What I have discovered is that by looking around the globe for gluten-free, vegan eating inspiration, I dine sumptuously and never think of ‘deprivation’, and this is what I hope to teach you to do! Today, I’m going to share with you the:

Top 5 Ethnic Cuisines For Gluten-Free Eating, And Vegan Eating, Too!

I am listing these in the order I feel they are easiest to adapt from and draw upon, with #1 being my top choice and then moving on down from there.

#1 Indigenous American / Mexican Food

I have written in the past about my view that Native American Foods form the most superior possible cuisine for all Americans today, and, as it happens, they turn out to be the simplest and most bountiful choice for building the best gluten-free, vegan diet. Indigenous foods form the main base of my family’s daily diet and we never, ever think of our food as limited or dull.

For gluten-free eaters, it is the grain base of any ethnic diet that you must look it to see how friendly it is to your needs and with Indigenous American foods, including the foods of North America, Mexico and South America, no substitutions of any kind are necessary because the grain base is corn. Learn how to make corn tortillas and you will never suffer for want of bread again.

Next, if you are vegan and on a gluten-free diet, you will be looking at the use of legumes, nuts and seeds for high protein dishes, and again, Indigenous American cuisine requires no alterations at all. Your choice of beans is almost limitless and you can top that with a bevy of fabulous nut choices from hazelnuts to cashews to pecans, walnuts and more.

So, without any effort at all, you’ve got an incredibly delicious base of grains and legumes to build on, and the tubers, fruits and vegetables that are native to the Americas cannot be bested anywhere on the world scene. From potatoes to tomatoes, avocados, peppers, onions, bananas, pineapples, plums…well, the list is way too long to write up here, but no other place on the globe has more flavor and variety to offer. Remember, too, that in addition to corn, there is quinoa, amaranth and wild rice to choose from in the grain department and that corn’s uses are incredibly diverse. Your gluten-free, vegan diet, following Indigenous American foodways can include gastronomic triumphs like these:

• Tacos or Tostadas, layered with beans, guacamole, salsas and other fresh delights
• Enchiladas filled with spicy beans, mushrooms or other savory things
• Tamales wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves (hallacas) with fillings of savory potatoes, beans and more
• A rainbow of salsas, from salsa roja made with ripe garden tomatoes, to salsas verdes made with tomatillos or green tomatoes at the end of summer.
• When avocados are in season, you may want nothing more than large bowls of guacamole with large stacks of freshly made corn tortillas.
• Summer and winter squashes, stirfried, stuffed, made into soups and stews or dozens of other preparations.
• Any potato dish you can dream up, thanks to the Andean Peoples who first cultivated these life-giving tubers. Don’t forget sweet potatoes, too!
• Abundant fresh fruits from the tropics up to the northern latitudes. The best desserts you’ll ever eat!

That’s a short list, but I hope your mouth has started to water thinking about how well you can eat from the foods that bless the American continents. And, if you want to mix indigenous foods with non-indigenous ones, you can enjoy hybrid cuisines like those of Cuba where the national dish of black beans and rice (Moros y Cristianos) is a nutritional powerhouse and very good to eat. There is simply no need to feel deprived on a gluten-free and vegan diet with choices as phenomenal as these.

I feel that it’s important to note that anyone choosing a corn-based cuisine for their mainstay must become well-educated about the contamination of the United States’ food supply with genetically modified corn (GMOS). For your health and safety, you must be certain to purchase only organic corn products. In purchasing masa harina for your tortillas and other corn-based dishes, insist on organics. Organic masa harina is totally affordable, when you compare the cost of making your own tortillas from it as opposed to purchasing ready-made tortillas from a grocery store. Support organic corn growers with your money and let agribusiness know we don’t want GMO corn.

#2 Indian Food
With its base of rice and lentils, Indian food is an easy choice for gluten-free diners, and because vegetarianism has long held such a strong foothold in India, vegan options are no problem at all. If you are a fan of Indian spices, going gluten-free will not change your enjoyment of the cuisines of India, though obviously vegans will be avoiding anything containing meat or dairy in this foodway. And, for those who have been having digestive issues leading up to their diagnosis of gluten sensitivity, you can always tone down the spiciness while your stomach heals. Indian cooking does utilize wheat in many dishes, but while skipping these, you can still enjoy:

• All manner of dishes based on the different types of lentils
• All kinds of curries and other dishes based on rice
• Spicy and filling potato dishes
• Hearty stews that include peanut sauces and nut sauces for richness
• An incredible variety of eggplant dishes (there are hundreds of varieties of eggplants grown in India)
• All kinds of fresh and cooked chutneys and other unique preparations of vegetables and spices

If Indian cuisine has always been high on your list, your diagnosis of gluten intolerance will mean that you have to check dishes carefully for the presence of wheat or other gluten-containing substances, but for the most part, you can still enjoy most of the foods of this nation with little adaptation. Hopefully, by now, you’re starting to see that going gluten-free, even if you are already vegan, does not equal hunger or boredom.

#3 Chinese Food
It was long held amongst famed gourmets that the world had only two great cuisines: French and Chinese. While there are some bean and potato-type dishes from Northern Europe that you can easily make gluten free and vegan, much more varied options await you when you step into the world of real Chinese cuisine. The care that traditional Chinese cooks take in the preparation of vegetables is practically matchless and the arts of stir-frying and steaming put foods on the table in their tastiest and most quickly prepared forms, leaving most of their nutrients and taste intact.

When looking to China for vegan and gluten free cooking inspiration, it helps to understand the gastronomic split between the northern and southern parts of the country. Because Northern China has long subsisted on wheat, it is to the south, with its rice-based cuisine, that you will most frequently turn for ideas, though there are many millet-based dishes in the north worth investigating because millet does not contain gluten. Check out this list to begin considering your vegan and gluten-free Chinese food options:

• Countless varieties of delicious rice and countless dishes made from all of the varieties.
• Noodle-based dishes made with rice noodles or mung bean noodles instead of wheat noodles.
• Wonderful stir fries of vegetables, including familiar ones you find in any grocery store, or less-familiar ones you can get at Asian markets.
• The incorporation of seeds and nuts into dishes for extra flavor and protein
• If you eat soy, all of the soy-based dishes including tofu, tempeh and miso.
• Nourishing, restorative soups and broths.
• An abundance of refreshing citrus fruits as well as less familiar fruits like Winter Melon

Stock your pantry with the base of garlic, ginger and scallions and you are on your way to dishes with incredible flavor, without major worry about having to substitute gluten-containing ingredients for gluten-free ones. If the only Chinese food you’ve ever eaten is from a Chinese-American restaurant, check out some traditional Chinese cookbooks from the library and become acquainted with the genuine article. Authentic Chinese food is healthier and better suited to home cooking than the Americanized restaurant version.

As with my note about corn-based diets and genetic modification, above, I feel it is important to mention here that any diner who chooses to eat soy needs to be made aware that America’s soy supply has become contaminated with genetically modified soy. Choose organic soy products only, including tofu, gluten-free soy sauce, etc., as your best hope for protecting yourself from GMOs. If it doesn’t say ‘organic’ on the label, chances are it is genetically modified as 90% of the soy grown in the U.S. is now GMO soy. Support organic soy growers with your dollar.

In my home, we don’t eat soy since my own diagnosis of soy sensitivity. This made me very blue at the time, because I ate tofu daily prior to this. Because of the soy problem, our family doesn’t view Chinese food as the basis of our diet. Instead, we treat it as a treat! A day on which we’ve had a hearty Native American style lunch, we might opt for a light and delicious Chinese-style supper with a steaming hot soup and lovely, crisp stir fry made savory with plenty of garlic, scallions and ginger. Sometimes, we cross cultures and serve a sweet potato dressed in a peanut dressing along side this if we want something heartier – try it, it’s a delicious pairing. And don’t forget other Asian cuisines! You can find great options in the cooking of Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and other Asian countries.

#4 Italian Food
As with China, Italy has traditionally been split between the corn eaters of the north and the wheat eaters of the South. If you look to Northern Italy for polenta-based dishes, you are in for many treats, and, if you can find a good substitute for wheat noodles, you can still have your spaghetti and lasagna, too! Recently, VeganReader.com discovered a brand of Italian-made gluten free pasta that got us excited enough to start eating noodles again after years of being disappointed by other brands. Definitely check that article out!

Grains aside, it is the Italian reverence for vegetables that wins them a spot in our Top 5 Gluten Free Ethnic Cuisines list. Much of this beautiful care for the simplest preparations of the best vegetables actually owes its thanks to the peoples of the Americas. We make no bones here about the fact that we consider the conquest of America the biggest tragedy to happen on the planet in the past millennium, but one of its few positive outcomes was the introduction of the rest of the world to the best fruits and vegetables ever cultivated. In Italian hands, the Indigenous American maize, tomato, potato, pepper and more took on a new life that is worthy in its own right. Just remember, no Andean and Mexican cultures – no Italian pizza. It’s as simple and stunning as that.

When looking to Italy for vegan and gluten-free dining inspiration, your list can start like this:

• Yes, you can still have pizza! Even if you’re vegan, even if you’ve gone gluten-free, you can still gobble up scrumptious pizza once you get the hang of creating the simple polenta bread base described in the article we’ve linked to here. Hooray!
• Beyond pizza, there are numerous polenta-based dishes that can be topped with sauces and stews rich in garlic, tomatoes, peppers and more.
• If you’ve found worthwhile gluten-free pasta, you can simply go wild with the toppings, from red sauces to creamy ones based on nuts and seeds.
• Treating fresh vegetables individually with great care is the hallmark of the best of Italian cooking. From a salad of marinated steamed zucchini or mushrooms, to deep fried artichokes, you can learn a ton from the niceties of Italian vegetable preparation. Everything is so fresh and tasty!
• For heartiest doses of protein, look to Italy’s preparations of garbanzos, cannellini, favas, lentils and more.
• And don’t overlook the use of nuts. Almonds play a much bigger role in common eating in Italy than they do in America, and pistachios make many appearances, too.

#5 Middle Eastern Food
On a hot summer night, there is nothing more apropos than a supper that takes its cues from the warm climes of the Middle East and North Africa, in my opinion. Serve it up with strong, sweet, hot mint tea and you will immediately see that the peoples of these ancient lands have developed a cuisine that is somehow perfect for their warm region. Vegans will veer away from the heavy use of lamb and yoghurt in Middle Eastern cooking, and gluten-free diners will have to pass on the wheat-based pita bread. If they are lucky or determined, they may be able to locate teff flour and make their own injera flat bread as is done in North Africa, or they can break out the white corn tortillas as we do in our home, crossing cultural boundaries but arriving happily at something bread-y to eat with the other Middle Eastern dishes.

To me, the ultimate Middle Eastern summer meal is based on the combination of hummus (rich in protein thanks to its pairing of sesame seeds and garbanzos) and tabbouleh. I was seriously sad when I thought I had to give up tabbouleh because of its base of bulgur wheat which contains gluten. But then I made a stern face about the whole thing and realized I could substitute brown rice with almost no sense of loss at all. My rice-based tabbouleh salad, loaded with diced tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, parsley and mint and dressed in olive oil and lemon juice has become a summer night tradition on our family farm. Try it and you’ll love it. There is so much to enjoy in Middle Eastern cuisine, including:

• All kinds of dips and sauces based on sesame seeds, garbanzos and olive oil
• Stews and casseroles rich in tomatoes, garlic, eggplant and other vegetables
• Wonderful dishes of cold marinated vegetables, as served at the open air cafes of the Middle East
• Mouthwatering and hearty lentil dishes
• Looking towards Africa, there are simply amazing combinations of peanuts and peanut sauces with savory vegetables and grains to consider.
• Don’t forget to set out little dishes of olives, dates, pistachios and other tasty nibbles that make a meal so enjoyable

The cuisines of the Middle East come a little lower on our list than the others because they require a little more of the art of substitutions than, for instance, Mexican food, but I definitely feel this way of eating deserves a place on the list because, if you get the hang of it, it is wildly delicious and also, incredibly nutritious. Middle Eastern cuisines contain a great deal of meat and dairy, as well as a considerable amount of wheat, so the vegan and gluten free diner needs to look past this to their beautiful use of legumes, seeds, nuts, vegetables and fruits and there they will find rich inspiration!

Bonus: Other World Cuisines
This article is being placed in the Reskills Column of VeganReader.com, because your success in superior gluten free and vegan dining is going to be dependent on your ability to cook your meals mainly from scratch. You may be able to find a restaurant here or there that can cater to your needs, but chances are, those will be few and far between, and gaining home cooking skills and a library of helpful ethnic cuisine books will ensure success in your efforts to get plenty of nutrition and, just possibly, eat better than you ever have before in your life.

I’m going to take a moment here to again extol the virtues of the vintage Time Life series of cookbooks, Foods of The World. For a beautiful entry into the subject of world cuisines, no other publication can beat this series, in my considered opinion. Find these books at the library or used on eBay and you will feel like the whole world, and all of its busily cooking people, have become your neighbors and friends and you will find countless recipes to adapt to your gluten free and/or vegan kitchen.

The volumes on Mexico/Latin America, Italy, the Middle East, India and China will all get you going in terms of our top 5 cuisines described here, but then move onto the other world cuisines from which you can derive tons of more inspiration for fine gluten free and vegan cooking. Consider these possibilities:

Scandinavia
Most people may think of Scandinavia’s heavy reliance on fish, but do not miss out on their yellow split pea soup (called Arter) which has become a winter mainstay in our home. Unusually seasoned, it is simply scrumptious. Look to Scandinavia, too, for great potato ideas, like fanned-out hasselbacks that will make the old American baked potato look kind of sleepy. Scandinavians are crazy about almonds, too, and you can find neat ideas for creative usage of these wonderful nuts within these nations. Finland, which is sometimes confusingly considered part of Scandinavia and sometimes isn’t, could teach the whole world a few lessons about the uses of mushrooms which they hold in near-sacred reverence.

Eastern Europe
From stuffed cabbage rolls to goulash to plum preserves, there are gems scattered across the nations of Eastern Europe. Look past the wheat, the sour cream and other items not on your vegan or gluten-free list and you are certain to find unique preparations of vegetables and grains that will add real variety to your menus.

Spain
Gluten-free, vegan versions of paella come naturally – use mushrooms and vegetables and even fruits instead of the traditional meat and seafood. Pay attention to the skillful and interesting Spanish preparations of vegetables. I make a dish of sauteed spinach with onions, peppers, raisins and almonds that is incredibly good and unexpected in its combination of ingredients I wouldn’t have thought of without reading Spanish cookbooks. Garlic lovers (like me) will find a wealth of ideas in Spanish cuisine, and don’t forget the Arabic-inspired dishes of the south of the country. So exciting!

Africa
I am a novice in this area, but whenever I start reading about lists of ingredients like peanuts, yams, greens, coconut and hot spices, I know I get hungry. I have much more to learn about the dishes of the many nations of Africa, and I hope that as I study this further, I will be able to add new dishes to my family’s table. Last winter, I tried my hand at a stew containing, among other things, pumpkin, peanut butter and lentils and it absolutely banished all feelings of chilly weather that evening. I’m intrigued and want to learn more!

These are just a few ideas for your consideration. I doubt that there is a country in the world that couldn’t contribute at least one superlative dish to your repertoire of gluten free and vegan eating, and I hope this article has gotten your creative juices flowing. The secret is to see your dietary needs as opportunities instead of limitations and then cast your eyes over our good Earth for answers. Seek and ye shall find!

In this piece, Estabrook documents the conditions of slavery in which workers in the tomato fields of Florida live. Chances are, if you are purchasing off-season tomatoes at the supermarket, you are eating food that has been grown by men and women literally living in slavery.

Now, I know that most Americans must have been shocked by Estabrook’s article, and I hope its distribution and the publication of his new book will do much to enable every reader to look with educated eyes on those peculiar, flavorless tomatoes that sit in gleaming piles on the supermarket shelves all winter. Time and again, people show that they will make good choices, once they know what the choices really represent. VeganReader extends heartfelt thanks to the rising wave of journalists who are devoting their professional lives to shedding light on the vast list of subjects that agribusiness works so hard to keep hidden in the shadows. We believe that all people of good will who have the chance to know the truth will refuse to support slavery on American soil with their hard-earned money.

I hope you will consider reading the article and book, and I can’t think of a better time to give thought to this important subject than right now – in the middle of summer. At this very moment, in gardens and on farms, at farm stands and farmers markets, the real tomatoes have arrived. Those gorgeous, real red, real sweet, real food tomatoes. Now is the time to get your hands on as many of these precious fruits as you can…for canning.

Winter will come again before we know it, but with our own stores of tomatoes, we can walk right past the off-season offerings in the supermarkets. Our own whole tomatoes, tomato sauces and pastes will still hold a great deal of the sweetness and flavor the fruits had in summer, whereas the supermarket winter tomatoes are without gustatory merit of any kind. People have probably gotten into the habit of buying these unappealing oddities just to have something to put in a salad. It is good to ponder what such a small, unthinking choice, made by so many, actually adds up to.

Once you realize winter isn’t the time for fresh tomato-containing salads, you can look elsewhere for great things to eat. If you want that tomato-y taste, make a vinaigrette with plenty of your own tomato sauce as the base. And if you want something acidic and sweet in a winter salad, try orange slices (which are so fabulously ripe in these coldest months). With a little planning ahead, you need not lack for tomatoes, but you can have the preserved versions and wait until summer for the next ripe ones to eat fresh. With slavery hanging in the balance, who needs those dubious things?

You can find recipes all over the web relating to preserving tomatoes – I don’t mean to get into the specifics of this right now, but I did want to take a moment to make a list of your very actionable alternatives to supporting such an abominable situation with the money I know you work so hard for. Take your dollars away from the industry, and you are telling them in the most powerful, effective way that their product and their policies are not wanted and won’t be funded by the American people.

Preserve Tomatoes – And Human Dignity

- If you’re growing your own this year, stock up on mason jars and preserve as many as you can, whether whole or in sauces.

- If you didn’t get to grow your own this year, local farm stands and farmer’s markets will often offer you really good deals on less than perfect tomatoes which are ideal for making tomato sauce. If you see signs that say ‘squishy tomatoes’ or ‘mushy tomatoes’ buy a box full and get canning.

- Many gardeners prefer to dry their tomatoes, claiming that this concentrates and preserves the flavor better than canning. Grocery stores charge a pretty penny for dried tomatoes. You can likely make them a lot more economically at home.

- If you’ve never preserved tomatoes before, buy a book on the subject or check one out of the library or read up thoroughly on the subject on the Internet.

- Use your preserved tomatoes in soups, sauces, pastas, on pizzas and hot sandwiches, and any place else you would like a little zip.

- If you cannot manage to preserve your own tomatoes, you may be able to find a local farm stand that does so. A farm near ours offers shelves and shelves of their own beautiful organic tomato preserves.

- If none of the above are possible for you this year, and you want to purchase tomatoes in the off-season, look for organic hydroponic tomatoes grown within your own state. The natural foods store where we shop has these for sale and they come from a grower about two hours away. They run about $5/lb., so likely this isn’t something you will be purchasing frequently, but if you absolutely have to have a tomato in winter, this is your safest bet for not supporting the abhorrent conditions for human beings in the tomato fields of Florida and Mexico.

- Don’t forget the green tomatoes! As the warm days of summer yield to the cool days and nights of fall, many of the tomatoes on your plants stop ripening. You can make the most savory, snappy, fantastic green tomato salsas and relishes for preserving. You might be able to source some of these green marvels from farm stands that are closing for the season and would love to offload the fruits that didn’t ripen. One of my all-time favorite fall dinners is homemade tortillas filled with sauteed winter squash and topped with spicy green tomato salsa. My mouth just watered thinking about it. It’s something you can really look forward to at the end of the red tomato rush.

Most nutritionists (and farmers) agree that eating with the seasons is your best bet for healthy and balanced nourishment, and it’s definitely the most ecologically-friendly basis for your family’s personal cuisine. But for millennia, people have used the art of preserving to fend off starvation in lean times and to add something special to the good ones. Drying foods, canning them, fermenting them, preserving them in acids and oils – these skills make us strong when it comes to providing food for ourselves and our loved ones. And they make us strong in another very remarkable way – they enable us to break free from corporations that aren’t acting with compassion for humanity. I call that pretty mighty.

Above you will see the ingredients of today’s lunch, including the very first tiny stupice heirloom tomato to ripen in our big tangle of plants. And yes, it was warm from the sun in the palm of my hand when I picked it. The snow peas – those jade jeweled pendants that garland our fencing in such opulent profusion – are giving us some of their last snapping sweet goodness as the weather grows hotter. Briefly stir-friend, they are like candy. I couldn’t wait one more day to gather our first two ripe crooknecks, dainty though they are. Sliced into golden coins and stir-fried in the merest wisp of sunflower oil, they melt on the tongue. As for the new potatoes, no other plant I know of distills Earth’s minerals into such profoundly perfect cream. It is heresy to do other than dig, quickly boil and dress with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and our ferny dill.

I contend that there isn’t a restaurant in the world, no matter how high the price per plate, serving a better lunch than this one right now, but that family farmers are blessed to eat this way every day when the harvest is good. This is why we compost and amend, grow only organic, save our seeds and plant, weed, water and sit among our plants, talking, laughing, singing and praying.

Move into the tiny house with the big yard. If Americans are as devoted to dining as all of the social sharing food photos suggest, they will find the ultimate in gustatory pleasure right in their own dirt. And while it’s true that a number of praiseworthy restaurants work hard to source some of their ingredients from local growers, you just can’t duplicate the farm to table flavor.

My dear foodies: if you’ve never eaten from your own seed, what joys await you when you bid farewell to the fancy chef and pick up your trusty shovel!

This is a 1920′s style sundress that I made over the weekend. I bought the fabric on Saturday afternoon at the local quilting supply store and by Sunday night, I was ready to take this photograph. My kind husband aided me with some of the ironing and rotary cutting, which was a big help.

I didn’t have a pattern, though you can find really neat vintage patterns on the web. Instead, I essentially made this dress as though I were making a tank top. I traced a tank top onto a piece of kitchen parchment paper to serve as a guide. I took my own measurements several times to be sure I would be cutting my pieces in the right proportions.

The dropped waist that gives it that 20′s look is a simple rectangle to which the tank top shape is sewn. The skirt of the dress is made out of two big rectangles which feature 4 pleats in front and 6 in the back to give it the appropriate shaping. These are then sewn together into a skirt and, finally, joined to the waistband.

The finished dress is ankle length and relatively loose, making it both modest and comfortable with plenty of movement possible. Made of cotton fabric, it’s definitely lovely and cool for summer wearing – so much nicer than those rayon, nylon and polyester sun dresses found at most department stores.

I think the fabric really makes this dress! I wasn’t sure what I wanted when I walked into the fabric shop, but when I saw the beautiful tan and antique red print with its very vintage Arts and Crafts era look, the whole dress popped into my mind as if I’d already finished it. If you have ever looked at advertising or sewing books from the 1920′s, you will recognize these colors and motifs as being true to that era. Artists inspired by both Native American and Asian folk arts developed a new design style that was used to embellish the fabrics, wall paper, furnishings and other elements of Arts and Crafts homes and textiles. This is one of my favorite eras of historical design and I was really thrilled to find this fabric.

The accent fabric, in that same antique red, again features a very 20s print of symbolic arrows. It looked to me like something I would find in a museum of historical fashion and it went just right with the main fabric.
The neckline and armholes are outlined in bias stripping in simple black, completing the garment in a graphical, era-appropriate manner.

So much of the sewing I do is utilitarian. Hard-wearing farm woman dresses are my specialty, and my project previous to this 20′s dress was a pair of denim jeans. This time, inspired by these unusual materials, I wanted to indulge my sense of the lovely, and finished off my dress with an elegant bow. It’s done in the red arrow fabric, backed by the black and I happened to find a button that highlighted both the colors of the gown and some of its design motifs. I think it gives just that tiny, special last touch to the dress that shows it was made with real pleasure.

Early summer is a good time for farmers to sew. Our crops are all planted and weeding and watering pretty much sums up the daily work we have to do. Spring is so much busier. If you find yourself confronting the heat and looking at the department store racks in despair, why not sew a new sundress for yourself? The style of mine may not suit your own tastes, but whatever you do like, you can make it. Sundresses tend to be made out of a few rectangles with minimal shaping and are a good project for beginning seamstresses, especially if you work with 100% cotton instead of those stretchy synthetics that give even experienced sewers headaches are are not very nice to wear.

If you’re looking for inspiration, look at old magazines and patterns. You can look at new ones, too, but for my own sense of aesthetics, classic and folk clothing tends to be so much more interesting to sew and wear. 1920′s clothing for women was a major breakthrough, designed to enable free movement. Those ‘modern ladies’ of a century ago were some of the first to demand equality in work and play and the fashions of the era reflect this, especially when you compare them to the stiff and unyielding garb of previous decades. Make a 20′s dress and you’ll find you can kick up your heels while maintaining a graceful appearance in our own ‘modern times’.

Like those birds of South America who select different tints from the jungle with which to paint their feathers, we have a choice of ensembles. Unfortunately, though, when we rely solely on big box stores to provide for us, we may be receiving the lowest possible quality for our time and money, coupled with a poor fit. Even if you are the fortunate possessor of wealth, good luck finding anything that’s been made with care if it comes from a factory! I started to sew because I didn’t admire store bought fashions and could almost never find anything that fit my tiny height. My woes ended with the hum of the sewing machine and I now view sewing for myself or my husband as some of my happiest times spent indoors.

I’m not much of a one for vanity. I don’t use cosmetics and if I remember to glance at myself once in a mirror at daybreak, I’m pretty much good to go. I worry about people who’ve bought the marketed pitch that all of us need dozens of products and hours of time focused on our appearance in order to be acceptable to some unspecified other or ourselves. Mostly, my mind is occupied with what I’m doing; not how I look doing it.

That being said, I do love lovely things and this was a treat for me to design and create a gown I feel I will look charming wearing. I will feel special wearing this dress, because of the whole process that went into it and because the sewing skills I’ve acquired mean that I can have this dress instead of something somebody else made. That feels good.

In Indigenous America, the custom of taking time to sincerely honor food sources is an ancient one. Many cultures offered prayers and petitions to animals they hunted or held ceremonies of thanksgiving for the abundance of crops, and happily, this tradition continues amongst many Native Peoples.

Vegan eaters do not have to contend with the experience of taking the lives of other animals to sustain their own. Instead, we take the lives of plants for this purpose, and in this article, I would like to introduce the subject of acting with grace in this matter. You will find many other fine articles on the Internet and in books about the methods of saving specific kinds of seeds; this piece will be different, in that I want to take a more holisitic look at developing enough sensitivity towards the lives and needs of plants so that we are reciprocating their life-giving friendship and partnership with mankind. I hope you can give some thought to this topic and see if it makes sense to incorporate this kind of honoring in your own life.

Our lives are inextricably bound together
I once read a very thought-provoking and unusual piece of writing in which the author suggested that corn is one of the cleverest plants on Earth. Unlike most plant species, corn cannot re-seed itself. Its kernels stay wrapped tightly inside the thick husk until a human being or other animal peels it off. For some 12,000 years or more, corn and man have had to walk side by side for existence, and this author suggested that what corn had done in making this interdependent relationship had insured its survival. Essentially, corn succeeded in colonizing the majority of South, Central and North America and was so beloved by so many people, it played a central role in countless Indigenous religions. Corn was, in other words, very smart.

Looking at corn this way – as a being with agency – will be something of a revelation for many people in the modern western world. In the absence of Native traditions, we may think of plants as having no intentions, no aims or needs. I would suggest that if you are a vegan, and especially if you are homesteading and farming for your family, you start considering that each plant in your garden has a story and a destiny and that, as farmer, you are playing a very significant role in this tale.

Every spring, my heart gets a scalding seeing ignorant people in my region spraying herbicides on their properties. A few days later, living grasses, wildflowers and other beautiful green plants lay in an eerie, dead orange-brown heap. Apart for the damage these neighbors are doing to their own health, the soil, the air and the water, it is truly disturbing to see the plants die from this chemical assault. I believe that most people who spray herbicides do so out of lack of education, and unfortunately, they are playing the ultimate bad guy in the story of plants.

On the other side of the scale, there is the small, organic farmer who invests the light of his mind and the sweat of his brow in every aspect of growing and caring for plants. He composts and builds up strong, healthy soil. He is out there watering his plants, talking to them, singing to them day after day. He is exuberantly thankful at harvest time, and as a final act of appreciation, he saves back some of the seeds from this year’s plants for next year.

I have come to feel that it is the spirit of appreciation that counts in the story. These plants which give us both intensely gratifying visual beauty around our homes as well as life-sustaining nourishment deserve our utmost consideration and gratitude. Every year, I become so attached to the plants on our farm. I spend hours and hours amongst them and can truly sense their goodwill towards me. In regarding plants as beings with agency, you might think that they would fear and hate we humans who take their fruits and often their whole lives so that we can eat them, but I sense that this is not true. From my years on the farm, I sense that plants are holding out a hand to us and asking us for an agreement:

“We’ll give to you, so please ensure that our story continues.”

What better way to make a covenant with life-giving plants than to promise to save some of their seed so that their history continues on Earth? In fact, I assure my plants of this – especially those corn plants who have come to seem to me like a family of wonderful beings standing in my yard, arms uplifted, hands waving. We not only bring beautiful rocks to our corn as a present when we pick the first ears of green corn, but I tell them that we will definitely be saving some of their seed so that their people can continue. If you’ve never thought of plants this way, this all may sound a little funny to you, but give it a try and see if you can feel some kind of response from the plants when you tell them this. I think you will.

Homesteaders who begin saving seed will quickly realize just how abundantly the plants are providing for this. Open a pumpkin or winter squash and you will think you have enough seeds to plant the whole globe! Corn, too, is truly astonishing. For every kernel you plant, you get a return of hundreds. Arugula sprouts almost as soon as you sprinkle it on the ground and spinach plants allowed to flower will literally shower you with their seeds for next spring. Soon, you will have jars and envelopes from one end of your home to the other, and you will know that keeping your promise to the plants means an embarrassment of food riches for next year.

We have not gotten this worked out perfectly yet. The photo at the beginning of this article includes our saved seeds from pumpkins, corn, mustard, peas and spinach. All of these have been utterly easy to collect and save. We are having more trouble with lettuce and summer squashes and need some help from other farmers to figure out exactly how to save these trickier seeds. We’re working on it, and I think you will be as proud as we are when the year comes that you buy very little of your seed from vendors because you have saved enough of your own, making your farm ever-more self-sustaining. This is an excellent goal for any homesteading family and one you can reasonably achieve with effort and time.

And the plants, I feel confident, will love you for it.

A Few Technicalities

- Plant heirlooms if you want to save seeds. Hybrids will not come back true to what you grew the first year because they are – well – hybrids. Heirlooms will come back more or less the same year after year.

- Be absolutely careful in choosing your initial corn and beet seeds, because of GMO contamination. We recommend FedcoSeeds.com for these seeds because this company has been right at the forefront of fighting genetic modification and we put more trust in their GMO testing than we do in that of other seed companies.

- The ease with which you save seeds may depend on where you live. We are lucky enough that even our first attempts to save seed were successful with an extremely high germination rate. We’ve saved our seeds in nothing fancier than regular mailing envelopes and they have sprouted right up and produced fabulous plants. Your success may vary, but as you gain farming wisdom, you will find out what works for you. It helps to find and talk with other local organic farmers to see what they do.

Standing Witness To The Miraculous In Everyday Life
Today is Easter – the paramount celebration of the promise of new life in the Christian calender year. No matter how many years I live, the miracle of seeds in spring never grows old for me. In the hills around my home, the verdant grasses are garlanded in ethereally lovely wildflowers – lupines, poppies, mallows, delphiniums, sages and a delicate rainbow of other charming blooms. The fruit trees have been laden with clouds of blossoms, brimming with promise. On the farm, the tomatoes stems are fattening and glistening, the grassy spinach is up and the peas are popping out of the earth just days after the seeds were sown.

Once again, you and I are witnessing just exactly how abundantly the Creator provides for us, if we know where to look and what to do. A handful of seed means a year of plenty, and our grateful response to this miracle lends a grace and dignity to our lives. Taking without thanking means we are unaware of the value of the gift. We can develop a better wisdom than this, just by living side by side with our plants and striving to understand their wishes and provide for their needs. They will provide for us in return with the very stuff of life.

Wishing all readers a Happy Easter and a green and growing Spring.

Conventional couches are treated with extremely hazardous chemicals, and for years, I have wanted to replace mine but simply could not afford even the least expensive green sofas being offered for sale in the United States. This article has been a long time in coming and represents many hours of research and work on my part. It’s my sincere hope that my assemble-it-yourself organic sofa is going to solve your problems by offering you a solution that many more families will find more reasonable to save up for. For less than $2000, I put together an incredibly comfortable, beautiful organic sofa and I’m going to show you exactly how I did it!

When I realized that my family could not afford a ready-made green sofa, the question I asked myself was whether I could replicate this arrangement of frame/spring/cushioning. I hit upon the idea of a simple wood frame that I could make cushions for. I love plain wood furniture and this would resolve the potential hardship of my having to upholster an entire couch myself. The cushions could offer the softness that the wood frame wouldn’t provide. Unfortunately, we don’t have a carpenter in the family, and so I began by trying to find a local professional who might be able to build me a simple, boxy wood frame. Some of them might have been able to, but not one of them had the skills to create the springy-ness that would need to be embedded in the seat part of the frame so that my cushions would be sitting on something other than hard, unyielding wood (not very comfortable!). For awhile, I was really nonplussed about this.

Daybed Bingo!
I found the solution to my problems at a local furniture store in the form of a plain, solid oak daybed. The Mission-style wood frame houses a springy seat bed secured with coils. If you have Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS), this might be the one part of the project that will be most challenging for you. I don’t know what kinds of glues were used to make the daybed I found, and so your search for a safe, completely chem-free daybed will require more work, but it will definitely be worth finding if you can, because every other part of the project will go like clockwork for you once you do. You may need to find a woodworker who can make a custom frame for you.

I was able to go with a ready-made one, having decided that the reduction in chemical exposure that would be accomplished by all-organic cushioning would make my couch about a million times safer than almost anything else out there on the market.

And now, for that luxurious softness!
The most important part of any couch is the part you sit on, and my wonderful new couch owes its seat to an organic, vegan mattress made up of layers of springs, non-toxic real rubber latex and organic cotton batting sewed up in an organic cotton cover. Due to fire laws in my state, I had to have my doctor write me a note excluding the use of wool (which isn’t vegan) and fire retardant (which is carcinogenic) in my custom-made mattress. The mattress is like a dream! A cloud of softness. Trust me, you will never have sat on a couch as fabulously comfortable as this one.

The typical daybed is made to hold a twin mattress (about 39″ x 75″). Fast-forward through some puzzling math calculations and I discovered that King Size bed pillows would fill up the back and sides of the couch almost perfectly, forming rests for my back and arms. I purchased 6 organic cotton King Pillows. I spend a lot of time sitting long-wise on my couch and wanted the end pillows to be twice as cushion-y. So, that’s 2 pillows along the back of the couch and 2 on each end.

The Designer In You
Now that these basic components of frame, springy seat and soft side and back cushions had been seen to, I got to turn to the fun part – the design! While my own home is very simply furnished, I have always enjoyed looking at books on interior design, and my two most favorite styles of design and architecture are American Southwestern and Scandinavian (interestingly, an accurate reflection of much of my own heritage, as well).

What I realized in looking over various design books is that both Southwestern and Scandinavian home decor frequently features furniture items like day beds, old trundle beds and benches that have been converted into beautiful, unusual sofas. All of a sudden, my project seemed really classic!

My next task was to figure out what kinds of fabrics I wanted to use and this is such an important step because it is the feature of the couch that will stand out most. The seat of the couch warrants real, heavy upholstery fabric because it gets the most wear. The side and back cushions can be done with a more delicate textile. The only problem was, I couldn’t find any ready-made organic fabric out there that suited my tastes.

The majority of the very limited number of design houses manufacturing organics have gone with that mod 60′s look, and that just isn’t me. I wanted special colors, special patterns, and that’s when I discovered a company that has literally opened up a whole new world for me.

If you love to sew and you want to sew with organics, you will be so excited about Spoonflower.com, a company that allows you to DESIGN YOUR OWN FABRIC and has several ORGANIC fabric options. I could hardly believe it! Now I could have exactly the fabric I wanted for my side and back pillows and my color palette could be anything I chose.

I decided to go with a Southwestern color palette (earth brown, coppery terracotta and turquoise accents) and with a naturalist theme that would be at home in any Scandinavian summer cabin, though with a North American twist. Using pen and ink, Adobe Photoshop and Spoonflower’s services, I created a fabric featuring woodpeckers, sapsuckers and tree trunks in a silhouette, white-on-copper palette. For birding aficionados, I’ve even got the mysterious Ivory-billed Woodpecker in there. Birds and trees have got to be some of the dearest things on our good Earth to me, and I decided my couch could reflect this, making my home furnishing very authentic to my family’s personality.

To keep costs low, I purchased plain earth brown organic cotton from another shop for the backs of the pillows, using my luxurious organic cotton sateen Spoonflower fabric just for the fronts. The heavy-duty basketweave organic cotton upholstery for the mattress cover was a big investment, purchased from yet another company, and it will stand up to years of use.

To complete the picture, a couple of throw pillows, made of pale turquoise organic cotton sateen and remnants of the woodpecker fabric, and stuffed with organic cotton stuffing lend that bright touch that speaks to me of clear skies on lovely days. The fronts of the organic throw pillows are done with hand-pieced quilting in the monkey wrench design – a symbol I’ve always theorized resulted from encounters with Native American arts.

A Small Adjustment
The height from floor to the top of the seat of a typical couch is about 17-20″. The thing about the daybed-frame/mattress combo is that the seat ended up being way too high off the ground. My solution to this was to go down the road to a local woodworker who obligingly shortened the legs of my daybed for me to the tune of just $15. All he had to do was make 4 quick cuts and the whole piece of furniture was then the correct height for comfortable sitting.

Where I Got My Materials And Exactly What They Cost

SOURCES

Custom Organic Vegan Mattress: The Natural Mattress Store
Organic Cotton Upholstery Fabric For Mattress: Harts Fabric
Organic Cotton Throw Pillow Stuffing: Compostable Goods
Organic Cotton King Pillows: Organic Textiles
Custom Designed Organic Fabric For Fronts Of King Pillows: Spoonflower
Solid Organic Fabric For Backs Of King Pillows: Fabric.com
Organic Cotton Throw Pillow Fabric: Near Sea Naturals

COSTS

Pillow Stuffing $25.50
Mattress $941.70
Upholstery Fabric for Mattress $181.45
6 King Pillows $239.85
Custom Fabric $72.90
Backing Fabric $20.00
Throw Pillow Fabric $12.00
Day Bed $489.41
Day Bed Carpentry $15.00
———
TOTAL: $1997.81

*Purchase of daybed and quick carpentry to legs were done at local shops. You can find a daybed at just about any local furniture store.

*I didn’t have to buy scissors or thread or pins. I already had those in my sewing box so the cost of such items is not included in the total.

How Much Fabric Will You Need
It took 5 1/2 yards of upholstery fabric to cover the mattress. I did this as simply as possible, like wrapping a gift box. I cut the fabric into two pieces, laid one on the floor, put the mattress on top of it and then laid the second piece of fabric on top of the mattress. I then folded the fabric, just as you would wrapping paper and whip stitched all around it. For the large back and side pillows, I ordered 3 yds. of the plain brown cotton and 3 yds. of the custom woodpecker fabric. This was exactly enough. The two throw pillows required less than 1 yard of the turquoise fabric.

Could You Replicate This Project For Less?
Yes, I believe you could. The major investments in this project were the mattress, the daybed, the organic king pillows and the upholstery fabric. One item that I think you could likely find a better deal on is the daybed itself. Mine is a bit expensive at $489, but I was just so glad to find the solution to my whole framing needs at a local shop, I decided to pay this price and support a local business. However, I’m betting you could get one for as much as a couple of hundred dollars less, and you might even be able to find something really cheap used. Just make sure it’s in good shape.

The mattress and pillows are not going to come much cheaper. Organic mattresses are expensive and that’s the bottom line. I was so happy that I could find a really reputable, caring company to custom make a vegan model for me, with my doctor’s note. I do recommend that you check out the shop I linked to. They really know what they are doing. I was very lucky to find a deal on the organic king pillows. I needed six of them and considering that most organic pillows run around $80-$160 apiece, I was really excited to encounter a two-for-one deal at the above vendor’s Amazon.com storefront, associated with their website. $239 for 6 big organic pillows is actually a steal, given current market pricing. I was especially excited about these pillows, which have an organic cotton cover and are filled with USA grown organic cotton. Very nice!

The fabric situation is another one where there is definitely some pricing leeway. Organic upholstery fabric (for that matter any kind of upholstery fabric) is going to be expensive, running $20-$40 per yard. You may be able to find a sale happening and luck out, significantly decreasing your investment for the 5 1/2 yds. it will take to cover a twin sized mattress.

Additionally, I didn’t have to use custom made fabric for the fronts of the big king cushions. I could have found the cheapest, ready-made organic fabric and gone with that. You can find some solid organic cotton fabrics for around $10/yd., sometimes less, so if you don’t need to be as artistic in creating your safe, organic couch, you could lower the overall price tag in this way. You might be able to make your own organic sofa for something more like $1500 if you find good deals. In any case, you will be spending a fraction of the amount that you would for pretty much any ready-made organic couch on the market.

But Will It Feel And Look Like A Bed Instead Of A Couch?
Back to the ‘zen of sofas’, remember that a couch can be anything you want it to, so long as it meets the basic requirement of providing comfortable seating. I think the alternative, creative approaches to couches taken in Scandinavia and the Southwest are actually miles more stylish that the big lumps of bulky upholstery sitting in most conventional furniture stores.

However, I think it’s really interesting that once I got my organic sofa all assembled, the actual seating area and overall size of the furniture piece is almost the same as that of the traditional couch we had before. The back pillows take up the space that the back of the old upholstered couch did and the seat is just a few inches deeper from front to back (which is actually extremely comfortable and luxurious, letting both you and your spouse put your feet up at the end of a long day farming!).

I also think the fabrics you choose will determine whether your organic sofa looks bed-ish or couch-ish. In the shop where we bought the daybed, it was being displayed with many pastel, fluffly, flowery chintz cushions. That made it look like a bed. My naturalist bird and tree design and color palette make this piece of furniture look completely different, and really not at all like a bed.

How Comfortable Is This Wonderful, Affordable Organic Sofa?
Think of it this way – you can get pretty cozy on a nice couch, but it’s to the mattress that all of us retire for sleep. With the daybed solution, and a really awesome organic mattress, you have the ultimate comfort of a bed every time you sit down. Choosing the correct firmness of mattress is important here. Ours is about medium-firm and it offers some give without letting us sink way down, which wouldn’t be comfortable for sitting. Doubling up the king-sized pillows where you rest your back most often is also, I think, important for giving you enough cushion-y support. You might decide to buy 8 pillows instead of 6 if you want equal support on the back and arms of the couch. Because we tend to sit sideways 90% of the time on our couch, we really only needed this on the arms.

Out of this thought came the Arts & Crafts movement which resulted in some of the most beautiful, functional homes and furniture ever created in this country. By using the simplest possible lines and the best available materials, rooms were re-invented as real living places rather than show-piece parlors in which few people enjoyed spending real time.

I think we’re in a similar, though somewhat different, fix now in the first decades of the 21st century. We work like crazy to earn money, but what we can get for our dough is of depressingly poor quality. Flimsy particle board furniture swathed in chemical-laden synthetic fabrics? Why should our hard-earned cash result in nothing better than this for our home and our family?

Here at VeganReader, we initiated the Reskills column to help get Americans thinking about how they can start doing for themselves again, just as our forebears did. Whether you are growing your own food, sewing your own clothes or coming up with your own non-toxic furniture solutions, chances are, you will end up with far better goods than you could buy anywhere. The downgrading in overall quality of goods available on the American market today is pretty epidemic, and American homes are filled with shoddy, toxic products. Even the homes of the very wealthy are filled with polyester! In my eyes, this warrants a re-thinking of how we budget for what we really need.

I would rather save up to be able to create an organic couch than to purchase the newest in entertainment systems. I really need to be able to sit down – I don’t need a new TV/DVD/Blu-ray/Stereo/iPod/whatever. By prioritizing my family’s needs, we were able to budget for and accomplish something that is absolutely essential to the comfort of our home while cutting down on possible toxins in our home environment, as well as on our home planet. It took quite a bit more effort to figure out how to do this than it would have if I’d just plunked down the money for a conventional, ready-made couch, but I rejoice that I had the chance to make a considered personal choice about this. This choice feels good to me, and I so hope that the time and research I put into this project will make your own decisions and work a lot easier to accomplish. I’m hoping you can take my idea and personalize it with your own fabrics and tastes so that the most comfortable seat in the house is in keeping with your family’s unique style.

A small and cozy revolution, just in a new way of thinking about couches? Could be.

Seeking Inner Peace? Consider Playing A Native Flute
A hundred years ago, no one really talked about stress. Today, you will hear everyone from grandma to the baby worriedly saying, “I’m so stressed out.” Go to the doctor and she will tell you that you need to reduce stress to recover from an illness or improve your overall health for life. The Stress Of Modern Living is on the lips of every news reporter describing crimes, every social worker documenting familial breakdown, every author penning tales of the daily life of modern man.

Let’s listen to somebody else, for a minute. Someone not talking about stress as a fact of life, but as something you can step out of, on a regular basis, if only for part of your day at first try. Recently, I sat down and listened to a very long interview with the late scholar, Joseph Campbell. In this interview, he made a suggestion for Americans hooked into the stress cycle that would enable them to break away from it, bit by bit. He advised people to create a space and one hour in the day for themselves. In this space – it might be a corner of your bedroom, a chair in your garden or a blanket on your balcony – you would consciously let go of the things you likely spend most of the rest of your day thinking about.

You would stop thinking about your job, who you owe money to, who owes money to you. You would stop thinking about your responsibilities, quarrels, fears and doubts. Instead of this, you will just be yourself – a creature of the earth, with a body, a beating heart, eyes that see, lungs that breathe, nostrils that smell things. Other creatures spend hours just sitting, just being still, just being themselves, with no external calls on them to perform. So, in this hour of your day, you will just be you, and not all the things you do.

This suggestion of Joseph Campbell’s rang true with me as prescription for a life graced with a sense of self-awareness many people never know, because they are too busy doing other things to really sit down and meet themselves. In Western culture, it’s next-door to an insult to call someone self-aware, but I would suggest we rethink that. If you aren’t aware of the wonder of yourself – yourself as a living, feeling organism – you can hardly be expected to observe the wonder of your fellow beings. Sages of the ages have told us we must first love ourselves before we can learn to love others, and I feel that this all ties into developing a sense of respect and value for our own spirits and bodies, through quiet reflection. If you live your whole life too busy to ever do this, I think you will have missed an encounter with the most important person in your life – you.

People with large resources of material wealth seem to spend endless sums of money seeking happiness. Do they find it? Only they can tell. What I can tell you is that the small investment you might make in a native flute has the potential to give you a gift of inner-confidence in being yourself that is beyond monetary terms of value. You might choose the ultra simple Ocarina, the soulful-sounding Plains Flute or the energetic, lilting Andean Quena, and whatever you choose will become a voice for you to send out a harmonious, personal sound into your surroundings. A sound that says, I am me, and I am here.

Many native flutes are relatively easy for total beginners to play, and the point here is not to become a concert flautist, reading sheet music and worrying about technique and perfection. No. Not at all. The whole point is not to worry – just to let you flute sing with your own, personal tune, your own music. This sound you make can become a form of meditation or prayer for you, a form that centers and balances you within yourself.

I believe that through this intimate music, you will begin to know yourself better and to start sensing your special place on the Earth. You are not a thing apart, a mere spectator, cut off from the natural world. You are the natural world, natural man, with a song to sing, just like birds, whales, coyotes and elk. Your song is beautiful, because it is part of life.

As the stress drifts away through your daily music, you become stronger inside yourself. Certainly, when your music time is over each day, you will return to the cares and obligations of your daily life with a strengthened sense of who you are. This will then begin to extend to who those ‘others’ are in your life. Recently, I also listened to a speech given by the Dalai Lama, in which he suggested that there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. There is only ‘we’. It has taken the Dalai Lama many years of reflection to truly believe this, I think, and who knows what benefits there may be for you, if you allow a meditative time to become part of your life? I hope the insights you gain will include love of yourself and others. And who could not love a person who is making music from their heart?

Play without doubt and doubt will be gone while you play. Play without fear and fear is gone. No, there is no magic, no prayer, that removes the uncomfortable parts of life, the sorrow and pain, but this doesn’t mean you cannot step back for a small time to experience some of the other things in life. The beautiful things, the quiet things, the expressive peace of music.

At least once a week in our farm kitchen, we make a big pot of soup, have it for supper and then save the leftovers to make lunches more hearty the rest of the week. Today, I’m going to share with you one of my finest of all recipes, so creamy, savory and soul-satisfying, I believe it will become a favorite in your home. Corn Chowder combines three of the finest Native American foods – corn, potatoes and onions – into a rich chowder with a truly ambrosial flavor. My recipe updates the old New England standby (heavy in animal fats and sometimes wheat flour) into a really healthy dish that both vegans and gluten-free diners will stand up and cheer for, as will just about anyone else you share a mugful with. Wonderful news for you new homesteading cooks: this gourmet chowder takes about 1 hour total to prepare, from farm to table. Follow my simple directions and you can’t go wrong.

Ingredients in Corn Chowder
Feeds 3 hungry adults – double the recipe for a bigger crowd

2 Large Potatoes
1 Small Onion
1-2 Ears Of Corn
1 1/2 Cups Almond Milk
3 Cups Water
Sprigs of Fresh Thyme Or 1 t. Dried Thyme
2 T. Minced Fresh Chives Or Parsley Or Both
4 T. E.V. Olive Oil
5 Dashes Or Grates of Nutmeg
Salt and Pepper To Taste

Notes On Choosing Your Produce
It goes without saying, the fresher your corn is, the better. We pick ours right before we add it to the chowder, but fresh from a local farmer or farm market is second best. Also, this soup can be made in winter with about 3/4 C. of frozen corn, though it is not quite as amazing as when you prepare it from fresh green summer corn. Please use only ORGANIC corn in this recipe or in any other, as this is your family’s only protection from exposure to genetically modified corn which is not safe for human consumption. If it’s not organic, chances are it’s GMO and this defeats your purpose of serving up a good and healthy dish to your loved ones.

Choose organic potatoes, onions, herbs and olive oil, too. In this batch of corn chowder, I’m using two large Yukon Gold potatoes, but the chowder is also quite good with russets, too. If the potatoes are small, use 3 or 4. I prefer a red onion in this soup, but if you’ve got yellow or white, that’s fine, too.

Don’t overdo it on the nutmeg. This unusual ingredient is meant to add just a whisper of fragrant spice to the dish. Don’t overpower the other delicate flavors with too much.

Easy Directions For Making Corn Chowder

Step 1
Peel and dice up your raw potatoes. Peel and thinly slice your onion. Put the olive oil into a pot over medium heat and add the onions.

Stir fry the onions until they are just barely translucent. Add your dried or fresh thyme now.

Step 2
Your potatoes should be cut into small dice, as this shortens the cooking time of the soup. Toss your diced potatoes into the pot and stir fry them for another 2 minutes, just to coat them with the good onion-y oil.

Step 3
Add your liquids. Remember, this is 1 part almond milk to 2 parts water. It’s helpful to understand this if you need to double or triple the recipe. You can use a different milk, if you prefer, such as rice milk or soy milk, but I find that almond milk is the best possible match of this subtly-flavored chowder. Add your pepper and nutmeg now. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a boil, scraping the bottom and sides of the pot to make sure the onions and potatoes aren’t stuck to it. Once the chowder boils, turn the heat down to low, cover the pot and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.

Step 4
While the chowder simmers, shuck your corn and then remove the kernels from the cob by scraping them with a knife onto a plate. Have your minced chives or parsley ready, too. Take a look at the soup and see if you can easily mash the potato dice with a fork. If you can, get out your potato masher and mash up all the potato so that the watery soup becomes a much thicker liquid – in point of fact, a chowder. Once this is done, add your corn and minced herbs and shut off the burner. Let the corn cook for just 3 more minutes by sitting in the hot chowder. Cooking the corn over high heat or for longer than this will only result in tough kernels that have lost some of their sweetness. Your last step is to salt the chowder, to your taste.

Your finished chowder should be a pale gold or soft white, freckled with flecks of pepper and nutmeg, tiny dots of rich olive oil, pretty with the green, fragrant herbs and chock full of sweet, juicy corn. Serve steaming hot in a thick pottery bowl!

For millennia, corn has been the revered staple of America’s First People. Summer is our time to appreciate the fleeting blessings of green corn and to give thanks to the ancestors whose work in times past put corn in our hands today. While I don’t think you can beat farm-to-table corn on the cob for an experience of the true soul of sweet corn, corn chowder is absolutely one of the most delicious alternates for showcasing this life-giving, abundant, generous grain.

Don’t throw away those husks! Your organic corn husks can be used to wrap tamales, as components of a dried flower arrangement or to make a little corn husk doll, such as the one shown in the above photo. Out of respect for corn, we try to make sure that every part of this precious plant is used, at the very least as an input into our compost pile so that everything is appreciated and nothing is wasted.

Storing and Serving Suggestions For Corn Chowder
If you don’t eat all of your corn chowder at one sitting, let it cool down and then put the leftovers in a sealed mason jar in the fridge. It will keep very well for at least a week. When you reheat it, make sure to do so as briefly as possible, or the corn will lose its softness and sweetness.

We served our corn chowder tonight with our vegan sesame cheese sandwiches on broiled polenta bread, layered with garden fresh tomatoes and lemon cucumbers, our snappy pickled peppers and sliced avocado. You couldn’t ask for a better combination than a steaming mug of corn chowder and a crisp, savory sandwich! The apple trees are starting to give us their first gifts, so I made a little apple tart for dessert. As I type up this corn chowder recipe, I am one full, satisfied woman. I’d like you to know the happy feeling I have right now, and I hope you will give this simple, sublime recipe a try.

Tremendously important news for all home farmers: a federal court judge has just rescinded the USDA’s illegal approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets. VeganReader congratulates Judge Jeffrey White, federal district judge for the Northern District of California, for finding that the USDA acted illegally in approving genetically modified sugar beets without requiring Monsanto to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by preparing an Environmental Impact Statement. This is the second time the courts have had to blow the whistle on the USDA for approving GMO crops without requiring Monsanto to first go through the NEPA process as required by law.

Why is this such big news? In our past coverage of the vital importance of beets and the threat of contamination and extinction posed to them by GMO sugar beets, we’ve discussed the anxiety felt by responsible farmers over this issue. GMO sugar beets not only contaminate non-GMO varieties, making them unfit for human consumption, but because of the huge amounts of chemical herbcides used to grow them, they are being cited as a cause of what are called ‘superweeds’. Just like overuse of antibiotics threatens that a time will come when diseases resist all of the medicines we have, the overuse of herbicides encourages stronger weeds to grow that are harder and harder for farmers to contend with. The end result of Monsanto’s biotech activities would mean a world without edible landrace beets but plenty of huge weeds. No wonder so many farmers have demanded that this issue be taken to court.

We at VeganReader are very eager to give congratulations and thanks to the major plaintiffs in the GMO sugar beet case, including Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds and others. We are so grateful for the hours, money, time and exceptional effort you have all put into bringing this dire issue to court and we celebrate this ruling with you.

Yet, even as we celebrate, it’s extremely important for all U.S. farmers to understand that this ruling provides only a temporary ban on new crops of GMO beets. The USDA estimates that Monsanto will have its Environmental Impact Statement ready by 2012, and considering the track record of both entities, we would be foolhardy to predict anything other than claims of total harmlessness in this statement. Having watched the USDA/CDFA spray thousands of Central Coast Californians in 2007 with pesticides that were subsequently banned by the EPA for their toxicity, I am fully expecting USDA to continue to protect the profits of chemical corporations rather than doing their duty of protecting farmers, human health and the environment.

All the more reason why this court ruling on GMO beets is so important: Judge Jeffrey White has just sent both the USDA and Monsanto a declaration that neither party is above the law. Inherent in this ruling is also a vital message for all farmers, watchdogs, whistleblowers and U.S. citizens: we must be ever vigilant when it comes to law breaking agencies and profit hungry corporations and demand that existent U.S. laws be upheld by both, as we work to create new laws that, I sincerely hope, will place a permanent ban on all genetic modification.

This is a red letter day for food security and a temporary triumph of justice. May I live to see the day when I can report here at VeganReader that the specter of GMOs has been stamped out across our great nation and around the world.

My husband is a lifelong fan of the pickled pepperoncinis familiar to most Americans as the zippy layer of a deli sandwich, but good luck trying to find an organic jar of pickled peppers, let alone a domestic or local one at most markets. A couple of years ago, I decided to treat my sweetheart to homemade pickled peppers and discovered it was so easy and produced such a superior canned pepper, there is just no reason in the world to buy them from a store ever again. The nicest thing about canning your own peppers is that you can choose the heat level you like. I’m married to a farmer who delights in eating the hottest peppers he can find; but this farmer’s wife melts into a feverish pool of pass-the-water at anything spicier than gingerbread. I can make super hot pickled peppers for my husband, but if we wanted to enjoy the results of my canning together, I had to find a compromise.

Thank goodness for the wax pepper called Gypsy with it’s very mild heat, just a few degrees warmer than a bell pepper. When picked unripe, Gypsy is a pretty, translucent yellow with a fantastic crisp crunch. When pickled it turns a light olive green, just like deli pepperoncinis. But, like Peter Piper in the nursery rhyme, you can pick whatever pickled pepper strikes your fancy. What I want to show you is how totally simple refrigerator pickled peppers are to can. There is just nothing hard about this.

Basic Refrigerator Pickled Pepper Recipe

Ingredients
Organic peppers of your choice
Organic Rice Vinegar
Salt
Organic Garlic
Organic fresh or dried dill
Water

Get some mason jars with clean lids (no rust). Boil lids and jars in a big pot of water to sterilize them. You’ll have to estimate the number of jars you need to contain your peppers. We’ve found that we can fit about 4 Gyspy peppers in 1 16 oz. mason jar.

Get the freshest peppers you can find, and choose ones without blemishes. Wash them well and then dip them into boiling water for just a second to kill any bacteria that might be on the skins.

This recipe is for quick refrigerator pickles – not for the kind you pressure can and store in a pantry. Because we’d like to be able to eat the pickled peppers as soon as possible, we cut them into thin strips. Cut off the top of each pepper, dig out the seedy core and then julienne cut them into long strips about 1/3 inch wide.

Cut up some cloves of garlic and wash fresh dill and put a portion of both in each jar. How much you use is up to you.

Next, put the pepper strips into the jar.

Now you make your pickling brine. In a big stainless steel pot, combine 1 part rice vinegar with 1 part water. Again, you’ll have to estimate how much of this you need. For every cup of liquid, add 2 tablespoons of salt. Bring the mixture to a boil and stir with a wooden spoon until the cloud of salt dissolves and the liquid becomes clear again.

Scoop up the hot brine in a measuring cup and fill the jars to just below the top. Cover the jars with a sheet of waxed paper and let cool.

Once they are cool, cut a sheet of waxed paper or parchment paper into little squares and put one atop the mouth of each jar. Put on the lids good and tight. Stick a label on each jar with the date you made the pickled peppers and put them in the fridge.

Your pickled peppers will be ready to eat in 1 week and will keep in the fridge for up to 6 months!

Variations on the Pickled Pepper Theme

If you like them sweet…add 2 T. maple syrup to each 16 oz. jar of pickled peppers when you put your dill and garlic in.

If you can’t stand the heat…use bell peppers. You can pickle green, yellow or red bell peppers for completely mild pickled peppers.

If peppers have always given you indigestion…try peeling them before you pickle them. I don’t guarantee that this will work, but old wives’ tales say so, and no one knows more about the arts of gastronomy than wise old wives. Interestingly, both cucumbers and peppers have a dyspeptic effect on some folks, resulting in burps. However, there is something about pickling foods that seems to render some of them more digestible. For example, many people who can’t eat a raw cucumber can eat a pickled one, and this can apply to peppers, too. If you’d like to be able to eat peppers, skin them and pickle them and try a small amount at a time to see if you find them palatable.

If you’d like something different…add 1 T. prepared mustard to every 16 oz. jar for mustard pickled peppers – very zippy! This is a nice alternative for people who have trouble with hot chiles but enjoy other types of warming spices. The mustard gives just a little heat and a nice and different flavor.

Peppers Are A True Native American Food
500 years ago, Hungarians had no paprika for their goulash, Italians had no pepper for peperoni and Indians had no curry power for curries. But in South and Central America, the genus Capsicum had long added color and fire to the daily dishes of the people. This much-loved plant, originating wild in the rain forests of South America, has been under cultivation for countless generations and only ended up in the ‘Old World’ as a result of European conquest.

Today, in North America, bell peppers and jalapeno chiles are the varieties most commonly grown commercially, but thanks to farm markets and the local food movement, many Americans are becoming acquainted with heirlooms and hybrids with all kinds of winning qualities. If you are a pepper or chili fan, it can be hard to imagine a world without these fantastic fruits. If you love peppers, you would do well to give thanks to the Indigenous peoples who first recognized their spicy virtues.

Here at VeganReader.com, we proudly promote Native American foods as the most natural choice for diners in the western world. These are the plants that are happiest growing here and with combinations like corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, chile peppers and chocolate, you can’t go wrong in the kitchen!

Pickled peppers are a wonderful option for enjoying a Native food, adding savor to sandwiches, tacos, tostadas, salads, salsas, vegetable dishes and appetizer trays. Can them in pretty jars or create your own colorful labels and a present of homemade pickled peppers makes a gift of great distinction.

You may find pepper canning recipes elsewhere on the web that will make hard work of what should be an easy task. We sincerely hope that this ultra-simple refrigerator pickled pepper recipe will show you that you can make these gourmet treats in a snap and, thanks to the technique of cutting them in strips, you only have to wait a few days before you can start eating them! Do up a whole bunch in an afternoon and you can be enjoying your own pickled peppers for months to come.