Wild About Nature Blog

Rebecca and I have been experimenting with eating different grains, and are quickly realizing that here in the United States we’ve developed a pretty narrow viewpoint of grain. Here, wheat and oats rule. There’s nothing wrong with wheat and oats, both of which are quite yummy, but the more we explore, the more we discover that there is a whole planet’s worth of wondrous grains out there, all with different flavours and nutritional benefits. Our latest discovery was teff.

The most remarkable thing about teff is its size. It’s apparently the world’s smallest grain, as the carefully posed photo below displays.

We soon learned that teff is used to make one of our favorite flatbreads — injera — which we had often eaten at a favorite Ethiopian restaurant in the Twin Cities. The huge plate-sized flatbread is served with a variety of colorful bean, vegetable, or meat mixtures set in piles on its surface, and you eat by breaking off bits of the bread and using this as an edible ’spoon’ to eat the mixtures.

Teff comes in different colors — ours is a dark variety, which has a nutty flavor. We’ve only begun experimenting, thus far having had it only as a breakfast porridge, which was very delicious. We’re excited to discover new ways to use it.

Another wonderful thing about teff is that it’s a species of Lovegrass, and it’s always nice to eat something that has such a ‘lovely’ name. It’s a very important grain in Ethiopia, and it’s interesting to think that even a tiny pouch of this grain would be enough to sow an immense field. It’s also highly nutritious.

We’d encourage people to give this grain a try, and if anyone has any good recipes for using teff, feel free to post them on the comments below!

Posted on January 21st, 2010 by Kenton Whitman
Filed under: Plants | 8 Comments »

We’re always trying to be responsible when it comes to our food, and for us that means planting our own gardens, purchasing as much local or organic food as possible, and looking at local sources for meat. When it comes to fish and seafood, though, things can get pretty confusing. Luckily, we were lately turned on to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Super Green List”. This provides information on what seafood to eat based on three criteria:  levels of contaminants such as mercury and PCBs, Omega 3 levels, and environmental concerns.

Here are their current top eight choices –

Albacore Tuna, caught by pole or trolling from waters off of British Columbia or the United States.

Farmed Mussels

Farmed Oysters

Wild Caught Pacific Sardines

Wild Caught Pink Shrimp from Oregon.

Wild Caught Salmon from Alaska.

Wild Caught Spot Prawns from British Columbia.

Farmed Rainbow Trout

Their report, found here, contains a wealth of other information. The only warning — it’s a large .pdf, and takes a while to load if you don’t have high-speed internet.

Our own research led us to a wonderful discovery last year. We were trying to find a canned tuna that would be healthy, delicious, environmentally responsible, and affordable. After a long time on the computer, we placed an order with Oregon’s Choice. Their website fulfilled our desire to know everything we could about their tuna — how it is caught, how it is canned, and its nutritional content. Spend some time on their site and you’ll be fully educated about the tuna situation.

Best of all, their tuna is GOOD! We get the regular gourmet albacore lightly salted, canned in its own juices (tuna and salt and nothing else), and were pleasantly surprised to find that it is totally different than the cat-food quality tuna we had previously eaten at the grocery. There are big flakes of meat, the flavour is exceptional, and if you add the juices to your meal you get an extra dose of Omega 3 fats. If you enjoy tuna, it’s definitely worth the purchase. When comparing prices, note that they have two can sizes — one of which is quite a bit larger than the standard grocery cans.

The life in the sea is being hit hard by the impact of fishing. We do enjoy eating fish, but it tastes a lot better when you know that you’re eating a species that isn’t on the brink of destruction.

Here’s our favorite tuna fish sandwich recipe: Take one 7.5 oz. can of tuna and mix with 1/4 cup finely chopped carrot, 1 green onion (the long thin ones), and 1/2 cup finely chopped purple cabbage. Add your choice of mayo or miracle whip. Squeeze in one slice of lemon, and get liberal with the cracked pepper. A dash of garlic salt and some hot pepper flakes, and you’re ready to serve on some nice whole-grain bread. Yum!

Posted on December 22nd, 2009 by Kenton and Rebecca
Filed under: Reviews | 10 Comments »

Today, to our astonishment, we found a butterfly in our kitchen. It’s not unusual for us to find insects or other creepy-crawlies in the house during winter. Spiders find their way in (or crawl up from the basement), and Asian Lady Beetles are always peeping in. But with the temps at about 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside, we weren’t expecting to see a creature we usually associate with summertime.

We think it’s a Clouded Sulpher, Colias philodice, and we’re pretty sure that it’s not supposed to be active this time of year. We’re not even sure where it came from — the best we can suppose is that it came in on some of the firewood.

We’ve provided it with a bowl of homemade nectar, and are watching to see what it does. So far it’s been rather inactive, not flying at all, and just walking about on the edge of the bowl. Really, we’re quite unsure of what to do.

If anyone knows how we might best keep this little critter alive until spring, we’d sure like to know!

Posted on December 6th, 2009 by Rebecca Whitman
Filed under: Bugs and Crawlies! | 16 Comments »

The Leonids are coming, and it sounds like it’s going to be a big one this year!  With the new moon keeping the skies dark, all we have to hope for is a cloudless sky. Asia will get a much more impressive display — estimates range as high as 300 per hour — but we can hope for 30 or so, with the possibility of some wild fireballs thrown in to the display. Get up in the wee hours of the morning, bundle up, and head outside. It might just be a night to remember =)

Posted on November 16th, 2009 by Kenton and Rebecca
Filed under: Natural Phenomena | No Comments »

“Well, I had no idea,” I said.

We put down the book we were reading — Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.  Among other things, Mr. McDougall talks about ‘persistence hunting’ — a mode of hunting that is almost forgotten today. The idea is that humans run their prey down — which seems quite impossible when you consider that humans seem pretty slow compared to most other animals.

I had said ‘I had no idea’, because a couple of years ago I decided to embark on a strange and rather crazy quest. Spurred on by a sort of mid-life crisis and wanting to test my physical limits, I decided to chase after and catch a wild turkey with my bare hands. I devoted a year to the endeavor, training harder than I had ever trained and spending the whole winter chasing turkeys in the hills and valleys behind Sweetwater. The contest didn’t really seem fair, considering that turkeys can run at 25 mph. A world-class sprinter, at the most, might clock in at 27-28 mph, but I’m not a world-class sprinter. And if ground speed isn’t enough, they’re capable of 55 mph flight. Despite being rather outclassed, I had some great adventures, and wrote a book about the whole affair. Now I have an agent and we’re in the process of finding a publisher. On her advice, I can’t tell you the result of my quest, but I can tell you that I’m pretty impressed by the idea of persistence hunting (my quest was to catch a turkey and let it go, so I wouldn’t really call it ‘hunting’, but the basic idea is the same).

You see, despite the fact that we’re not very impressive sprinters, humans are superb endurance runners. In distance races against horses, humans often come out the victors. Some people are suggesting that during human evolution, it might not have been our intelligence that gave us our best advantage (there is some evidence that Neanderthals were the more intelligent species), but rather our running ability, which allowed us to secure game. The remarkable truth is that humans may very well be the best endurance runners on the planet — outpacing all other species.  This video records a persistence hunt by San tribesmen, and gives an overview of how a human can run down a Kudu (a type of antelope).

I discovered that many of the elements of persistence hunting that Mr. McDougall wrote about (many of which are also portrayed in the video above), had come naturally to me during my turkey quest. Toward the end of the winter, I began to ‘think’ like a turkey, and stayed on the turkeys’ trails for long periods by tracking and ‘intuiting’ where the turkey might have flown. In effect, I had observed them long enough and spent enough time in their environment that I understood the way that they reacted when they fled danger.

Rebecca and I are now becoming ultra-running aficionados. We’re going for longer and longer distances, often barefoot, and are discovering that running can be incredibly enjoyable when you relax into it and just let your legs carry you over the hills. It’s an amazing thought to consider that our ancestors might have used this skill to bring meat home to their families. We may not be using it for hunting, but there’s something magical about running over the ground and wondering if, indeed, we are following the pathways of an ancient tradition that shaped human evolution.

Read Kenton’s Latest Nature Column Article in the Dunn County News! (Sorry, the online version is lacking Rebecca’s awesome photography)

Visit our Adventure Journal to learn about our latest adventures!

Posted on November 3rd, 2009 by Kenton Whitman
Filed under: Nature Inspiration | 10 Comments »