Commonplace Vol. 4 Issue 4

Hello. It’s now early summer, properly, and for the first time in years, my reverse-SAD isn’t cutting in, which gives me an entirely more positive outlook on, well, everything. It’s not like it was ever all that bad, and probably wasn’t much visible to other people, but I’m very glad not to have seen it this year. It might arrive later, of course, but it’s always been worst around the time the clocks go forward, so I’m well clear of that. There are other effects of warm weather and just being busy, such that fewer newsletters get written.

[ There is a Patreon. It does very little for the subscriber, really, but it does encourages me to write more. Also, you can say “I knew him before he really went off the rails”. Sign up today! ]

(Sometimes I don’t understand what I’m looking at at all)

But anyway: I’m able to think a bit more about growing food at the right time of year. I already planted some kale plugs (Nina’s favourite green vegetable) which bolted as soon as they saw dry weather and were therefore eaten. I sowed dill, which is thriving, and courgettes, which didn’t take off at all and were replaced with purple broccoli plugs from Eva, and I’ve more stuff to go. All of this, thus far, is in containers at the front of the house. It’s shaded there except in the morning, but that might actually be a good thing for some of the plants, and the fact that there’s concrete around them saves them from some level of slug issues. Certainly everything there is absolutely thriving. There are also some volunteer potatoes in last year’s tubs, which I’m entirely willing to let roll, and see how they do. The seed potatoes for those must have been tiny, because I practically sieved the soil.

All the indications are that this will be a bumper year for foraged foods, too. Due to travelling back and forth for an SCA event’s setup and takedown as well as the actual event, we’ve had a lot of Wexford strawberries, and they’re excellent this year. The hawthorn had a density of flower greater than anyone seems to remember, and the elderflower is particularly prolific too. I’m not terribly keen on elderflower myself, but I spent an afternoon showing a friend how to identify it, and picking a pile of it so she can make syrup. The blackberries, at least at the blossom stage, look good, although they’re going to want more rain between now and the end of July or so.

At the aforementioned SCA event, I taught a class in basic camp kitchen management. I’ve taught this before; it starts with “here is how to light a fire”, and goes on to talk through the kitchen setup, interpreting a recipe from al-Warraq, and the cooking of that meal. Participants eat the meal at the end along with whoever else we’re cooking for at that camp. It’s always an interesting class to teach, and it’s always different, because people bring such diverse prior experiences and understandings. It also challeneges my own assumptions as to what’s common knowledge.

One of the questions this year was “what is mutton?”. And you know, that’s fair. Mutton is practically unknown in this country now, such that I can get goat more easily than mutton. Mutton is the meat of a sheep that is more than two years old. Almost all sheep meat in Ireland is sold as lamb, which is technically a year old or younger. The gap in between one year and two years is, very technically, referred to as ‘hogget’, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word in modern use. Hogget is sold as ‘lamb’ here, and I think in most places. And mutton just isn’t available at all. It has a stronger taste, it stews better than lamb, and it’s almost certainly the meat that’s expected in al-Warraq when the text says just ‘meat’.

Poking around online seems to indicate that some rural butchers, and old-fashioned ones in regional capitals like Waterford had some mutton until about 2010, and now it’s vanished even from those. Certainly no butcher that I’ve ever asked could get it, although one did say that if I’d commit to buying the whole animal, he could probably sort something out. I could not commit, so that went by the wayside too.

Part of this is because we can now get lamb (or hogget, whatever) year-round, via imports from New Zealand and South America. And part is, I think, probably due to the Irish aversion to foods associated with poverty. Or rather, foods associated with Irish poverty. We’ll happily eat stuff advertised as “Thai street food”, burritos, dumplings, ramen, and other stuff that is the food of poorer people in other countries, but as a culture we’re still somewhat averse to mutton, offal in general, wild-caught anything, mushrooms and other foraged foods, or indeed fish. All of these have been the foods of resort for Irish people up to the mid-twentieth-century, and they still seem to carry some pessimistic associations.

One of the really interesting outcomes of this, in a sociological sense, is that very upmarket and expensive restaurants do serve these things. And people will happily go there and eat them, and then go back to the more-positively-connotated chicken and beef at home. There’s also the phenomenon where people will pay significant amounts to go on day- or weekend-long foraging courses, be shown all the things you can eat from field, forest and hedgerow, and then never even consider going looking for them again once the course is over.

Speaking - sort of - of not eating things, Italy have banned lab-grown food. This isn’t particularly surprising given Italy’s somewhat purist food culture (at the level of legislation, anyway), but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I suspect there are a number of people who are now cranking their heads around to look at me and going “you’re in favour of lab-grown food?”. But yeah, I am. The population of the planet is still increasing fairly rapidly, and climate change is going to impact the ability to produce food. And if we ever, as a species, get around to actually trying to do something about that climate change, we’re going to have to give up some of the land currently in use for food production for forest and other re-wilding. (If this is of interest to you in general, I commend to your attention my other newsletter, Gentle Decline.)

One of the ways we can get around this is lab-grown food. For many purposes - curries, stews, burgers, sausages, even fried chicken and the like - lab-grown meat will be absolutely fine. It’s only when you’re looking at the plain cut of meat on the plate, as in steak, chops, and roasts, that anyone is going to notice any difference. And given the right scaffolds and growth conditions, that may not be evident either. Being able to surrender some of the vast areas of land currently in use for meat animals - particularly beef - will be essential. It’ll also mean that meat can be produced in urban or urban peripheral areas without contributing to pollution (or at least not in the same way) or the horror-shows that are American feedlots.

In support of such things, I have a couple of insect-and-soy burgers in the freezer, waiting for when I have enough brain to be able to cook and try them properly and thoughtfully. They came frozen from Lidl; I’ll report back when I get as far as trying them. I can also report that Burger King’s “Plant-Based Whopper” is basically indistinguishable from the beef version, and according to their own material “contribute up to 90% less CO2e emissions than [their] regular beef”. When they introduce lab-grown burgers, I’ll be keen to try those too.

Anyway. Enough rambling for now; I’ll try to get the next issue out somewhat sooner, temperatures and work allowing. This issue has been brought to you by summer temperatures, a farmer’s tan, a cat that has taken up plummeting from the skylight as a sport, and daily plant-watering. Eat well, and I shall write again soon.

[Support Drew’s writing via Patreon, and see some of the general background of life! Or throw a coin in the hat via Ko-Fi.]