Future Food
As I write this it’s during a global pandemic where the most logical thing for a person like me to do is stay home—which is what I’ve been doing as much as possible. But, this isn’t going to be a post about preparedness or the current pandemic.
Being home has brought my thoughts around to my early spring garden. I have plenty of greens and leeks ready right now—and had I been organized, and had my poly greenhouse survived the last snow storm, I could have plenty of other types of food ready, or soon to be ready (like early potatoes). A small space like mine can produce plenty to eat. And as always, I think home grown food is the tastiest.
But what about producing food in even smaller spaces? And since I’m a scifi writer, what about growing good food in space?
For future space travelers, we can do way better than ‘space gorp’ — in fact, I’ve never been in a circumstance where food can’t be made better (even if only slightly), from army rations to ship board fare in the high Arctic. It turns out there are people at work researching this as discussed in this article (https://www.wired.com/story/space-food-what-will-keep-us-human/)
If food is culture, when we move off this world we’ll need an interplanetary cookbook to make the best of the food available. And the available food will likely be different than what we’re eating now. A nice example is the eating of dandelions on the moon in The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowel (I loved this detail!). They’re easy to grow (plenty are growing in my garden right now) and they’re already used as a food source in some cultures, there’s no reason not to eat them.
I’m curious what else might end up in our interplanetary cookbook.
P.S. The photo is of lentil plants from a past garden (beluga lentils to be exact) -- the plants were gorgeous, but I didn't get many lentils