Get Ready to Barter, Baby! + Recipe: Oat Milk
Issue No. 65
We’re back for 2021! And what a wild first two weeks it has been. 😱 We’re making a few changes for the new year. Sunshine + Microbes will publish the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month. Special editions might also go out here and there, if we feel particularly inspired. 😉 Also check out our new food calendar section!
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I’m currently taking a course through Sterling College called “Surviving the Future”, based on the work of the late British economist David Fleming. The underlying message is that the next 30 years will look very different for humanity than the last thirty years. And if the first week of 2021 was any indication, that feels like quite the understatement.
This week I have been thinking a lot about the role that the informal economy might play in our collective future. Fleming defines the informal economy as “[t]hat part of an economy whose members provide for each other and cooperate on terms which do not involve money.” This includes all the ways we coexist as family units, like cooking, cleaning, instilling values, and caring for the elderly. A very old example of the informal economy that’s currently having a resurgence among activist communities is mutual aid, a system of community care built around the free exchange of resources for mutual benefit. When I lived in the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts, I participated in Valley Time Trade, a super cool barter system. It worked like this: I received time credits for cooking food and walking dogs, which I could then use to get my socks darned or get a massage. It’s also how I learned to use a pressure cooker!
Trading Eggs for Star Fruit 🤝
When we think about all food systems in history besides our own global industrial food chain, we think of informal economies on an individual community or regional-scale. Neighbors bartering milk for eggs; the gifting of canned goods or extra star fruit from the garden; village-wide hunts and harvest parties.
I do not think it’s likely that our industrialized food system will completely collapse in my lifetime. I do think that factors like climate change, social unrest, and diminishing resources will make it significantly less stable and ubiquitous in my lifetime, and perhaps in the near future. Informal food economies will start to plug some of these holes, and folks that can garden or bake bread or brew beer or raise goats will strengthen their local food networks. Perhaps some visionary savior will swoop down with a fabulous new technology that will secure our future and save us from ourselves, but...better safe than sorry.
Community Building in 2021
Particularly as I embark on my forthcoming little bakery, I’d like to bake in (heh) the concepts of the informal economy into my business. For example, let’s say you’re a reliable handyperson on the Treasure Coast, in exchange for fixing a few things around the house, I could offer you free bread for a year (or life. We’d barter for it!) Also, I am really desperate for a good handyperson. Please send recs.
For me, 2020 was defined by isolation. I want 2021 to be defined by community building. As the world continues to be a dumpster fire, I’m constantly grateful for the support of my community of friends and family. My intention for 2021 is to use food as a means of further strengthening that support network, from dropping off loaves of bread to my neighbors to enjoying backyard meals with friends to weeding my mother’s garden to starting a community fridge. Let’s think of the next year as a testing ground for growing the robust informal economy we’ll need to survive the future.
love,
Jackie
Start the New Year right… and share this newsletter with some friends!
The School Nutrition Association is advocating that Congress make universal free school lunch and breakfast permanent. You can read their position paper here. Congress won’t act on any related legislation until at least March, but for now, you can email your congressperson (👉 use this handy tool from FoodCorps) to express your support for universal free school lunch and breakfast.
The pandemic has made feeding our community even harder. In the U.S., 1 in 5 children don’t have enough food to eat, an increase of a factor of 14 since fall 2019. Thankfully, the HEROES Act, which includes free school lunch for all students among its provisions, has been extended through the rest of the current school year. But it should be a perennial program.
Free school lunch is worth spending money on. Besides reducing food insecurity and obesity and improving health and nutrition, it’s also linked to improved academic performance. Check out the Food Research and Action Center for all the facts and figures. Anyone that’s tried to get work done while hungry understands the clear connection.
🍝The Very Real, Totally Bizarre Bucatini Shortage of 2020 | GrubStreet
Rachel Handler asks “What the hole is going on?” in her investigation into the disappearance of her favorite pasta from supermarket shelves. Bucatini looks similar to spaghetti but the pasta has its own cult-like following due to the hole in it, which allows it to absorb more sauce.
And during the pandemic it’s started to disappear in the United States.
Handler’s trip down the Bucatini (rabbit) hole involves the FDA, Big Pasta, and a seemingly petty case of sabotage. The mystery itself makes for a lively detective feature that also illustrates how peculiar parts of U.S. bureaucracy can cause a food shortage for the entire country.
🥐 I Got High and Made Croissants Like Meryl Streep | Vulture
Rachel Handler, who solved the bucatini mystery, took on a more internal challenge here. After watching the Nancy Meyers’ movie “It’s Complicated”, Handler asked herself if it was possible to replicate the scene where Meryl Streep makes croissants while she’s stoned with Steve Martin.
The result of this totally trivial investigation is one of the funniest stories I’ve read in a long time. (Yes, I was high when I read it. But it’s probably funny sober too!). Really, I highly (pun not intended) recommend spending time with this delirious article as an escape from the current Hellworld.
Time begins to stretch like the pliant dough I am not working with. The fridge door is slick with butter. I have eaten all of the Frosted Flakes and now have started on peanut butter straight from the jar. My boyfriend returns to the kitchen. “Why is there flour on your hips?” he asks. I try to tell him “it’s complicated” but can barely get the words out because I am so funny. (It was a sativa.) I write in my notes, “It’s complicated hahahaha.” I also write, inexplicably, “The dough and I are friends now and we finally agree.”
🛒Stealing to survive: More Americans are shoplifting food as aid runs out during the pandemic | Washington Post
The bummer of our current reality is that so many people in the United States are living precariously. One tough week away from not being able to put food on the table. As a result shoplifting is on the rise. What’s most alarming is the foods being shoplifted: “staples like bread, pasta and baby formula.”
Security experts say there’s historically a correlation between high joblessness and shoplifting. It’s not about stealing televisions, but just goods to survive.” Census Bureau data from November shows an all-time high number of U.S. adults without enough food — almost 26 million. Supermarket manager Joo Park said he’s noticed a consistent uptick of people taking diapers or bags of rice or a package of meat. Basics that are harder to afford with high unemployment and economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
Park usually doesn’t call the police but just bans offenders from returning. “People will say, ‘I was just hungry,” Park said. “And then what do you do?”
Cultured Oat Milk
Last summer, we sent out a survey to our readers asking for recipes they'd most like to see in this newsletter. The winner — to my surprise and delight — is the suddenly trendy oat milk!" This vegan mylk is excellent in smoothies, splashed into coffee, used in desserts like cobbler, or heated with spices and served as a warm drink.
I culture my oats beforehand, because fermenting grains isn’t just for sourdough. Beneficial microbes help break down grains, making them more digestible and their nutrients more readily available. And the lactic acid bacteria acts as a preservative, extending shelf life. I like to save the leftover solids from oat milk and add them to bread dough. Since this recipe is easy peasy, I’m including a few variations to play around with below.
Makes 4 cups
Ingredients and special tools
1 cup rolled oats
4 cups water
1 teaspoon plain yogurt
optional: 2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup
optional: 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
blender
fine-mesh sieve
thin cotton kitchen towel
In a large bowl, thoroughly mix water, oats, and yogurt. The yogurt serves as the fermentation starter, inoculating the oats with beneficial lactic acid bacteria. Cover the bowl loosely with a kitchen towel and allow to ferment at room temperature overnight or up to three days. Stir once or twice a day to keep anything funny from growing on the surface.
Add cultured oat and water mixture to a blender, along with sweetener and vanilla extract if using. Blend for about 30 seconds on high, until the oats are completely pulverized.
Place the sieve over a bowl, and place the kitchen towel inside of the sieve. Pour the mixture into the kitchen towel. Gather the corners of the towel together so that the mixture hangs in a little package below your fist and spin and squeeze the package of oats. That way the liquid (your oat milk!) drips away from the solids out of the bottom of the towel. Continue squeezing until no more liquid remains.
Store the oat milk in an airtight container in the fridge for up to two weeks. Save the oat solids for another use, like adding to pancake batter.
Variations:
Nutella: add 2 tablespoons of Nutella to blender, cut sweetener to 1 tablespoon
Golden Milk: add 2 tablespoons fresh chopped ginger and 1 tablespoon fresh chopped turmeric to blender
Fertile Crescent: Add 1/4 cup pistachios to oats, replace vanilla extract with 2 teaspoons rose milk, and replace sweetener with 2-3 dates
We’re adding a new section to the newsletter, a rundown of upcoming classes and other food events happening virtually or in South Florida. Feel free to email us with calendar submissions! If you have any questions about any events, please ask.
Compound Butter Demo with Jackie | Sunday January 17th at 3 p.m. | FREE | IGLive
Bread + Butter January | All Month! | Zoom and IGLive
I Heart Salad Workshop with Jackie | Wednesday January 20th at 7pm | $12 | Zoom
Vegan Cream Cheese Workshop with Jackie | Wednesday January 27th at 7pm | $12 | Zoom
Submit an event to sunshinenadmicrobes@gmail.com
From last week’s workshop on making your own mayo 👇
Best advice for 2021
Talk to Us
Send in your comments, mailbag questions, recipe mishaps, or cooking tips: sunshineandmicrobes@gmail.com. Also do us a favor and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Visit our website and cook yourself something nice.
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is a cook and kitchen educator based in Stuart, Fla. She is co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a communications specialist at the ACLU of Texas. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.