Book Review: “Eating on the Wild Side,” by Jo Robinson

Have you ever wondered how to pick the perfect watermelon out of the bin at the supermarket?  Or how best to store that salad mix you just bought?  Or whether there’s a nutritional difference between white and yellow corn, green or red lettuce, or the 15 varieties of apples available at your local produce stand?  Or whether strawberries will become sweeter if you let them sit on your counter for a day or two?

If you like answers to questions like that, you’ll enjoy Jo Robinson’s book “Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health” (Little, Brown & Co., 2013), available at books stores in your neighborhood or online and at public libraries (where I checked out a copy), and also in audio and E-book editions.

“Eating on the Wild Side” is not about searching for wild asparagus along country lanes or picking mushrooms under your pine trees.  Its 17 chapters cover commonly available vegetables and fruits, each chapter covering such topics as: history and how each vegetable or fruit has changed, usually for the worse, through its encounters with us humans over centuries and sometimes millenniums; how to forage for nutritious varieties when you’re buying at the super market, farm stand, or U-pick; how to best store and prepare them; and recommended varieties, with some basic details about each.  Each chapter ends with bulleted “Points to Remember” that cover main points and will comfort you if you are time challenged.

Here are a few of the many things I learned from this book:

1.  As a general rule, darker colored vegetables and fruits are more nutritious than their lighter colored cousins.  Red or bronze lettuce is better than green.  Yellow corn is better than white.  But there are exceptions to the rule.  For example, a light-green Granny Smith apple is more nutritious than a Pink Lady (my favorite in recent years), and a white peach is more nutritious than a yellow one.

2. Sometimes a cooked vegetable or fruit has more nutritional value than a raw one.  An example is sweet potatoes: “Steaming, roasting, or baking them can double their antioxidant value, but boiling reduces it.  Ounce per ounce, the skin is more nutritious than the flesh, so eat the whole root.”  What, eat a sweet-potato skin?  I find that suggestion hard to swallow.

3.  Red cherry tomatoes have more of the anti-oxidant lycopene than large red beefsteak tomatoes.

4.  Green tomatoes sometimes are gassed with ethylene to turn them red—but sometimes the gas is also used to turn green oranges orange and green grapefruits and bananas yellow.  Who would have suspected?

Vegetable chapters cover lettuce and other salad greens (arugula, radicchio, spinach); alliums (garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, chives, scallions); corn; potatoes; other root crops (carrots, beets, and sweet potatoes); tomatoes; crucifers (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale); legumes (beans, peas, lentils, edamame); and artichokes, asparagus, and avocados.

Fruit chapters cover apples; blueberries and blackberries (loganberries, boysenberries, marionberries); strawberries, cranberries, and raspberries; stone fruits (peaches, nectarines, apricots, cherries, plums and prunes); grapes and raisins; citrus fruits (sweet, cara cara, blood, and Valencia oranges and tangelos, mandarins), grapefruit, lemons and limes; tropical fruits (bananas, pineapples, papayas, mangoes, guavas); and melons (watermelons, cantaloupes, honeydews, casabas).

I like the book because it contains so much good, practical information, and I am reluctant to mention a debatable downside: Some possible medical or health benefits mentioned, such as phytonutrients in vegetables and fruits, are based on test-tube or animal research and not yet duplicated in human health studies.

For a general example, sometimes referenced are oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) values researched by the United States Department of Agriculture.  Wikipedia says this about ORAC:  “A wide variety of foods has been tested using this method, with certain spices, berries and legumes rated highly in extensive tables once published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), but withdrawn in 2012 as biologically invalid, stating that no physiological proof in vivo existed in support of the free-radical theory.  Consequently, the ORAC method, derived only in in vitro experiments, is no longer considered relevant to human diets or biology by the USDA.”

Of course, as nutritional research and human studies continue, researches may eventually prove what today is not scientifically accepted by the majority.

The dust jacket of “Eating on the Wild Side” identifies Jo Robinson as a “health writer and food activist” and author of 14 books.  If you want additional information about the author’s approach to food and nutrition, check out her website at www.eatwild.com.

If you’ve read this book, please share your thoughts in a Comment below.

Update:  The January 30, 2014, print edition of the Washington Post, p. A2, carries an article by Ariana Eunjung Cha, “Study questions antioxidant use in cancer patients,” that indicates some current research findings about antioxidants.

Deer Country 10: Annual Flowers

Browsed marigold

Nearly every gardener in Deer Country has a list—a short list—of annual flowers that local deer don’t eat. Over the years my short list included—note the past tense—marigolds, petunias, and vincas.


In “Deer Country 1,” I mentioned how the sunflowers and pansies I planted when we first moved to Meadow Glenn disappeared and how I then realized that deer were going to use our flower gardens as a salad bar.


My defense was to start planting annuals that I thought deer would pass by. Friends advised, “Try marigolds. They have a strong scent that the deer will avoid.” Others suggested, “Try petunias. They have furry leaves the deer don’t like.”


I planted marigolds, and, amazingly, the first year had beautiful blooms. But the second year, deer regularly browsed the marigolds—and we had no blooms to admire.

Browsed petunia

I planted petunias and they grew for several months and started to bloom. “Ah, ha,” I thought. “The deer really don’t like the furry leaves. I’ve outwitted them.” Then one morning I was greeted with petunia plants consisting of just stems. The deer had eaten all the blooms and leaves. The plants struggled to releaf, but they never bloomed again.


I had better luck with vincas, a tropical import. I planted a line of them in the narrow bed between our front sidewalk and our front porch. In fact, I planted them successfully for about five years, and we enjoyed their pink and white blooms in mid-summer until cold weather set in. And then in year six the deer decided to browse the vincas. They ate the leaves and as they browsed pulled up many of the plants, which don’t have much of a root system.

Browsed & uprooted vinca

I don’t plant annuals in our deer-accessible landscape. I do usually grow a row of zinnias and marigolds in our fenced backyard, but I’ve surrendered to the deer elsewhere. I now spend my effort and time on perennial flowers with which I’ve had much better luck, which means I planted them, they grow and bloom, and the deer generally ignore them. In the next several Deer Country postings, I’ll be talking about those perennials.


Are there annual flowers that I could grow without deer browsing here at Meadow Glenn? Probably. Are there annual flowers you can grow without deer browsing in your landscape? Probably. The only way to find out is to experiment. Grow some good candidates and see what your deer think of your additions.


There are lists of good candidates in the publications I mentioned in “Deer Country 3.” The Soderstrom book lists a page and a half of “Annuals and Biennials.” Hart lists seven candidates, including zinnias, which our deer browse. Adler has several pages of “Plants Rarely Damaged,” including some annuals, and Drzewucki lists a dozen annuals. Both Adler and Drzewucki include marigolds and petunias, which Meadow Glenn deer browse heavily. University of Maryland Extension Fact Sheet 655 includes several annuals in its “Rarely Damaged” section on “Annuals, Perennials, and Bulbs.”


If you’re serious about growing annual flowers in Deer Country, I recommend that you invest in a deer-resistant fence, experiment to find varieties your deer don’t eat, or use a deer spray.


To go to “Deer Country 3,” which lists the books and brochure mentioned in this posting, CLICK HERE.

To go to “Deer Country 4,” which discusses repellents, CLICK HERE.


Please post a Comment to identify annual flowers that deer in your part of Deer Country don’t eat.

FrugalGardener: Plant Tags as Bookmarks

After noting important information from the plastic tag of a newly purchased plant, I sometimes use the tag as a bookmark.


Recently, though, I had a very sad thought: people who buy an ebook and read it on a Kindle or similar electronic reader can’t use a colorful plant tag as a bookmark. They’ll not experience pleasant gardening memories when they remove a plant tag at the page where a chapter begins. They’ll not wonder why they’re wandering in the kitchen and looking for a blueberry muffin to snack on.


Sad thought indeed. I think I’ll continue buying “old fashioned” books in which I can place real bookmarks. How frugally quaint, but those ground-up trees don’t ever need recharging, and you can pass them on to a friend to read after you’ve enjoyed them or give them to a charity for recycling.


For curious readers, despite the book cover in the posted photo, I am a grammarphile, not a grammarphobe. I also smile at my own, spell-check’s, and other writers’ misspellings, such as the recent Internet news story by a Baltimore TV station calling the clients of physicians “patiants.”


So logical, I thought as I smiled, so wye knot? It could have been “patience.”


But back to “grammarphile” and “grammarphobe.” Do you fit yourself into one of those classifications? And why?

Deer Country 3: Helpful Information for Gardeners

What better time to read about deer and gardening than during the winter months, when you’re dreaming of next year’s gardens and wondering how to keep deer away.


Over the last 15 years I’ve read several books and many magazine articles and Internet resources about gardening in deer country. I want to recommend five publications—one university publication and four books. The university publication is available free online, and the books are available for sale at local or online book sellers and for checking out at some libraries.

1. Fact Sheet 655, “Resistance of Ornamentals to Deer Damage,” available free online to read, download, or print, at the University of Maryland Extension’s Home & Garden Information Center’s website. The brochure divides plants into four categories, “Rarely Damaged,” “Seldom Damaged,” “Occasionally Damaged,” and “Frequently Damaged.” Each of those categories is then subdivided into “Trees, “Shrubs & Climbers,” and “Annuals, Perennials, & Bulbs.” A great first publication to read if you’re serious about solving your deer problem. To access, CLICK HERE.

2. Neil Soderstrom, Deer-Resistant Landscaping: Proven Advice & Strategies for Outwitting Deer & 20 Other Pesky Mammals (Rodale). I think this recent book (2009) is the best of the four I’m recommending. It’s a book you can pick up and read a chapter or just skim here and there. It contains hundreds of color photos. Chapter 1 is “Outwitting Deer.” The next chapters are about everything from armadillos and bears to voles and woodchucks. Chapter 21 is “Research on Deer Resistance.” Chapter 22 is “Deer-Resistant Plants.” Chapter 23 is “Profiles of Deer-Resistant Plants.” This is a stunning beautiful and highly useful and insightful book. 635.0496S in Howard County libraries.

3. Rhonda Massingham Hart, Deer Proofing Your Yard & Garden (Storey). This was my long-time favorite until Soderstrom’s book arrived. Read it if Soderstrom isn’t available, or you want to read two books on the subject. I’ve always smiled that this deer book was written by a Hart. 635.0496M in Howard County libraries.  ("M" for Massingham, the last name now used by the author.)

4. Bill Adler, Jr., Outwitting Deer (Lyons). Similar in organization and contents to the Hart book. Adler's writing should make you smile at times.  This is the only book where you find a comment of the Humane Society of the United States followed a few pages later by a recipes for Curried Venison and Venison Shortcake.  635.0496A in Howard County libraries.

5. Vincent Drzewucki, Jr., Gardening in Deer Country (Brick Tower). 635.0496D. Similar to Hart and Adler, but perhaps a bit simpler, especially good if you’ve napped too long and want a quick read. 635.0496D in Howard County libraries.

Isn’t there snow in the forecast? Happy reading.


In the next Deer Country: homemade and commercial deer repellents. Do they work?