When we talk about “culture,” we’re talking about everything humans have ever created to make their lives a little nicer, from painting, to music and literature, and including food traditions. We also use the word “culture” to describe foods that are alive with beneficial bacteria.

It’s no coincidence. Humans have been working together with health-giving microbes to improve our foods for longer than we’ve been painting or writing. Fermentation is culture, and there’s nobody who knows that better than our resident fermentation evangelist, Sandor Ellix Katz!

Below is an excerpt from his book Wild Fermentation, and if it whets your appetite for more information you should check out his newest book, The Art of Fermentation, too.

The following is an excerpt from Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Katz. It has been adapted for the Web.

Fermented foods and drinks are quite literally alive with flavor and nutrition. Their flavors tend to be strong and pronounced. Think of stinky aged cheeses, tangy sauerkraut, rich earthy miso, smooth sublime wines. Humans have always appreciated the distinctive flavors resulting from the transformative power of microscopic bacteria and fungi.

One major benefit of fermentation is that it preserves food. Fermentation organisms produce alcohol, lactic acid, and acetic acid, all “bio-preservatives” that retain nutrients and prevent spoilage. Vegetables, fruits, milk, fish, and meat are highly perishable, and our ancestors used whatever techniques they could discover to store foods from seasons of plenty for later consumption. Captain James Cook, the eighteenth-century English explorer who extended the far reaches of the British Empire, was recognized by the Royal Society for having conquered scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) among his crews by sailing with large quantities of sauerkraut.¹ On his second round-the-world voyage, in the 1770s, sixty barrels of kraut lasted for twenty-seven months, and not a single crew member developed scurvy, which previously had killed huge numbers of the crews of long sea voyages.²

Among the many lands Cook “discovered” and delivered into the Crown’s realm were the Hawaiian Islands (Cook called them the Sandwich Islands in honor of his patron). I find it an interesting parallel that the Polynesian people who crossed the Pacific Ocean and populated Hawaii more than a thousand years before Captain Cook also sustained themselves through the long voyage with fermented food, in this case poi, a thick starchy taro root porridge still popular in Hawaii and throughout the South Pacific.³

Fermentation not only preserves nutrients, it breaks them down into more easily digestible forms. Soybeans are a good example. This extraordinarily protein-rich food is largely indigestible without fermentation. Fermentation breaks down the soybeans’ complex protein into readily digestible amino acids, giving us traditional Asian foods such as miso, tempeh, and tamari (soy sauce), which have become staples in contemporary Western vegetarian cuisine.

Milk, too, is difficult for many people to digest. Lactobacilli (a type of bacteria present in fermented dairy products and many other types of ferments) transform lactose, the milk sugar that so many humans cannot tolerate, into easier-to-digest lactic acid. Likewise, wheat that has undergone fermentation is easier to digest than unfermented wheat. A study in the journal Nutritional Health compared unfermented and fermented versions of a mix of barley, lentils, milk powder, and tomato pulp and found that “starch digestibility almost doubled in the fermented mixture.”⁴ According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which actively promotes fermentation as a critical source of nutrients worldwide, fermentation improves the bioavailability of minerals present in food.⁵ Bill Mollison, author of the Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition, calls the action of fermenting foods “a form of pre-digestion.”⁶

Fermentation also creates new nutrients. As they go through their life cycles, microbial cultures create B vitamins, including folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, thiamin, and biotin. (Ferments have often been credited with creating vitamin B12, otherwise absent from plantsource foods; however, this bubble has now been burst by improved assaying techniques that show that what had been identified as B12 in fermented soy and vegetables are actually inactive “analogues.” B12 is only found in foods from animal sources, suggesting that a vegan diet is deficient in B12 without supplementation, the efficacy of which is quite controversial.⁷)

Some ferments have been shown to function as antioxidants, scavenging cancer precursors known as “free radicals” from the cells of your body.⁸ Lactobacilli create omega-3 fatty acids, essential for cell membrane and immune system function.⁹ A marketer of “cultured whole food supplements” boasts that “the culturing process generates copious amounts of naturally occurring ingredients like superoxide dismustase, GTF chromium, detoxifying compounds like glutathione, phospholipids, digestive enzymes, and beta 1,3 glucans.”¹⁰ Frankly, nutritional factoids like this make my eyes glaze over. You don’t really need chemical analysis to tell you what foods are healthy. Trust your instincts and your taste buds. The data adds up to this: Fermentation makes food more nutritious.

Fermentation also removes toxins from foods. This is vividly illustrated by the case of cassava, an enormous tuber native to the tropical regions of the Americas that has also become a staple food in equatorial regions of Africa and Asia. Certain varieties of cassava contain high levels of cyanide and are poisonous until they have undergone a soaking fermentation. The fermentation process eliminates the cyanide, rendering the cassava edible and nutritious.

Not all food toxins are as dramatic as cyanide. All grains contain a compound called phytic acid, which can block absorption of zinc, calcium, iron, magnesium, and other minerals and lead to mineral deficiencies. Fermenting grains by soaking them before cooking neutralizes phytic acid, rendering the grain far more nutritious.¹¹ Nitrites, prussic acid, oxalic acid, nitrosamines, and glucosides are some other potentially toxic chemicals found in foods that can be reduced or eliminated by fermentation.¹²

Eating fermented foods live is an incredibly healthy practice, directly supplying your digestive tract with living cultures essential to breaking down food and assimilating nutrients. Not all fermented foods are still alive when you eat them. Certain foods, by their nature, cannot contain live cultures. Breads, for instance, must be baked, thereby killing the organisms present in them. However, many fermented foods can be consumed live, especially those involving Lactobacilli, and alive is the most nutritious way to eat them.

1. Sue Shephard, Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 210.
2. Claude Aubert, Les Aliments Fermentés Traditionnels (Mens, France: Association Terre Vivante, 1985), cited in Sally Fallon, Nourishing Traditions (Washington, D.C.: New Trends Publishing, 1999), 95.
3. Shephard, Pickled, Potted, and Canned, 129.
4. R. Binita and N. Khetarpaul, “Probiotic Fermentation: Effect on Antinutrients and Digestibility of Starch and Protein of Indigenously Developed Food Mixture,” Nutritional Health 11, no. 3 (1997).
5. Chavan et al., United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Fermented Foods: A Global Perspective, Agriculture Services Bulletin, 1999.
6. Bill Mollison, The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition (Tyalgum, Australia: Tagari Publications, 1993), 20.
7. Victor Herbert, “Vitamin B-12: Plant Sources, Requirements, and Assay,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 48 (1988), 852–58.
8. L. A. Santiago, M. Hiramatsu, and A. Mori, “Japanese Soybean Paste Miso Scavenges Free Radicals and Inhibits Lipid Peroxidation,” Journal of Nutrition Science and Vitaminology 38, no. 3 (June 1992).
9. S. Bengmark, “Immunonutrition: Role of Biosurfactants, Fiber, and Probiotic Bacteria,” Nutrition 14, nos. 7–8 (1998).
10. “New Chapter Health Report,” 2000.
11. Sally Fallon goes on at some length about phytic acid in Nourishing Traditions, 452. This idea is confirmed in Paul Pitchford’s Healing with Whole Foods (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1993), 184.
12. Mollison, The Permaculture Book of Ferment and Human Nutrition, 20.

Chelsea Green isn’t the only publisher on the planet with a focus on sustainability. Two of our key partners in bringing books on green living into the world are in the United Kingdom: Green Books and Permanent Publications.

We distribute many Green Books and Permanent Publications titles here in the United States — and Green Books does the same for many of our books in the UK.

So without further ado, here are the latest offerings from across the pond. Enjoy!

New From Green Books

Future Money: Breakdown or Breakthrough? by James Robertson

Future Money explains in plain language and convincing detail how money is now working to propel us toward the self-destruction of our species – and what we should do about it. Of course, money is not itself the problem, but in the way it works at present, it affects us as a diseased blood or brain system affects a living person.

$23.95 - Paperback

How to Grow Perennial Vegetables: Low-Maintenance, Low-Impact Vegetable Gardening by Martin Crawford

Perennial vegetables are a joy to grow and require a lot less time and effort than annuals. In this book Martin Crawford gives comprehensive advice on all types of perennial vegetable (edible plants that live longer than three years), from ground-cover plants and coppiced trees to plants for bog gardens and edible woodland plants.

$26.95 - Paperback - Full Color

Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective by David Cooper

In this book David E. Cooper explores our relationship to nature – to animals, to plants, to natural places – and asks how it can be shaped into an appropriate one which contributes to the good of people’s lives as a whole. Religions and philosophies have much to say about our relationship with nature, and Chinese Daoist philosophy has long been regarded as among those most sympathetic to the natural world.

$19.95 - Paperback

The Weeder’s Digest: Identifying and Enjoying Edible Weeds by Gail Harland

A practical, attractive guide to identifying and using many edible weeds. Provides details on over 45 species, with advice on how to identify and use them in the kitchen, as well as tips for non-culinary uses. It includes both common weeds, such as nettles, dandelions, and chickweed, and less common ones, such as brooklime and pineappleweed. Advice is also given on avoiding toxic plants.

$17.95 - Paperback - Full Color

Weeds? If you Can’t Beat them, Eat them! - Daily Mail Book Review

The Fruit Tree Handbook by Ben Pike

The Fruit Tree Handbook is a clear, practical guide that will help both amateur and expert to grow delicious fruit, from apples to mulberries and plums to peaches. Simple instructions guide you through soil preparation, choosing the best varieties and planting your trees successfully, while the mysteries of pollination and pruning are unraveled with the help of diagrams and photographs.

$29.95 - Paperback - Full Color

New From Permanent Publications

People and Permaculture: Caring & Designing for Ourselves, Each Other & The Planet by Looby Macnamara

People & Permaculture widens the definition of permaculture from being mainly about land-based systems to include our own lives,relationships and society. This book provides a framework to help each of us improve our ability to care for ourselves, our friends, families and for the Earth. It is also a clear guide for those who may be new to permaculture, who may not even have a garden, but who wish to be involved in making changes to their lives and living more creative, low carbon lives. People & Permaculture transforms the context of permaculture making it relevant to everyone.

$34.95 - Paperback

Permaculture Design: A Step-by-Step Guideby Aranya

In this unique, full color guide, experienced permaculture teacher Aranya leads you through the design process from beginning to end, using clear explanations, flowcharts and diagrams. It is based on course worksheets which have been designed, refined and tested on students over time. Linking theory to practice, he places the ethics, principles, philosophies, tools and techniques directly into the context of the process itself. While written for anyone with a basic grasp of permaculture, this book also has plenty to offer the more experienced designer. 
$24.95 - Paperback - Full Color

Tonight marks the first big frost in central Vermont, and I am SO excited. It’s rosehip jam time. What could be more illusive and mysterious than a wild rose? I’m picking the rosehips tomorrow morning, post-frost.

A rosehip’s sweet, unique flavor is perfect on morning toast. There are several methods to making this type of jam; I will probably opt for Variation 2. I am so excited. Did I already express that? And I haven’t even said the best part yet: that there’s no canning necessary.

The following is an excerpt from Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation by Gardeners & Farmers of Terre Vivante. It has been adapted for the web:

Marinated Rosehip Jam

VARIATION 1 :

Rosehips (fruit of the wild rose)
White or red wine (optional), or water
Sugar
A preserving pan or large saucepan
A food mill
Canning jars and lids

This jam is seldom made, unfortunately. It’s true that you have to gather rosehips during the winter, after several frosts have softened them. The cold and the wild-rose thorns take their toll on your fingers, and the preparation for this jam
takes quite a bit longer than for most other kinds. Having said this, the delicious taste and velvety smoothness of rosehip jam make it all the more worthwhile! Rosehips are also very rich in vitamin C (one-half pound of rosehips contains as much as is found in two pounds of lemons). The Causses region, where I live (in extreme south-central France) is poor, but covered with wild-rose bushes. Every year, I partake of frozen, silent mornings, for the pure pleasure of giving my friends this glowing nectar to savor.

Pick the rosehips when they are very soft (January or February, depending on the winter). Remove the black tip from each end, place the fruit into a preserving pan, and cover it with a good white or red wine. Marinate one week, stirring
every day. (You can leave out the wine and omit this marination step, cooking the rosehips with just enough water to cover them, but the flavor of the jam will be different. Jams made with white wine or red wine also taste different from each other, but they’re both a treat!)

After one week, cook the contents of the pan over high heat for fifteen minutes. Then put the rosehips through a food mill, using a fine grind (this is the longest part of the process, due to the quantity of seeds in rosehips). Weigh the purée obtained and add one and two-thirds pounds of sugar per two pounds of purée. Cook this mixture for thirty minutes, stirring constantly. Put the jam in jars and seal them. The consistency of the jam will vary from year to year; some years it comes out firmer than others.

–Emmanuelle Bompois, St. Énimie

VARIATION 2:

Rosehips
Sugar
A large saucepan
A food mill
Canning jars and lids

Gather the rosehips when they are very ripe, immediately after the first frosts. Sort and wash the rosehips, if necessary. Immerse them in boiling water for a few minutes; then put them through a food mill with the cooking water, using a fine grind. Weigh the puréed rosehips, and add one and one-third pounds of sugar per two pounds of purée. Cook this until thick enough. Put it in jars, closing them immediately. The normal consistency of this jam is thick, but it will become very hard if you cook it for too long.

–Sophie Jacmart, Coux

Uncooked Rosehip Jam with Honey

Rosehips
Liquid honey
A food mill
Canning jars and lids

Pick the rosehips after the frost, when they’ve become soft. Wash them, remove the stems and the black tips, and purée the fruit in a food mill. Using the back of a knife, scrape off the purée that comes out. This process may seem long and tedious, but it’s worth it. Mix the purée along with an equal amount of liquid honey. This jam is very rich in vitamin C and will keep indefinitely. You can serve it as a garnish on desserts, cakes, and so on.

--Odille Angeard, Cognin

The humble honeybee does so much for us. Bees pollinate plants we depend upon for food like apples, tomatoes, zucchini — lots of crops need the gentle nuzzle of a bee or butterfly to get from pretty flower to juicy fruit. And of course they make honey — a food we’ve turned to for thousands of years to make our lives a little sweeter.

Honeybees and other bees have been in trouble in recent years. You might have heard mention of Colony Collapse Disorder. Is it a disease, is it caused by cell phone towers? Nobody really knows the cause for the massive drop off in bee populations, but we all know it’s bad news.

National Honeybee Day is August 18th, so this week we’re celebrating the honeybee by putting a few of our bee books on sale for 25% off. If you’ve been thinking about starting a hive of your own, this is a great opportunity to learn from the masters at a great price.

Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health by Les Crowder and Heather Harrell

Top-Bar Beekeeping provides complete information on hive management and other aspects of using innovative top-bar hives that mimic the shape of a hollow log. All home and hobbyist beekeepers who have the time and interest in keeping bees should consider the natural, low-stress methods outlined in this book. It will also appeal to home orchardists, gardeners, and permaculture practitioners who look to bees for pollination as well as honey or beeswax.

Listen to Bee Mentor’s interview with Les Crowder.

Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture by Ross Conrad

Natural Beekeeping describes opportunities for the seasoned professional to modify existing operations, increase profits, and eliminate the use of chemical treatments. Beginners will need no other book to guide them. Whether you are an experienced apiculturist looking for ideas to develop an integrated pest management approach or someone who wants to sell honey at a premium price, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Start anew: become a honey farmer! Read this excerpt from Natural Beekeeping to learn more.

On a small island off the coast of Denmark, Hanne Risgaard and her family grow organic grains — wheat, spelt, rye — stone-grind them, and bake beautiful breads, pies, cookies, and more. The farm is called Skaertoft Molle (translation: Cut-Road Mill), and the family has won awards for their healthful and delicious grains.

Now you too can create wonderful breads from the simple recipes in Risgaard’s book, Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry. The book is on sale this week for 25% off.

Nordic cuisine is growing in popularity, perhaps owing to its focus on fresh and wild flavors. Home Baked follows from this tradition, incorporating unexpected flavors into easy and healthy bread recipes, such as “green knots” that use fresh nettles, and fragrant bread made with lavender buds.

Including a step-by-step guide to kneading dough, and full color photographs of the farm and each recipe, Home Baked is a must-have for bakers and bread-lovers everywhere.

Richard Bertinet, author of Dough: Simple Contemporary Breads agrees:

“Hanne Risgaard’s connection to and understanding of the grains grown and milled on her land at Skaertoft shines through in this beautiful collection of Nordic recipes, drawn from the rich baking heritage of northern Europe. Home Baked is atmospheric and appealing!”

Get Home Baked for 25% off this week only!

What’s in a seed?

If you’re paying attention as closely as author and activist Janisse Ray, you might say life itself — and not just the plant life that waits patiently inside — but all life on Earth depends upon how we treat these tiny, potent, irreplaceable seeds.

Ray talked about her new book The Seed Underground, and explained the importance of seeds and biodiversity in a recent radio interview on “Your Call” with Rose Aguilar, and took calls from listeners and weighed in on topics raised by other guests, too.

Of the thousands of seed varieties available at the turn of the 20th century, 94 percent have been lost — forever.  “And the less biodiverse any system is,” says Ray, “the greater the potential for its collapse.”  So how can we save the seeds we have left?  Listen here.

Part of what makes The Seed Underground so inspiring are Ray’s visits with fellow seed-saving revolutionaries around the country, coupled with her own lifelong passion for the environment and for seed-saving.

In this excerpt on Utne.com, you can join Janisse as she meets with Sylvia Davatz, a seed-saver and gardener in Vermont.

The woman who answered my knock didn’t look like a revolutionary. She was slim, in blue jeans and hyacinth turtleneck. Sporty reading glasses hung from her neck.

“Right on time,” she said.

I smiled. “For once.”

When I decided to learn as much as I could about seeds, I was directed to a village in central Vermont where a woman lives—a quiet, under-the-radar revolutionary, I was told—who understands some things I’m trying to understand.

She invited me inside, into a sparkling and artful kitchen. The walls were red, the stove green, the counters blue. On a woodstove rested a pan filled with seed heads I did not recognize. The woman followed my eyes. “Leeks,” she said.

Meet Sylvia Davatz, radical American gardener. Somewhere in her well-kept home in the forested hills of central Vermont is a seed collection of plant varieties salvaged from the dustbins of history. “I’m the Imelda Marcos of seeds,” she laughed. “I have a thousand varieties in my closet!”

Keep reading…

Chelsea Green authors give you plenty of reasons “why” you should live more simply, sustainably and resiliently. But, readers return to our books year after year because they are also practical — filled with information culled from years of an author’s hands-on experience. Our authors guide you through the “hows” of living in concert with the natural world — sometimes through cutting-edge techniques and other times using timeless traditions — in a way that helps you become your own expert too.

In honor of this tradition, we’ve gathered a selection of inspired and unique projects from our books and put them on sale. Learn how to start a batch of wild sourdough, save tomato seeds, build an outdoor shower heated by the sun or rethink your personal finances to keep your money safe from the global banking system.

Happy reading from the folks at Chelsea Green Publishing.

FERMENT-IT-YOURSELF: Start a batch of sourdough

Retail Price: $39.95 Sale Price: $25.97

Sourdough is a mixed culture starter for rising bread (as well as many other culinary applications). Want to start your own sourdough and keep it healthy? In The Art of Fermentation you’ll find tips for this and much, much more.

All you need to start a sourdough is flour and dechlorinated water. Maintaining it takes a little care and attention, but with Katz as your guide you’ll be catching wild yeasts in no time. FIND OUT HOW…

Sandor Katz presents the concepts and processes behind fermentation in ways that are simple enough to guide a reader through their first experience making sauerkraut or yogurt, and in-depth enough to provide greater understanding and insight for experienced practitioners.

GARDEN TIP: How to save tomato seeds

Retail Price: $17.95 Sale Price: $11.67

There’s a trick to saving tomato seeds, trapped as they are in the juicy, gooey flesh of the tomato. But it’s not hard to do, and if you save seeds from varieties you love you’ll be joining in the front lines of the latest food revolution

 Along with charming profiles of radical seed-savers, the book has practical tips. LEARN HOW TO SAVE TOMATO SEEDS…

In The Seed Underground, Janisse Ray’s latest work of literary nonfiction, the award-winning author and activist argues that if we are to secure the future of food, we first must understand where it all begins: the seed. 

RECIPE: Bake a loaf of lavender bread

Retail Price: $39.95 Sale Price: $25.97

If you’re tired of the same old wheat bread, Home Baked will offer you some exciting new recipes, like fragrant lavender bread, and teach you to work with different grains.

Take a look at two receipes (Hanne’s Lemon Pie and Lavender Bread) HERE….

With enticing, full-color photographs throughout, Home Baked offers recipes and techniques for baking artisan bread and pastry using organic, nutrient-rich grain and stone-milled flour.

DIY PROJECT: Make a self-watering planter

Retail Price: $24.95 Sale Price: $16.22

You can grow many different crops on your balcony, or in a sunny spot indoors using self-watering planters. Even better yet, it doesn’t have to cost you (much). Take a lookt at this great weekend project to make your own self-watering growing container (on a bookstrap budget). Learn how HERE…

A comprehensive “how-to” guide for growing fresh food in the absence of open land, Fresh Food from Small Spaces can teach you how to make some — and much more. The book is a practical, comprehensive, and fun guide to growing food in containers and other small spaces.

ORGANIC GARDENING 101: A crash course in composting

Retail Price: $24.95Sale Price: $16.22

The first step in year-round organic gardening is learning to make good compost. It will form a strong foundation for whatever you choose to grow in your greenhouses and cold frames.

Get started with a good foundation by building nutrient-rich compost for your plants. FIND OUT HOW…

This tip comes from Eliot Coleman’s classic Four-Season Harvest. If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this book is for you.

HOW TO: Build a simple solar shower

Retail Price: $35.00Sale Price: $22.75

If you can’t beat summer’s heat, you might as well join it! Build a solar shower and enjoy the sun’s warmth in a whole new way. Try this easy-to-build, inexpensive solar shower. FIND OUT HOW…

This is just one of the great ideas in The Carbon-Free Home. The energy used in your home produces more global-warming pollution than your car. But there are plenty of simple things you can do to reduce your home’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Read this book—then grab your handsaw, tape measure, and drill, and get started! A life powered by the sun is waiting for you. Meant as a guide for renovating existing homes, The Carbon-Free Home gives you the hands-on knowledge necessary to turn your existing house into an environmental asset.

PERMACULTURE TIPS: A guide to gardening with chickens

Retail Price: $39.95 Sale Price: $25.97

With a few careful considerations to protect your crops, chickens can help out in the garden — and Harvey Ussery can help you figure it out. Put those hens to work in your compost pile! FIND OUT HOW…

His book, The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, is the most comprehensive and definitive guide to date on raising all-natural poultry for the homesteader and small farmer.

No other book on raising poultry takes an entirely whole-systems approach, or discusses producing homegrown feed and breeding in such detail—it is truly an invaluable and groundbreaking guide that will lead farmers and homesteaders into a new world of self-reliance and enjoyment.

BE PREPARED: A list of what you need to survive

Retail Price: $24.95 Sale Price: $16.22

If you’re prepared for the worst, it won’t be so bad: put together a 72-hour survival kit today. This simple guide will help ensure you’re ready for the unexpected.  GET STARTED…

Disasters often strike without warning and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. Yet armed with the right tools and information, survivors can fend for themselves and get through even the toughest circumstances. Matthew Stein’s When Disaster Strikes provides a thorough, practical guide for how to prepare for many of life’s most unpredictable scenarios.

This disaster-preparedness manual covers how to find and store food, water, and clothing, as well as the basics of gathering and sterilizing water, building a fire, and treating injuries in an emergency. 

GREEN UP YOUR FINANCES: Become your own banker

Retail Price: $17.95 Sale Price: $11.67

Did you know that local investing doesn’t just have to involve food co-ops and small businesses? You can do wonders by strategically investing in yourself as well. Local Dollars, Local Sense can show you how to cut your addiction to easy credit-card money and save by becoming your own banker. Just like in Monopoly, you can become your own banker. FIND OUT HOW…

In this book, local economy pioneer Michael Shuman demystifies the growing realm of local investment choices—from institutional lending to investment clubs and networks, local investment funds, community ownership, direct public offerings, local stock exchanges, crowdfunding, and more.

 

 

 

 

More New and Noteworthy Titles On Sale

 

* Books on sale until August 15th*

Ever since Eve took some snake’s bad relationship advice, the apple has been an important part of our lives.

Apples come in many colors and subtle differences of flavor, each unique and bursting with vitamins. In temperate climates they’re easy to grow, and recipes abound for cooking with them in both sweet and savory dishes, as well as preserving them by canning or drying.

This week is National Apple Week, and to celebrate we are offering a bushel of books with tips for growing your own apples, lists of rare varieties, nutrition information about apples, and recipes.

The books below are on sale for 25% off until August 13.

	The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way by Michael Phillips Phillips’s newest book demystifies the basic skills everybody should know about the inner-workings of the orchard ecosystem, as well as orchard design, soil biology, and organic health management.
	The Apple Grower: A Guide for the Organic Orchardist, Second Edition by Michael Phillips For decades fruit growers have sprayed their trees with toxic chemicals to control a range of pests. This book shows it is possible to grow apples organically, and teaches you how.
	Cooking Close to Home: A Year of Seasonal Recipes by Diane Imrie and Richard Jarmusz Created by a nutritionist and a chef, this gorgeous cookbook has plenty of unique apple recipes including Simple Apple Cheddar Turnovers and Delicata Squash with Apple.
	Old Southern Apples: A Comprehensive History and Description of Varieties for Collectors, Growers, and Fruit Enthusiasts by Creighton Lee Calhoun An indispensable reference for fruit lovers everywhere, especially those who live in the southern United States. Features descriptions of some 1,800 apple varieties that either originated in the South or were widely grown there before 1928.
	Whole Foods Companion: A Guide for Adventurous Cooks, Curious Shoppers, and Lovers of Natural Foods by Dianne Onstad Nutrition information on tons of different fruits and vegetables, including apples.

Power from the People: How to Organize, Finance, and Launch Local Energy Projects by Greg Pahl is here!

If you’ve ever looked up at the power lines feeding into your home and wondered if there could be a better way than giant plants miles from town supplying your electricity by burning dirty fossil fuels — this is the book for you. The answer is an emphatic yes! There are many better ways to generate power than our current system, and Greg Pahl shows through examples from around the country and world how communities can take control of their energy destiny, generating power in more resilient and more sustainable ways.

Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet says about the book, “Talk about down-and-dirty. Or rather, down-and-clean! Here’s the actual useful detail on how to do the stuff that really needs doing. Read it and get to work!”

Power from the People is the second book in the Community Resilience Guide series — a project in partnership with Post Carbon Institute exploring the newest and most promising examples of relocalization for uncertain times.

To celebrate the arrival of Power from the People, we’re sharing the Foreword from the book, written by Van Jones, author of the recently-released book Rebuild the Dream and The New York Times bestseller The Green Collar Economy. Jones is president and co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, a platform to foster bottom-up, people-powered innovations to help fix the U.S. economy. He is currently a Visiting Fellow in Collaborative Economics at Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco.

“This book rests and optimistic message on a pessimistic premise,” Jones writes in the opening of the Foreword. “The paradox is this: Only by recognizing how much worse things can get can we muster the energy and creativity to win a better future. In that regard, the book you hold in your hands is not just an action guide; it is a survival guide.”

We couldn’t agree more. But, if that’s not enough, Jones adds:

Climate change and the economic and equity crises of our communities may appear to have little in common, but they share a key determining factor—namely, our near-complete dependence on coal, oil, and natural gas. The carbon dioxide produced by driving our vehicles, heating (and cooling) our homes, and lighting our cities with fossil fuels is the main culprit behind climate change. Meanwhile, that same dependence on fossil fuels sucks billions of dollars every year out of communities across America, with the poorest households often hit hardest.

But what if we found ways to power our homes, businesses, factories, and vehicles that didn’t warm the planet, that kept local dollars circulating in local economies, and that even created local jobs? What if we spread those climate-friendly, local-economy-boosting, job-creating ideas to every city and town across the country?

For more inspiring words from Van Jones, continue reading below.
Power from the People - Foreword by Van Jones

The following recipe is from Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection by Jessica Prentice.

At the height of summer, when the days are long and the Earth is in bloom, we enter the lunar cycle known in sixteenth-century England as the Mead Moon. The beehives are heavy with honey made from the pollen of spring and summer flowers, and honey was the crucial ingredient for making mead—the honey wine of legend, myth, and human history brewed from the precious produce of industrious bees.

Mellow Mead

Makes 2 quarts
This lacto-fermented mead has very little alcohol but showcases the flavor of honey, and is delicious. Mead was traditionally drunk on the summer solstice.

• 2/3 cup raw, unfiltered honey
• 1 1/2 cups filtered water, very warm (about 110°F)
• 6 cups filtered water
• 1/2 cup kefir grains—rinsed grains from making milk kefir, or water kefir grains

1. Pour the honey into a clean, 2-quart mason jar.
2. Pour the hot water over the honey and stir to dissolve.
3. Pour the rest of the filtered water into the jar.
4. Add the kefir grains.
5. Cover the jar and put it in a warm place for 1 week.
6. Strain into two glass bottles with screw tops. I use the bottles from the mineral water Gerolsteiner. Put an even amount into both bottles. If they are 1-quart bottles, they should be full; if they are 1-liter bottles, add enough water to fill to the top. Screw the lids on tightly, label and date the bottles, and return to the warm place for another week.
7. Transfer to the fridge. Once they are cold you can enjoy them anytime! When you are ready to drink the mead, open the bottles carefully because they may have built up a lot of carbonation. Open them outside or over a sink. Turn the lid very slowly to see if the drink begins to release foam. If so, then allow it to release some of the carbon dioxide by not opening the bottle all the way and letting out some of the pressure, then opening it more and more, bit by bit. This way you won’t lose your drink to its carbonation.