Time to check your pulses
This is the year — believe it not — of the “pulse.”
But I’m not talking about the sensation that keeps flickering reassuringly in our wrists.
Pulses are vegetables — the dried kind, such as lentils, chickpeas and various beans — which get harvested late in the season, primarily for their seeds. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization declared 2016 the “International Year of Pulses” in an attempt to make more people aware of their potential as a food source, an idea which Canadian author and gardener Dan Jason heartily endorses.
“I’ve been growing and talking about the value of pulses for 30 years,” he writes in a new book called The Power of Pulses, “and I remain more convinced than ever that they could help renew the health of our planet.”
Why? Unlike other more demanding foodstuffs, such as corn, pulses snatch nitrogen out of the air and add it to the soil, increasing its fertility, he explains. You can, in fact, keep growing pulses over and over, in the same place.
“They are the epitome of renewable energy,” he notes, “(but) most North Americans don’t know beans about beans.”
Huh? This assertion strikes me as a bit out of date, given that so many pulse-heavy dishes (such as hummus, made from chickpeas, as well as lentil soup and Mexican black beans) are now available everywhere. Yet Jason backs up his claim with startling facts. Canada is currently the world’s largest exporter of pulses, producing billions of them. Yet we apparently pulse-shy Canucks consume only a fraction of that amount.
Also, in a bizarre, “coals to Newcastle” twist, we even import some pulses such as lentils and dried peas that are sold in supermarkets.
Jason would like to see more small-scale farmers across the country producing pulse crops. And gardeners? He wants us to try them too, lamenting that they are rarely seen in garden seed catalogues.
Yet whoa, Dan. Pulses may be “easier to grow and more rewarding than just about any other garden crop” out where you live, on Salt Spring Island in B.C. Yet that’s not always true in Ontario. Alas.
I eagerly tried lentils a few years ago, during a wet, cool summer. But disaster. They hardly grew at all. And because pulses aren’t harvested until their pods are completely dry and crinkly, they need a long growing season — also a tall order in our neck of the woods. (Where I live, we often get late, wet snow in May.)
Still, inspired by Jason’s passion for pulses, I did plant one this year, a climbing pea called Swedish Red. And thanks to our unexpected sizzler of a summer, it was indeed easy. The vines clambered with gusto up a makeshift trellis in my veggie plot, producing pretty pinkish-violet flowers and plenty of pods.
After I shook those pods last week, hard peas resembling purple chocolate chips tumbled out. Then soaked overnight and simmered in a soup with garlic, onions, potatoes, carrots and fresh mint, the peas turned the rich, inviting hue of black beans.
Yum. Pretty tasty. So with Ontario summers getting hotter, I’ll probably try more pulses next year. If you want to do the same, Jason’s seed company, Salt Spring Seeds, sells some unusual varieties with fascinating names (saltspringseeds.com).
The book is also a source of delishsounding recipes such as Lentil and Mushroom Cottage Pie, which vegetarians will enjoy. They were devised by Jason and his two coauthors, Hilary Malone and Alison Malone Eathorne.
The Power of Pulses is published by Douglas and McIntyre. soniaday.com