Aromatic agrobiodiversity was in the news and the peer-reviewed literature today. Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) got a good write-up in ScienceDaily. It turns out that one of chemicals found in its spiky leaves — carnosic acid — can protect the brain from free radicals, but is only activated by the damage caused by these compounds. Otherwise it just sits there doing nothing, which is what you want in a drug. Anyway, there are lots of different varieties of rosemary, and different levels of carnosic acid among them. There are also wild populations in the Mediterranean, as of other herbs as well, and people who make a living harvesting them from the garrigue. That can sometimes be overdone, resulting in damage to the plants, and to the environment, due to increased soil erosion when it rains. So a study from Spain just published in the journal Catena is welcome. It quantified how much harvesting of various aromatic shrubs (lavender, oregano, sage and santolina) you can do before the soil starts to suffer. The recommendation is to leave 50% of the plant biomass in the field.
Two Africas
While browsing the iafrica.com website after reading its features on the potato, I ran across an article about tea-tasting at the Mont Rochelle Hotel in Franschhoek, not far from Cape Town. Which sounds wonderful. But a poignant complement to it was provided by a post I found a little bit later on a blog from the Botswanan village of Nata, which has a line about how tea and bread are served at funerals there. Anyway, Nata Village Blog seems like it’s definitely worth following. Franschhoek and Nata are about 1,600 km apart, as the crow flies.
Crop books reviewed
More about food and farming from bookforum.com, including links to reviews of books on the history of citrus and of beans. Meanwhile, iafrica.com has features on the potato in history and the potato and politics to remind us that 2008 will be the International Year of the Potato.
Kill and cure
There’s a great article at Common-Place about the Great American Ham. No, not Kevin Bacon. We’re talking how to cure “the thigh of a back leg of a hog, [with its] three large cross braided muscles, now designated the inside round, outside round, and sirloin tip.” It’s down to the “three s method: salt, saltpeter and smoke.” Sugar sometimes features as a fourth s. Fascinating historical stuff, and something of a (welcome)Â antidote to our incredibly popular mini-pig nibble.
Eat local
Interactive map of local foods in US.