STABILITY

Cabbage slaw is perfect for a summer meal with any grilled meat or fish

By Barbara Shark Redstone Review

LYONS – I bought a beautiful green cabbage from Zweck’s farm stand on Airport Road. Connie Zweck claims their cabbage is as tender and sweet as lettuce and she’s right. I decided to make a favorite coleslaw with mangoes.

Cut half of the cabbage into thin shreds. Then peel and thinly slice a mango and add it to the cabbage with a big handful of torn cilantro and a smaller handful of slivered mint leaves.

Toss this with the dressing: combine the juice of a lime, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, a teaspoon of shoyu (soy sauce), a tablespoon of maple syrup and a big pinch of hot red pepper flakes.

Then add the crowning touch – caramelized macadamia nuts.

In a small heavy skillet, toast a handful of macadamias in a teaspoon of butter. Add a couple teaspoons of sugar and let caramelize, watching closely so the nuts don’t burn, then sprinkle them with a bit of salt and red pepper flakes. Let cool then scatter over the salad.

I’ve made this with peaches in place of the mango and Shark pecans or sliced almonds in place of the macadamia nuts. This delicious slaw is a great accompaniment to any grilled meat or fish.

Barbara Shark is an artist and author of How I Learned to Cook, an Artist’s Life. She lives near Lyons. For more recipes, read her blog at www.howilearnedtocookanartistslife.blog.

Tadka Dal – creamy, dreamy low-cal soup

By Catherine Metzger Redstone Review

LYONS – Although we don’t usually think about making soup in the heat of summer, once you discover this delicious dish featured at most Indian suppers – dal – it will become a welcome guest at your table with every season.

Dal is the Indian word for a bean or pea that is split. There are sweet dals and savory dals found in Indian cuisine. Some are served hot and others cold. What follows is a recipe for the bright yellow, restaurant-style tadka dal filled with the summer tastes of fresh tomato, onion, cilantro and turmeric married with the magic of the tadka.

Tadka means tempering spices in oil. It is a process common in Indian cooking where spices are heated in ghee or oil until they are crackling – but not burned – and the mixture is added to the dish either at the beginning or the end of cooking. In our recipe today, tadka lifts common spices we have on hand with their earthy fragrances and flavors married with beans, legumes and vegetables. This creates a creamy, deeply satisfying and visually cheerful cup of palate-pleasing soup/stew (you decide on the thickness).

If there is no Indian grocery nearby, some of the ingredients might be hard to find. I shopped online for the moong Dal (split yellow mung beans) and toor Dal (split pigeon peas) to get the result I was looking for. The pigeon peas have a distinctive nutty flavor. Mung dal are dried split mung beans without their green coat. Both are packed with protein, carbs, fiber, nutrients and minerals and are a great addition to your low-calorie, high-flavor dining plans this year.

This is a recipe from Food and Wine that I interpreted with what was on hand minus some of the chile heat in my dish for what became a delicious result. Once you learn this basic Indian soup, it will become a regular go to in your soup rotation. Tadka dal is delicious as part of an elaborate Indian meal or can be served simply as a complete meal over basmati rice.

Tadka Dal 1.5 hours. Serves 6 to 8

Dal 3/4 C dried split yellow mung beans 3/4 C dried split red lentils 3/4 C split pigeon peas 2 1/2 t kosher salt 1 1/2 t ground turmeric 6 to 7 C water 1 1/2 T canola oil 4 green cardamom seeds crushed, shells discarded 4 whole cloves 1 1/4 t cumin seeds (I substituted all three spices with 2 t garam masala) 1 medium-sized yellow onion, finely chopped (about 2 C) 2 medium fresh serrano chilies, whole and slit through from top to tail (I substituted 1 jalapeño) 1 medium tomato chopped (about 1 cup) 1/4 C roughly chopped fresh cilantro plus more for garnish

Tadka 3 T ghee 3 small dried chiles or more to taste 1 t cumin seeds • In a large saucepan stir together the first 5 ingredients along with 6 cups of the water and bring to a boil over mediumhigh heat. Reduce heat to medium low, partially cover and cook, stirring occasionally until dal is soft and tender, about 35 to 40 minutes. Add up to the remaining 1 cup of water 1/4 cup at a time until desired thickness and consistency is reached. • Heat oil in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add cardamom, cloves and cumin (or the garam masala, as I did) and cook until fragrant, about 30 to 45 seconds. • Add onion and serrano chilies and cook, stirring often until onion is lightly browned around the edges, about 10 minutes. • Add tomato and cilantro to the onion mixture and cook stirring often until the tomato begins to break down, about 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Add tomato-onion-cilantro mixture to dal mixture; stir to combine, season to taste with salt, cover and keep warm keep warm over low heat. • Just before serving, make the tadka: In a small skillet, heat ghee over medium high heat. Add dried chilies and cumin to pan; cook, stirring occasionally until cumin is toasted, fragrant, and beginning to crakle, about 30 seconds. Divide the dal mixture among serving bowls. Drizzle a portion of warm tadka over each bowl, sprinkling with additional cilantro. Serçe and enjoy.

Catherine Ripley Metzger has been cooking professionally and privately since 1979. She was a French cuisine journeyman at the celebrated Henri d’Afrique restaurant in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Today she is the proprietor of the food blog www.foodfortheages.com, and Facebook.com/Food for the Ages. Though she cooks every day in a tiny kitchen with a two-burner stove, her recipes are expansive and she dedicates her craft to living large by cooking well in tiny kitchens.

COOK SPICES WITH WITH ONION AND CHILES

ADD TOMATO AND CILANTRO

FINISHED DAL

CSU Researchers study bats in Uganda, with an eye toward disease transmission

By Mary Guiden Redstone Review

Editor’s Note: The team is studying bats that have an evolutionary relationship with beta coronaviruses. Researchers will be able to monitor them for transmission of SARSCoV-2 into the bat populations.

FORT COLLINS – Bats and humans depend on the caves that pockmark the Mount Elgon caldera in eastern Uganda, making it the perfect field site to study human-bat interactions and emerging viral pathogens.

This spring, an international team of scientists began a five-year research project in the area. Funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a Department of Defense agency tasked with identifying and mitigating emerging threats to global health, the research will help both countries understand and mitigate disease transmission from bats to humans and humans to bats.

Principal investigator and CSU virologist Rebekah Kading is building on a decade of experience in Uganda. “From a biodiversity perspective and an infectious disease perspective there’s a lot going on there,” Kading said. “People enter the caves to collect guano and salt crystals. They shelter in them with their cattle during rainstorms. They visit them for ceremonial purposes. It’s very tied with their communities and their resource needs, so it’s a really interesting place to study the interactions of humans, wildlife, and livestock and the transmission of infectious agents.”

Monitoring viruses, preventing outbreaks

After a year-long pandemic delay, Kading, veterinary postdoctoral fellow Dr. Anna Fagre, and postdoctoral researcher Emma Harris joined their Ugandan colleagues in May to capture, tag, and sample wild bats. They use passive integrated transponders – the wildlife equivalent of microchips for pets – to tag the bats. The PIT tags allow the team to identify individual bats and monitor virus infection and shedding over time.

“There’s some evidence that there are differences in viral shedding patterns according to the breeding and birthing seasons. We’re going to capture that information from these bat populations to get a seasonal assessment of the virus prevalence in these caves,” Kading said.

They sampled six species during the rainy season, when all of the female bats were pregnant. The team will return during the dry season with wildlife veterinar-

Continue Bats on Page 13

ian Dr. Kevin Castle to begin GPS tracking to collect data on the regional movement of the bats.

Eventually, they’ll be able to develop risk scenarios that predict what viruses are circulating when and where so local communities can gauge their risk. The team collected Rhinolophus and Hipposideros bats, which have an evolutionary relationship with beta coronaviruses, so they will be able to monitor for spillback of SARS-CoV-2 into the bat populations.

“The new post-pandemic perspective is that cross-species transmission is not unidirectional. If these bats are susceptible to this group of viruses, then we want to test for it because of human traffic in the caves,” Kading said.

The caves are considered community property because they provide valuable resources, such as shelter, guano, salt, and crystals. They are also used for tourism. Next year, the team will survey local communities to understand their knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of bats and human-bat interactions. They will also collaborate with village health care workers who are the first people on the ground to see and respond to infectious diseases.

“With SARS-COV-2, it’s arguably more important now than ever before to understand these interactions and how to mitigate risk of disease transmission while ultimately still protecting the conservation of the bats and maintaining the integrity of their habitat as much as possible,” Fagre said.

Understanding and protecting keystone species Kading is mindful that their work could have unintended consequences on the bats. “People observe us going into the caves with Tyvek suits and respirators to protect ourselves from infectious agents, but we don’t want to instill fear in them,” Kading said. “That might have negative consequences on the conservation of the bats, and so engagement is critical. We have lots of conversations about how to live safely with bats.”

Kading’s team depends on a Ugandan team led by Robert Kityo, a natural history biologist at Makerere University and the author of the East African Bat Atlas. While Kading focuses on biosurveillance and virus discovery, Kityo focuses on bat ecology and conservation.

Bats provide many ecosystem services as predators, prey, pollinators, and seed dispersers. As ecotourism and other economic pressures increase human-bat interactions, it becomes even more urgent to understand and protect bats and their habitats.

“We want to know what species of bats are in which caves? What lives in there with them? What are they eating? Who is going into the caves? What are their interactions with the bats? What is the relationship between bat habitats and local communities?” Kityo said.

Acoustic monitoring is essential to identifying species and understanding population distribution and movement. Kityo’s team and the Uganda Wildlife Authority aim to create a comprehensive library of bats and bat calls in Uganda. There are 110 known bat species in Uganda, but new species continue to emerge. Kityo’s team leads the bat capture and tagging efforts, and they also record bat calls in and around the caves.

“We know quite a bit, but there is a lot to uncover. We might record a call that we don’t know, and that’s a reason to keep searching,” Kityo said. “Tourism is not just about the Big 5. It is about all of the biodiversity. Tourism around bats in Uganda is not big yet, but I hope it will thrive.”

Rebekah Kading is the lead investigator for “Ecology, Epidemiology, and Biosurveillance for emerging viral pathogens of Uganda bats.”

The project is funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Partner intuitions include Colorado State University, Uganda Virus Research Institute, Makerere University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Uganda Wildlife Authority.

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A Word Walk at the Labyrinth

LYONS – Local author Kayann Short will hold a Lyons Word Walk writers’ workshop from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Sunday Aug. 1 at the Memorial Labyrinth on the river at the Rocky Mountain Botanical Gardens in Lyons. Short is encouraging writers of all experiences and genres to come to the Labyrinth to be inspired by the surroundings.

Kayann Short Ph.D. is the author of a new flash fiction story, To The River in Burning word Journal. She is also the author of A Bushel’s Worth, an Ecobiography. During her undergraduate career at Colorado State University, Short was a member of the Feminist Group, a student organization that challenged sexism on campus by shutting down a dormitory Playboy Club, establishing a Women’s Film festival and newsletter, and organizing the community’s first Take Back the Night march. After earning her bachelor’s degree in literature and women’s studies, Short played violin in a symphony orchestra, became a mom, and managed organic produce at a food co-op. Following in her greatgrandmother and grandmother’s teaching footsteps, she returned to graduate school for her Master’s and Ph.D. as a single parent and wrote her dissertation on the feminist press publishing movement.

Interested writers are asked to meet at the east entrance of the Rocky Mountain Botanic Garden at 104 Fourth Ave. Parking is available at Fourth and Prospect or Bohn Park. Writers are asked to bring whatever you need to write, plus water and whatever snacks will keep you fueled.

You can RSVP to kshort@greenspeedisp.net to receive a list of writing resources or you can just show up. A $10 suggested donation would be appreciated. Let nature’s wondrous rhythms inspire your writing in Lyons’ own botanic gardens and labyrinth.

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