BRB w/ Nathan P - Mushrooms Saving the Bees, Lava Cakes & Braiding Sweetgrass
This Wednesday, we're diving into a breakthrough solution to stop colony collapse in bees, the perfect Valentine's Day dessert, and how indigenous practices can heal our relationship with food.
Welcome to BRB with Nathan P - a weekly newsletter on all things food & climate. Each Wednesday, I’m excited to pour your inbox 3 freshly roasted brews: 1 Breakthrough, 1 Recipe, and 1 Book revolving around food & climate. (BRB, get it?)
Before we get started, here are some highlights of food & climate news this week:
This new ‘mega ranch’ turns mushroom roots into meat (Fast Company). Start-up Meati is turning mycelium into chicken & steak alternatives after raising $250M to date.
Liberation Labs Selects Indiana for First Biomanufacturing Facility (Global Newswire).
Biden protects vast wilderness area in Minnesota from mining (Washington Post).
BP Cuts Long-Term Oil and Gas Demand Outlook. It’s Good News for Renewables (Barron’s).
💥 Breakthrough: Mushrooms Saving the Bees
Disclaimer: I love mushrooms. And I think they are the key to solving many of our food and climate challenges. And they might be able to save the bees, too.
Around 75% of crops - from fruits and veggies to beloved cocoa and coffee beans - depend on pollination from bees. But since 2006, beekeepers’ colonies have been declining at an annual rate of ~30%. The culprit? Colony Collapse Disorder, believed to be driven by parasitic mites and the viruses they carry.
Paul Stamets, leading mycologist and visionary featured in Fantastic Fungi and How to Change Your Mind on Netflix (highly recommend both), once observed in his garden that bees nibbled on mushroom roots called mycelium. Why might that be? It turns out that mycelium contain immune-boosting and anti-viral compounds.
He collaborated with University of Washington Professor Steve Shappard to discover that two fungi (Metarhizium and Fomes fomentarius for the mushroom nerds out there) could kill these parasites without harming bees and protect from viruses as well. Their innovation: a patent-pending mushroom extract bee-feeder that I dream to see in most backyards one day.
It is now well-known that many fungi carry anti-viral compounds that can also protect against bird flu (H5N1) and other viruses. Paul Stamets made the case to Congress and the DOD that old-growth forests should be protected for the sake of National Security. Bilateral support. Mic drop. Go Paul.
[PS: what is the difference between fungi, mushroom, and mycelium, you ask? Fungi is a kingdom of living species (like animals) that includes mushrooms and unicellular organisms like yeast. And using the analogy of a tree, mycelium is the roots and the mushroom is the fruit.]
🥘 Recipe: Lava Cakes
Valentine’s Day is already in two weeks. Make the perfect dessert for your loved one: a warm & gooey lava cake.
Want to make it fancier? Serve it with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and fresh raspberries. My twist on the recipe below.
PS: if you make it, please send photos!
Ingredients (makes 3 large or 4 smaller lava cakes)
1 stick or 115g of butter
2 eggs and 1 yolk (keep the egg white for something else!)
20g brown sugar
40g granulated sugar
2g of sea salt
20g of flour
Vanilla extract
Instructions (total time: 25 mins)
Grease 4 6oz ramekins with butter. Add a teaspoon of sugar to each ramekin, then tilt and turn to coat all the walls. Discard excess.
Bring an inch of water in a pot to a boil, then melt in a heat-proof bowl (large enough to sit on top without touching the water) 165g of 70% chocolate with 115g of unsalted cold butter. Stir until incorporated.
Whisk 2 eggs and 1 yolk until doubled in volume, then add 20 g of brown sugar and 40g of granulated sugar, 2g of fine sea salt, and a splash of vanilla extract.
Add the egg mixture to the chocolate mixture and stir. Add 20g of flour and mix in. Divide the batter evenly among ramekins, then place in oven heated to 450F for 10-11 minutes. You can tell it’s ready when the borders of the lava cake look cooked and the middle is slightly underdone.
Carefully flip ramekin onto a plate and serve lava cake with powdered sugar, vanilla ice cream, and raspberries.
📚 Book: Braiding Sweetgrass
This is a book I love gifting and talking about.
Robin Wall Kimmerer shares her multitude of perspectives as an indigenous woman with PhD in botany. In different chapters devoted to her favorite plants - like strawberries, pecans, and witch hazel - she contrasts the reciprocity of ecology with the transactionality of consumerism. Our food system is no exception. We lack of curiosity in where our food comes from; we build systems that extract rather than regenerate; we favor short-term gains to long-term harmony.
Robin interrogates our relationship with food and the land, encouraging us to become indigenous to where we live. We have much to learn from age-old indigenous practices like the ‘Three Sisters’ - beans, corn, and squash - which grow in resilient polycultures rather than chemically fertilized monocultures.
Young college graduates often aspire to ‘have an impact.’ After reading this book, I think having minimal impact (on the planet) can be beautiful, too.
My favorite quotes as teasers:
“For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.”
“Wild strawberries fit the definition of gift, but grocery store berries do not. It's the relationship between producer and consumer that changes everything. As a gift-thinker, I would be deeply offended if I saw wild strawberries in the grocery store. I would want to kidnap them all. They were not meant to be sold, only to be given.”
That is all for today - BRB next week ✌️
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier - I’m an avid reader, food enthusiast, and climate optimist. I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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Very Interesting read, love it! Well done Nathan!