Courtesy of the National Lentil Festival
Every August (this year, the 16th and 17th), thousands of visitors flock to Reaney Park in Pullman, Washington for the annual National Lentil Festival. While there, they stroll through the garbanzo garden, buy from marketplace vendors, sample the world’s largest bowl of lentil chile, and watch live lentil cooking demos. Performers entertain on the main stage, adults sample local beverages at the beer and wine garden, and children play in the lentil land kid’s area. There’s more — the Tase T. Lentil 5K Fun Run, a lentil pancake breakfast, and the famous lentil cook-off. Past winning cook-off recipes include cinnamon lentil mini-pies, lentil empanadas, and caramel lentil cheesecake.
A lentil festival?
Yes. Pullman has been hosting this festival since 1989. The city is in the heart of the farm-rich Palouse, and the Palouse has long been known as a major producer of lentils. In fact, one-quarter of all U.S. lentils are grown here. Today lentils are just one of a rising number of pulse foods grown in the region.
Pulse foods?
Pulse foods have nothing to do with throbbing arteries or bursts of sound. They are actually members of the legume family, a special legume sub-group. Legumes themselves are plants whose ‘fruit’ grows in a pod. Well known legumes include alfalfa, fresh peas, soybeans and peanuts. Legumes are good for the soil because they convert nitrogen in the air into nutrients available to plants, thus improving the soil and reducing the need for nitrogen fertilizers.
Pulses are the dried edible seeds of the legumes. The most common are lentils, chickpeas (garbanzos), dry peas, and dry beans. The word comes from the Latin puls, which means ‘thick soup.’ In contrast to some legumes, pulses have extraordinary health benefits – low in fat, very high in protein and fiber, and high in a variety of minerals. They are also gluten-free and easy on the pocketbook.
Good for the body, good for the soil. Small wonder these strangely named foods have been gaining in popularity in recent years.
To wheat and beyond:
Wheat remains the most important crop on the Palouse, but the fields suffer if wheat is planted year after year. In the past, pulse crops were planted primarily as a rotation crop to replenish the soil, but today farmers, to their great pleasure, find that pulses have also become a cash crop in their own right. With the growing interest in healthy, earth-friendly foods, pulses are included in many innovative recipes. Perhaps best known is hummus, a Mediterranean dip made from mashed garbanzos, tahini (sesame seed paste), and olive oil. Rising to the demand for garbanzos, the Palouse has become the nation’s leading producer. Another popular pulse recipe, perfect on a cold winter day, is split-pea soup. In addition, pulses today are found in everything from breads to breakfast cereals.
A year in the pulse fields:
In 2017, The Spokesman-Review newspaper ran a series of articles on farming in Washington State. Though quite interesting, the articles were long. I’d often start one, set it aside, then forget to finish it. So I was pleased to learn the newspaper was publishing the articles in book format, and even more pleased to find the book under the tree on Christmas morning. Titled A Year in the Fields: The State of the Washington Farmer, it – of course – has a chapter about “Pulses on the Palouse,” written by Chad Sokol.
Courtesy of The Spokesman-Review