited absorption of the calcium in them, when compared to the absorption rates of calcium eaten in plant forms. The Dairy industry continues to promote its products as your key to healthy bones, but independent scientists want you to know the truth.

In addition to this, the first advice given to most Americans by their doctors when a patient is suffering from intestinal disorders, high cholesterol and heart diseases is often to stop eating dairy products. If you’ve found your way to this article because you’re trying to create a new dairy-free menu for yourself because of a health concern, I hope this recipe will help you to take comfort in the fact that dairy-free foods can be exceptionally delicious when prepared with thought and care.

Remember, going dairy free is actually a very natural thing to do – not something outrageous. Human beings are the only animals on earth that drink milk past infancy. The milk that is taken from mother cows is not meant for us – it is meant for their calves. Going dairy free means breaking out of the bizarre cycle of permanent infancy most Americans live in – and get sick from. If you are seeking a new dairy-free lifestyle, I sincerely hope it brings you better health.

For The Animals
I believe the world’s people will live to see the day when we look back on our past of forcing animals to labor for our purposes, without their consent, with dismay. Dairy cows lead heartbreaking lives; mechanically forced to reproduce, deprived of their children, drugged, kept in an unnatural state of permanent lactation, fed waste products and finally, slaughtered when they are of no ‘use’ to people any more, these beings are victims of almost unthinkable cruelty and lack of regard for their dignity.

Many people turn to vegetarianism when they learn about the horrors of animals slaughtered for meat, and I applaud that response of compassion for the suffering of others. It’s important to understand that this same suffering is inherent in animals used by the Dairy industry as well. On the other side of every glass of milk, every slice of cheese, is a veal calf, stolen from its mother, held in unbearable confinement and slaughtered in infancy. And, the slaughterhouse is waiting at the end of every dairy cow mother’s life, too. Very often, people make the move from vegetarianism to veganism because they suddenly realize how the meat and dairy industries are interconnected and how the suffering is the same for all animals involved.

For The Planet
The factory farming of cows is doing more to destroy our planet’s ecology and contribute to global warming than is our car driving habit in America. The methane belched by cows is one of the major contributors to climate change and the waste produced by factory farms has totally contaminated much of our precious water supply. Our consumption of meat and dairy means polluted skies, a suffering ecology and hungry people around the world. It’s unsustainable and unfair to future generations.

By opting out of dairy product consumption, you are making an extremely important difference in the fate of our world. That may sound grandiose, but it truly isn’t. Just think about the future, and what a simple act like making your own dairy-free cheese might do. Maybe you’ll share a sandwich with a friend who will come back and ask you for your recipe. Maybe you’ll be able to help out a sick loved one by mastering healthful cooking and making their transistion to a healthier diet not just easier, but a real pleasure. If you have children, maybe they’ll some day be blogging nostalgically about those mouthwatering vegan cheese sandwiches you made for them. And, maybe they’ll be feeding them to their own children.

It’s thoughts like this that help me to realize that a recipe can be more than a recipe. It can be a plan for a kinder, more compassionate future for people and all God’s creatures. Suddenly, that tasty vegan cheese tastes even better in your mouth when you think about it that way and food, made with knowledge, skill and love, becomes a blessing.

Wheat Free and Soy Free?
My own diagnosis of gluten intolerance came bundled with an equally burdensome diagnosis of soy intolerance. As a devoted home cook who baked her own bread and could make literally hundreds of mouthwatering tofu-based dishes, I confess I shed a few tears. And then, I got back into my kitchen and started using my noodle (albeit a gluten free one) to begin devising new tasty dishes that could stand between my family and a feeling of deprivation.

One of the most frustrating things for me about these intolerances is that they seemed to put a barrier between me and from-scratch cooking. There is a growing inventory of gluten free mixes out there for baked goods, but all my adult life, I have avoided processed and packaged foods whenever possible. Worst of all, attempting to find gluten free processed foods that are organic has proved incredibly difficult where I live. There is not a single edible loaf of organic, gluten free, vegan bread to be found here. When it became obvious that I was no longer going to be able to bake wheat-like crusty loaves of bread without purchasing a lot of unfamiliar, processed ingredients, I had to think long and hard about something that could stand in for bread in our daily diet.

Enter Polenta
Polenta is a traditional corn meal mush, made for centuries in Italy. Purchase organic bulk polenta at natural food stores. I stress purchasing only organic polenta, as this is your only protection from genetically-modified corn (GMO). Cooked polenta can be eaten mushy or – and this is the great part – cooled and sliced into bread-like slices that can be broiled, baked, fried or grilled. Once you’ve got something that is acting as a piece of ‘toast’, you’ve got the base for individual pizzas! I count this as one of my great gluten free discoveries and I’m going to teach you how to create what just might be the best little pizzas you’ve ever eaten.

Making the Polenta
We don’t have a fancy kitchen, fancy tools, or fancy ingredients. We don’t even have any sharp knives around here. Don’t let gourmet cooking shows fool you into thinking making polenta is hard. If you’ve ever made oatmeal or Cream of Wheat, you can make polenta.

Step 1
Combine 1/2 cup rice milk with 2 cups water. Heat over medium heat on stovetop, adding a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil.

Step 2
When the water is almost boiling, add 1 cup of polenta in a slow, steady stream, mixing with a whisk constantly. I find it is helpful to have the polenta in a measuring cup for easier pouring.

Step 3
Stir constantly for about 8 minutes. The polenta will be extremely thick at the end of this.

Step 4
Spoon the polenta into a small square dish. The one we use is a piece of glassware measuring 5″ x 5″. The idea is to end up with a loaf-like block that you can cut into slices. This amount of polenta will not fill up a regular size loaf pan. If you’re feeding a crowd, you could double the recipe and use a regular loaf pan as your polenta mold. Set aside and let cool for about 20 minutes.

Step 5
Unmold the polenta by running a knife around the perimeter inside the baking dish. Some polenta recipes advise greasing the baking dish, but we have never found this to be necessary. Let the polenta fall out of the mold onto a dish or cutting board.

Step 6
Slice the polenta into 1/2″ slices and lay them out on your oven’s broiling pan. Turn the broiler onto high. Place the broiling pan in the broiler and broil one side of the polenta until the top side is turning golden brown. We actually like our pizza crusts a tiny bit burnt around the edges. Then, with a spatula, flip the polenta crusts over and brown on the other side. Remove from broiler and set aside. Your crusts should look like this:

* After you’ve broiled the crusts, turn off the broiler and pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees.

The Toppings
When it comes to pizza toppings, it’s definitely to each his own! The suggestions I am going to offer you create a combination of flavors that my family is crazy for. We consider pizza to be best as a summer dish, as this allows us to use summer squash, tomatoes, onions and garlic from our farm. If you don’t have a garden right now, try to buy your pizza toppings from the nearest farmers market. It makes an immeasurable difference in the flavor of the finished dish.

If you have homemade tomato sauce, terrific. If you have to use canned or bottled sauce, try chopping up a fresh tomato and adding it to the sauce while you cook it on the stove top. We add fresh thyme, sage, rosemary, marjoram, salt, pepper and a little olive oil to our pizza sauce. Heat this up in a pot, pour it into a bowl and set it aside. Again, if you are purchasing sauce, make sure it is organic in order to avoid GMOs.

We’ll be topping our pizza with mushrooms, red onion, garlic, crookneck squash circles, sliced kalmata olives and paper-thin slices of fresh tomato. As with everything else, organic is the way to go.

Cooking the Special Toppings
I love this part of the preparation because it’s a one pan deal. In a skillet over medium high heat, briefly sautee some minced garlic and thinly sliced mushrooms in olive oil. Shake a little thyme over them. Cook just until the mushrooms are softened and releasing some of their savory liquid. It’s very important that toppings like these be pre-pan fried because, unlike with traditional pizza, the pizzas we’re making only spend a few minutes in the oven once they’ve been garnished with toppings.

Toss the mushrooms onto a plate, but leave behind the cooking liquid. Toss in thinly cut circles of yellow crookneck squash. If you don’t have any crooknecks, you could use zucchinis or patty pan squash. Toss in thinly sliced sweet red onion. Add salt and pepper. Stir fry until the squash circles are just getting tender. Toss them back out onto the plate.

The olives and tomatoes do not need to be pre-cooked.

The great thing about polenta pizza crusts is that they can hold plenty of sauce and toppings without getting soggy. If you’ve broiled them correctly, the outsides of the crusts will be crisp and toasty, and the insides will be soft and creamy. One of the things I love best about this gluten free, vegan pizza recipe is that cornmeal is already a familiar taste to pizza lovers. Many pizza parlors bake their crusts on a pan sprinkled with cornmeal, so the savor of these little pizzas is really going to satisfy your cravings for specific taste combinations.

Additionally, anyone who is vegan or has been put off dairy products because of an allergy will notice that the creaminess of the interior of the polenta pizza crusts has a certain cheese-y texture to it. I can even live without my once-cherished tofu in this pizza recipe because of the unique, creamy quality of polenta.

In topping the pizza, your first task is to smear a tiny bit of organic olive oil on the top side of each crust. This little detail will delight pizza lovers who have long been loyal to the traditional San Francisco Italian-style of pizza preparation which always involves lots of olive oil!

Second, smear plenty of delicious pizza sauce on each crust.

Finally, add your additional toppings. I like to put the squash/onion mix down first, then the mushroom/garlic mix, and then garnish with tomatoes and olives. Just look at how incredibly delicious these little pizzas look going into the oven:

As I mentioned earlier, the baking part of this recipe is brief. We’re just making sure that all of the toppings get heated and blend a bit. I know the pizzas are done when the tomato loses its shine because its juice has begun to evaporate in the heat of the oven. Remove from oven.

As a final touch to the pizzas, we like to sprinkle each one with a little nutritional yeast. It gives a final cheese-y note and adds to the nutritious qualities of the dish.

We’re serving up our scrumptious pizzas with a salad picked minutes ago from the farm – a combination of baby butter lettuces, olives, arugula and parsley with a dill and garlic vinaigrette!

Deprivation? I Don’t Think So!
I’ll be the first to admit that food allergies do put limits on what we think of as normal life. It was with a sense of desperation that I began working to create new recipes in my personal cookbook. Living on rice cakes just doesn’t cut it when you’ve eaten delicious wheat bread all your life. Additionally, vegan cooking without soy is somewhat uncharted territory. When I got my allergy diagnoses, all I could see at first looking into my pantry was absences. It was very upsetting.

But then, I took hold of myself and remembered that I come from an incredibly long line of skilled people who always found something good to prepare from the ingredients they had at hand. Some of my first efforts at gluten-free vegan cooking were total failures. It’s taken time to gain the confidence I need, and once enjoyed, in the kitchen, but I really feel like I’m getting there and I know you can, too. With creativity and deep appreciation for the bounty of healthful, delicious foods we can still eat even on an allergy-restricted diet, we can eat incredibly well.

I sincerely hope that this recipe for gluten free pizza will keep you from fainting with envy every time you have to walk past your local pizza parlor. I know the hollow longing of that experience. Happily, there is absolutely no reason to pine when you’re munching down on pizza this good!

Are You Considering Learning To Sew? Here Are Good 10 Reasons To Do It. Can You Relate?

• You’re not a stock size (who is?)
• Your skin crawls when you touch those rubbery synthetic fabrics
• You have the odd notion that clothing bought in February shouldn’t have fallen apart by April – you’re all for things being bio-degradable, but not while you’re actually trying to wear them!
• You suspect that the fact that the addition of 2% spandex in EVERYTHING is some new government mandate that has resulted in your pants growing 2 sizes larger between morning and night, leaving you hanging onto your belt loops from lunchtime onward
• Shredded hems, giant buttons and depressing hospital colors may be someone’s idea of serviceable clothing, but it isn’t yours
• You can’t find a dress or skirt of decent length amidst the racks of rags and tatters
• You wonder who the people are in Pakistan, Honduras and China who made the t-shirts on display. Were they men, women, children? Had they eaten well that day? Did they have any kinds of rights or benefits?
• You’re ethics are shouting at you about BT Cotton – the GMO frankenfiber that may look like cotton but has been genetically modified by mad scientists in some ominous way and is the cause of unimaginable misery in the cotton growing regions of the world.
• You’re starting to wonder how wise it is to be covering your body’s largest organ – your skin – with pesticide-laden fibers, day after day
• You want to be a skillful woman, walking in the footsteps of all of your highly-skilled ancestors

Whatever your reasons for dissatisfaction with commercially-made clothing, all of them point to an important realization. By delegating the manufacture of our clothing to others, we have agreed to give up pretty much all control over the quality, fit and design of our daily garb as well as the ethics and processes that go into its creation. We’ve traded in our own historic authority over all matters of dress for the convenience of mass-produced garments of dubious worth. It’s time we reconsider the deal our grandmothers made with Sears-Roebuck and their counterparts and discover whether we can’t do a better job by providing for ourselves in the clothing department.

With the exception of upper class women who had personal seamstresses to custom sew for them, all women of all countries in all times have always sewn for themselves or their families. All women knew how to cut cloth, thread a needle, sew a seam and in more modern times, read a sewing pattern. Most of us in America have lost these universal survival skills and if the local Kohl’s closed tomorrow, we wouldn’t have a first hand idea of how to clothe our families. That’s not a strong position to be in, and many intelligent women are now taking steps to re-skill themselves in the home arts of sewing basic garments as an act of self-determination and love.

The Most Basic Reason For Learning Basic Sewing
The first reason is the most obvious – people aren’t born wearing clothes, and except for in the most temperate climates, clothing means survival. Our economy is in peculiar shape right now, and while I’m praying for more stable times for our world, I think you’ll feel more confident if you have the skills to create light garments that keep the body cool but covered from the powerful rays of the sun and warm garments that have the power to stand between bitter weather and your loved ones. Knowing how to clothe people, when you come right down to it, is a prerequisite for life in the absence of Macy’s.

If You Think Sewing Is Difficult, You’ve Taken The Bait
Like most scenarios in which we trade money for goods created by someone else, the whole deal takes place under the conditions that we believe we don’t have the expertise to produce what the other person can. Now, if we’re talking about building an airplane – okay- maybe we don’t need to tackle the job, but if we’re talking about throwing together a sun dress for ourselves or a pair of shorts for our husband, the only thing that stands between us and our accomplishment is the false notion that we’re helpless.

We’re not helpless. We all come from incredibly long lines of needlewomen. It profits Wal-Mart when we feel helpless, but it sends our own psyches a constant message that we lack authority in our own lives and sets a helpless example for all future generations. We deserve to feel better about our abilities than that! Knowledge is power and all we need is a very little bit of knowledge to become vastly more able people.

The Big Secret Is…
You can sew a dress out of two rectangles! It may not be the most elegant creation ever worn, but it would cover your body and protect you from the elements. Pants, again, are cut out of two pieces of cloth shaped something like an apostrophe. A shirt is 4 rectangles – 1 for the front, 1 for the back and two little rectangles for short sleeves.

We’re not talking about fitted fashions with darts, princess seams and bias-cut styling. We’re talking about what you could easily make out of a bolt of cloth to clothe your family should all department stores fall off the face of the Earth tomorrow. If you’ve got two working hands, you can sew these things, and once you’ve mastered the extremely simple task of joining two pieces of cloth together with a needle and thread, you can expand your horizons to learn a few tailoring techniques that can take a rectangular, boxy garment and shape it into apparel with more grace and elegance. The level to which you want to pursue finer fitting techniques over time will be up to you, but the main benefit of learning to sew is that you will have the lifelong satisfaction of knowing that you can take care of yourself and your family. I think that’s worth a lot.

What Should You Know How To Sew?
The photograph at the beginning of this article features some shirts I’ve sewn for myself and my husband over the past year. I’ve been sewing long enough so that I can tackle projects with collars, cuffs and buttonholes with confidence and it’s really gratifying to be able to produce a shirt that is every bit has good as a store-bought item and, frankly, better than one because I’ve gotten to choose the style, the fabric, the exact size I want and I’ve been able to make my seams really, really strong so that the shirt truly holds up to daily wear.

Learning to sew basic, every day garments is a smart goal, and your first task is to make a list of what items of clothing are essential wear for you and your family. Your list will look something like this:

Sewing For Men
A basic shirt, a basic pair of pants, some type of coat and maybe a pair of shorts is really all a man needs to get through 4 seasons of dressing himself. If your husband is an exectutive or office worker and has to wear formal clothes, you can learn to make them…or, you can ask your husband if he really loves that life or would prefer to create some new job for himself in which he can dress more comfortably (and more simply, for you, the seamstress).

Basic Sewing For Women
A basic shirt, skirt, dress and pair of pants, plus some kind of coat covers most womens’ needs. The summer garments can be made of light-weight cotton or linen and winter ones out of heavy flannels. Choosing fabrics carefully can help you get many ensembles out of just a few basic pieces. When your closet has only what you need in it, you’ll always feel taken care of and never cranky over unserviceable garments that don’t do what you need them to.

Basic Sewing For Children
Children’s garment requirements are the same as those of adults, only appropriately sized down. If you can make a dress for yourself, you can make one for your daughter. If you have children who threaten to die if they aren’t given designer clothing…homeschool them to get rid of such useless, materialistic notions that put the focus on belongings instead of the value of the human person.

Folk Clothing Provides A Path
No matter what country you turn to, you will discover that the indigenous clothing of that region accomplishes three factors:

1. It covers the body to provide either the appropriate amount of sun-protection where that’s needed, or it adds layers of warmth to protect from the cold. Where you live, and the season you’re sewing for, can dictate which country to turn to for guidance.

2. It facilitates work. Ease of movement is vital to all working class people and folk clothing evolved in a way that allowed people to walk, run, bend, stretch, lift and perform both fine and gross motor skill tasks. Unless you have servants to do your bidding, your wardrobe needs to allow you to work or it is simply useless.

3. It is graceful. Compared to the nightmarish fabric concoctions brewed up by modern fashion designers, folk clothing is a dream come true for normal people. It is designed to allow you to move gracefully through your day, never tripping over hems, catching sleeves on fire or taking 1/2″ long steps because that’s all you’re permitted in an ill-conceived garment. Folk clothing is plain sensible for busy working people.

Think about the native clothing of Mexico, South America, India, Asia, Scandinavia and you’ve got guidance for what people have traditionally worn to keep cool or warm up for centuries. All that wisdom should not be lost.

Quick Tips For Learning How To Sew Real Clothes

• Take your favorite everyday garment apart and study how it was put together
• Take a sewing class
• Watch sewing how-to videos on YouTube
• Download free or inexpensive sewing patterns
• Look at books or magazines about other countries and pay attention to the way traditional people dress
• Make your very first project an easy one – like an elastic-waist skirt or simple sun dress

Choosing A Sewing Machine
If you’re ready to graduate from hand sewing to using a machine, choose the most affordable machine with the least features. You do not need a ton of fancy or decorative stitches to sew clothing. The simpler the machine, the longer it will last.

Choosing Fabrics
Steer clear of fashion fabrics that may look shiny and beautiful but are not designed for daily wear. For comfort and durability, your best bet is to avoid synthetics of any kind (rayon, acetate, polyester, spandex, lycra etc.). My personal preference is for 100% cotton, whether I want heavy corduroy for a coat, thick flannel for winter pants, batiste for a breezy blouse or calico for a family quilt. Cotton is the most comfortable fabric to wear against the skin and, unlike synthetic fibers, it comes from a natural source. Look into buying organic cotton if you value your family’s health. Two sites I like are Organic Cotton Plus and Near Sea Naturals. The fabrics are sometimes more expensive, but picking and processing cotton is hard labor and deserves fair compensation. One day, I hope to grow, spin and weave my own organic cotton, and I know that if I was doing such time-consuming work, I’d want to be paid decently for it.

Choosing Sewing Patterns
Check out TheMexicanDress.com for an ultra-easy first dress, made out of 5 rectangles. If the Mexican embroidery doesn’t appeal to you, make it out of a plain or printed cotton for a non-folksy look. Folkwear.com has the largest collection of folk clothing patterns available, and some of them are for very simple garments whereas others are incredibly complex. Look at each pattern carefully. When you look at fabric store patterns, seek out patterns that are denominated quick, fast or easy if you are a beginning sewer. Read the directions twice before you cut! That’s the only rule.

Sometimes, even the best patterns assume that you know how to do something without them telling you what it means. When in doubt about a sewing techinique, turn to the Internet for definitions, tutorials and even videos.

Men Can Sew, Too
My husband is the household whiz with a rotary cutter. He can cut far straighter lines than I can. We quilt together for fun and he has even tried his hand at embroidery, though he says this is my strong suit, not his. When I am sewing for myself or my husband, he helps me and his assistance makes projects go like lightning. Sewing together, for us, is a great alternative to spending an evening watching TV. We get to talk, laugh and work hard side-by-side. Most married people want that experience of sharing, and a man who can wield a needle deserves great respect for his skills.

There Is Nothing You Can’t Learn To Do
In my own life, I derive the highest satisfaction I know of from being able to do something for myself. With a very few exceptions, I’m finished with seeing everyone but myself as ‘the expert’. I can be the expert. I can farm. I can cook. I can sew. To put it another way, I can feed and clothe the people who are dear to me and this is incredibly gratifying. I’m so grateful for my two good hands and my mind that is able to learn to care for others.

Because of the current confusion in the world, some people are acquiring survival skills out of fear. I think we can find a healthier approach than this. The proof that we can survive may be seen in the lives of our ancestors. And they did not see their daily tasks as a punishment, a loss or a tragedy. Rather, they took deep joy in being skilled men and women with the capacity to provide for themselves. They got to learn what it was like to be fully human in the world. Re-skilling ourselves jumps the bridge between them and ourselves, crossing over that brief period in which the past few generations gave away their personal expertise because they were promised convenience and savings of time. What does all that saved time amount to now?

Time is there for living, for learning and becoming adept at survival. We have all the time in the world and the power to enjoy our own capacities and abilities. When I look to the past, I am filled with admiration for how multi-talented people were. They could sew a dress, make a fire, grow a crop, build a house…everything they could possibly need in this world. I want what they had, and I’m starting to see that I’m not alone in this. On this journey, I’ve discovered that there’s nothing you can’t learn and I think that’s a fabulous blessing. Needle and thread are powerful liberators. You have only to take them in hand.