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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 2020)
B Tuesday, February 18, 2020 The Observer & Baker City Herald BOB’S THOUGHTS Scrumptious Soups BOB BAUM The beauty, thrill of the Winter Olympics I put on my trusty old boots the other day. It was the fi rst time I’d worn them since the 2006 Winter Olympics, when I trudged through the snowy grandeur of the Italian Alps. For the fi nal two decades of my 43-year Associated Press career I was based in Phoenix, Arizona, not exactly a place you’d go to fi nd someone to cover Alpine skiing. But that’s what happened. So those boots made it to the gor- geous mountains at the Nagano Olym- pics in 1998, Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin, Italy in 2006. The gig also included covering World Cup races in Mammoth Lakes, Cali- fornia; Vail, Aspen and Beaver Creek, Colorado, and Lake Louise, Alberta. After the long fl ight to Tokyo and an interminable bus ride, we arrived in Nagano. We proceeded by van into the mountains of western Japan and the Tokyu Hotel, within walking distance of the downhill and super G courses. At the Olympics, summer or winter, reporters normally stay in special hous- ing, which can be spartan (Barcelona, Beijing) or very nice (Seoul, Sydney). See Olympics/Page 2B TRASH TALK CYNTHIA ROBERTS Curbing food waste saves more than money Healthy eating is an important part of my daily life. Each week I buy a lot of organic produce. Sometimes I get a little carried away and buy more than I can eat. I hate to waste food so I have to get creative to use it all up. I like to use leftover vegetables from dinner in a breakfast omelet, excess kale becomes kale chips, and inventing new soups is always a fun (and mostly tasty) way to use up lots of vegetables. I was not always a waste-conscious person but knowing that we live in a world of dwindling resources has made me evolve my thinking and lifestyle choices. In the United States about 40% of the food that’s produced is never con- sumed. Food waste begins at the farm. Our desire for good-looking food has led to quality standards that emphasize appearance causing blemished but perfectly healthy food to be dumped before leaving the farm. As food travels up the processing chain some is lost due to overproduction and market fl uctuations. In recent years bacterial contamination from industrial farming practices has necessitated the destruc- tion of a lot of food. We’re wasting food that could be used to address hunger, while also wasting the resources being used to produce food: land, energy, water, seeds, fertilizer, fi nancial capital,and labor. Food waste takes up about 18% of landfi ll space. Discarded food rots in landfi lls emitting methane. The U.N. Panel on Climate Change estimates that food waste accounts for 10% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. See Waste/Page 2B Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS Carrot and red pepper soup W INTER W ARMERS By Daniel Neman St. Louis Post-Dispatch It was a cold night during the extended holi- day season. We had been indulging in every- thing one indulges in during that caloric time. And so we wanted to eat something fl avorful but healthful. Something that did not require a trip to the grocery store. So we shopped in the pantry and the refrigerator, though actually it was the freezer, and made a hearty, delicious seafood soup. And then, like a lunkhead, I failed to write down the recipe. I didn’t even think about it. It’s not like I write about food for a living, or anything. Still, a recent cold snap had me thinking once again of cooking up several batches of that most wintery of dishes, soup. Naturally, I started out by attempting to re-create that magnifi cent seafood dish. A great seafood soup begins with a good seafood broth. You can buy it, but it’s so easy to make one yourself. All you need is chicken broth, which I always keep on hand, and shrimp with shells on it. Just remove the shrimp shells, drop them in the broth and cook. After a few minutes, you have a superb, fresh-tasting (because it’s freshly made) sea- food broth. Along with the usual soup suspects — onions, garlic, carrots, celery and a single bay leaf — I added a can of fi re-roasted tomatoes for a mahogany-like depth. Only at the last minute or two did I add the shellfi sh: the peeled shrimp, which I had chopped, some langostinos, which I had also chopped, and a handful of clams. It helped that we happened to have the langostinos in the freezer when I fi rst made the soup. The second time I made it, for this Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS Hearty shellfi sh soup story, I used frozen bay scallops. Either way, it was terrifi c. Admittedly, the shellfi sh soup recipe is a little complicated, so for my next soup I made what has to be the world’s easiest soup. Hon- estly, I do not understand how something that takes so little effort can taste so good. All you do is plop some broccoli into boiling water, and then blend it with some of the water you boiled it in. See Soups/Page 3B Bulbs, tubers and other interesting growths A lot of times the things we plant are called bulbs, but there are differences. The roots always grow from the bottom and the stems seek the light, so it re- ally matters that you plant them right side up. Bulbs, bulblets and bulbils Bulbs are embryonic small plants surrounded by fl eshy scales that protect and store food for use by the plant. The outermost scales are dry but still provide a protec- tive cushion. These are the true bulbs. Examples are lilies, onions and narcissus (daffodils). The new bulblet (or “offset”) is formed from a lateral bud on the basal plate; the old bulb may die or, like daffodils, keep coming back each year. Bulblets can be sepa- rated from the mother bulb and BETWEEN THE ROWS WENDY SCHMIDT replanted to increase your stock of the original plant. Bulbils are small bulbs that form in the axis of leaves, in fl owers, or on stems of certain bulbous plants. Corms and cormel Corms are solid plant tissue (unlike bulbs made of scales), but with a basal plate from which roots grow. The growth point is on the top where the leaves come out. Many corms have a tunic composed of the base of last year’s dried leaves. Cormels are the tiny new corms sprouting from where the base plant meets the tunic all around last year’s corm. Gladiolus and watsonia are corms. Tuber Like a corm, a tuber is a swollen underground stem base, but lacks the corm’s organization. There’s no basal plate, so roots can grow from all sides; multiple growth points are scattered over the upper surface — each is a scale — like a leaf with a growth bud in its axial. Divide by cutting into sections that have growth buds. Tuberous begonia belongs to the group. have visible growing points. Iris and Zantedeschia (calla lily) are examples. Tuberous roots These are actual roots, rather than stems, that are specialized to store nutrients. Growth buds are at the bases of old stems rather than on the tuberous roots. To divide, cut apart so each division will contain both roots and part of the stem’s base with one or more growth buds. Dahlias are tuberous roots. Daylilies (hemerocallis) have very fl eshy roots but are not what Rhizomes you call tuberous roots. This is a thickened stem that You can divide and transplant grows partially or completely daylilies any time of year. Of course underground. Roots grow from the you still need to use care and underside; the principle growing always water. point is from the tip, though addi- If you have garden questions or tional growing points do form along comments, please write to green the rhizome’s length. gardencolumn@yahoo.com. Thanks To divide, cut in sections that for reading!
