Hello from sunny Alaska! Still unseasonably springlike here--we've seen green grass, mosquitoes, gnats; I was out hiking this afternoon and ran into a friend, whose friend was carrying bear spray! I guess the cue to hibernate isn't very strong just at the moment. Strange this weather has been. Homer is subarctic, but it is also maritime, which means that even in less bizarre winters there's usually a couple of thawing spells, hence icier roads than if everything just froze nice and tight for the duration. Since I'm shy of ice driving, I tend to be semi-glued to the ten-day forecast on Weather Underground throughout the winter, trying to prepare myself for what's to come. To which I should add, having lived in maritime climates in CA and HI too: meteorologists do their best with these weather systems blowing in from far out in the Pacific, but it's always somewhat of a crapshoot. Weather Underground are by far the most consistent, but they don't always get it right; sometimes the incoming weather system never makes it to land mass. For the past month, I've been amazed to see above-freezing temperatures all the way to the end of the ten-day forecast every time I look, repeatedly and repeatedly, the tail end of those ten days inching toward the end of the month. But now it's inching colder and should be 20 degrees and snowing by Friday, apparently. Hopefully nobody's bees or peonies will have come too far out of dormancy.
My own little dining-room-table garden continues. Sunflower sprouts reach for the light continually. I have a couple sad little parsley sprouts. Clover makes a nice cover crop, indoors as well as out in farmers' fields, but it's easy to eat as a sprout too. I've had some buckwheat greens, but one shouldn't consume those with any regularity because the greens (not the seeds, which have their own issues) contain fagopyrin, which can cause a photosensitive rash, and we have all kinds of light up here, haha. My milk thistle was a bust--old seeds, very poor germination.
I'm no kind of corn fanatic as so many people are--I don't care for popcorn. I'm suspicious of baked goods with corn grain for celiac reasons (non-gluten grains mess me up too). As far as corn in its "fruit" rather than "grain" phase I like fresh corn on the cob but not with the devoted adoration of many people; I love corn kernels but honestly I'm afraid of their calories (as ridiculous as that might seem)... But this 'ere purple corn is the graminaceous version of those magic beans Jack got.
I'd been hearing about "purple corn" and "purple corn extract" as a superfood for years and had been skeptical. You can get purple corn tortilla chips--that's mainstream novelty, far beyond the superfood universe in its own gimmick-prone spectrum. But I got hold of some purple corn for very cheap, and I was curious.
All purple foods are high in antioxidants. Anthocyanins, resveratrol. Heart healthy, cell protective. Ultra violet, crown chakra. Have you noticed how many purple foods come in a paler version? Grapes, eggplants, tomatillos, berries, cabbage and pretty much all cabbage family veggies, potatoes, beets...The darker version is always more delicious, richer tasting, antioxidant-richer. Green is my favorite color, but purple is my next favorite, and with all my indoor gardening, I felt drawn to see if those magic kernels would sprout, to green the purple.
Um. They were about 100% germination. And it's fascinating, the contrast of this monocot, this grass, looking like some sort of goofy insect, roots everywhere and that one intent shoot; so singleminded in comparison with the sunflowers with their gentle dicot pairs of leaves cauled in prayer by the black husk.
You can see them here. The sunflower sprouts, leggy with their two leaves at the top, still look prayerful, expansive, reaching out this way and that. The corn is the green fuse unfurling like a sword, looking just one way. Up. I snip sunflower greens and the stalks languish useless. I snip the corn; it keeps right on growing. It doesn't taste like corn whatsoever; it tastes more like wheatgrass, go figure.
Wheatgrass and barleygrass are famous for their enormous wealth of minerals. Grasses don't contain gluten, and their ratio of omega 3 to 6 is much better than that of grains. Amazing the transformations a plant can undergo. I think of trying to be a grass rather than a grain, of being an anti-inflammatory omega-3 rather than pro-inflammatory omega-6, vibrantly growing, full of minerals rather than dormant and protected with phytates to prevent me sprouting when winter pretends to be spring... Of course, the other big difference between grains and grass is that grains are highly caloric and grasses minimally so. But nobody's going to be surprised to hear that I'd rather be mineral rich and calorie poor than the other way around. So, that's how I'm going to be eating that corn! And I'm going to need more growing space!
