I spent the morning in bed.... weeding.

My daughters and I packed up the car early this morning and took the 45 minute drive to our farm.  I like to call it "our farm".  It is in a way.  We are CSA members of a small (5 acre) organic farm in Oxnard, Calilfornia (just outside of Los Angeles).



We have been members of Join the Farm (as "our farm" is known) for almost a year now.  I stumbled upon them quite by accident - during some late night googling for a local organic CSA to try and bring to our neighborhood elementary school.  I hadn't been able to find one as "local" as I wanted - most seemed to be south of Los Angeles, and we live on the northern end. I did not relish the idea of produce being driven through the City to get to us.  I had been doing a lot of reading on food access - and the relationship between the communities our freeways intersect (on which our food is transported) and those same communities access to fresh produce. It was shocking.

As I looked more closely at Join the Farm I learned of their relationship with The Abundant Table Project. The project centers around issues of faith, social justice and sustainability. It sounded like a great fit. I contacted the farm and off we went. Drumming up subscribers in the beginning wasn't easy. We began with a core group of five families - not enough for delivery to our school site. Confident we could build it up we signed on and rotated driving to the next nearest pick-up spot. Soon we had doubled our subscribers and were able to move delivery to our school. (How does your CSA grow?)



At first I struggled with making my way through our weekly box but we are now in a groove, and look forward to unpacking our bounty each week.

I've turned to on-line resources for new recipes, including past CSA posts here on sewgreen. We've built a blog for our subscribers to share what they are doing with their box. We organize visits to "our farm". That is the icing on the cake.



Today the girls weeded a bed of purple beans for two hours. Careful to stay in the furrow, they worked quietly and carefully. The only break they took was when they were asked to go check for eggs in the hen house - they took off running. They love it there. They have taken it as theirs without question. And this connection to the soil, to our food, to the people who grow it, to where we live, is more valuable than I imagined.

Garbage-less Lunches

I may write a whole lot about food over at my other blog (It Ain't Meat, Babe), but I don't get much of a chance to write about how that food gets eaten. I usually leave that up to my readers. But personally, despite spending most of my time thinking about how the food gets prepared, I also have some systems in place for how it gets eaten.

First let me tell you that my day job necessitates a lot of travel. A LOT! I am rarely in my office. Some days I am working in rural communities two hours out of the city. Some days I'm in some far-flung suburb. Occasionally I am lucky enough to be working somewhere within walking or biking distance. As a result of this, I've become very good at packing a lunch. I know it's usually the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly thing to do. Not to mention the fact that vegan food is hard to come by in most places, especially if I'm looking for a quick lunch to eat while I'm traveling.

So I pack my lunch. But what do I pack it in?



Over my many years of lunch-bringing, I've figured out how to make everything involved with my lunch reusable. Lots of schools have garbage-less lunch programs in place, I figured why not have a one-woman garbage-less lunch policy in place for myself?

My first step was to find some glass containers with good lids. I try to use as little plastic as possible, period. Although we have no microwave at home, I do sometimes use one when I'm lunching elsewhere and I am loathe to microwave any of my food in a plastic container. (Why fuss around trying to figure out if one container or another is "microwave safe" when you can just avoid the potential danger all together?)

So far, in our house, we've tried three different kinds of glass containers (all have plastic lids). The little round one in the photo above is made by Anchor. We have larger versions as well and I have to say that they are the clear winners. They are union-made in the United States and they are reasonably priced, widely available, and oven safe. The lids fit tightly, even after a few dishwasher washings. They aren't completely leak-proof, but they aren't too bad if the food inside isn't too liquidy.

The other container in the photo is made by Pyrex and it is my least favourite of our three varieties. The sizes are kind of awkward, and the lids are freakishly tight at first and then loosen a lot when washed in the dishwasher. Though I must say, looking at their website it seems they've introduced a line of containers with "No-Leak Lids". I'd be anxious to give those a try.

My other favourite is the Glasslock containers (not pictured). The lids are almost completely leak-proof (why "almost"? Well, let's just say my purse smells a bit more like curried cauliflower than I'd like it too. However, my boss brings soup in one of these containers everyday and her briefcase is unscathed, so I may just have a slightly wonky specimen.) These are a little heavier than the Anchor containers and some of them are labelled "not safe for oven". They are also made in the U.S.A.



The other lunch item I never leave home without is my homemade cutlery holder. If you can sew in a straight line, you can make one of these. All it is, is a rectangle of fabric, folded over on one end with stitches making sections of the fork, knife, spoon, and napkin. I added a ribbon to one end so that after I fold down the top flap and roll it up, I can tie it closed. Some spare cutlery from a secondhand store and a cute cotton napkin complete the project. It doubles as a placemat if you want to be fancy. And at the end of the week you can throw it in the washer. I like it so much I'm slowly making similar ones for all my coworkers.

And last, but not least, (though totally unrelated to lunches, at least right now) I wanted to give you all a garden update. You may remember my last post about getting over my fear of starting seedlings from scratch. Well, get a load of those little seedings now:



They're big, healthy tomato plants! Growing happily in the garden. I can't wait until harvest time.

J.

a small food shop

image from the guardian: Jeanette Winterson outside her store Verde's in Spitalfields. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Observer

my friend eireann sent along this article this morning and i thought that readers here might be interested in it. i found it very uplifting and inspiring and a nice concise statement on buying small and local....

once upon a life - jeaette winterson .

she opened a small food shop instead of allowing a chain coffee shop into the building where she lived. hip hip hooray.

baby epicure

scarfing down a dessert of bananas

There's nothing as much fun for someone who likes to cook as an appreciative eater. The Little Pea is a loud, lip-smacking, spoon-waving, groaning and mmm'ing appreciative eater - I've never cooked for someone so enthusiastic about their three squares a day. She makes it easy to be adventurous in the kitchen.

I've really enjoyed making baby food for her, and thought I'd share a little of the fun with you all. First, a couple of books that we love:

Simply Natural Baby Food, by Cathe Olson
Feeding Baby Green, by Dr. Alan Greene (love love love Dr. Greene!)

The first book is a great little cookbook for babies and toddlers. We were pleased to realize that you can feed a little baby just about anything (natural), as long as you prepare it properly for her. This book taught us how to cook all sorts of veggies and grains to make them safe and appealing for babies who are just starting solids, and well into toddlerhood.

Dr. Greene's book is one of those big advice books written by a pediatrician, but he is very down-to-earth (and all about saving the earth), and we were inspired by his adventurous approach to feeding little ones.

Since babies can't have salt, and since we don't tend to like our vegetables smooshy, the little one isn't eating much of our table food yet. But boy, is she eating diversely. We found that it's fun, easy and cheap to steam up a big pot of vegetables, puree them (when she was tiny) or cube them (so that she can practice feeding herself) and then use ice cube trays to freeze them in individual portion sizes. That makes it really easy to give her a very well-rounded meal full of interesting foods, with very little work.

I have to say that making your own baby food is also far cheaper than buying it at the store, and you get a lot more variety too (not to mention the ability to serve everything organic). We found that depending on the particular ingredients, home-made baby food is anywhere from one-third to one-tenth of the price of store-bought. And of course there's the environmental benefit of less consumption, packaging, transport, production energy, etc.

My partner was particularly inspired by Dr. Greene's book to try to feed our little one something from all 21 plant families before she turned one. The ones in italics are plant families she hasn't tried yet:

1. Mushrooms
2. Amaranths - spinach, chard, beets, quinoa
3. Umbrellifers - carrot, fennel
4. Cruciferous vegetables - broccoli, cauliflower
5. Bromeliads
6. Composites - lettuce (swiped from the garden beds)
7. Bindweeds - sweet potato - the all-time favorite!
8. Gourds - butternut squash
9. Heath plants
10. Legumes - peas and all sorts of beans
11. Lilies - onion
12. Woody trees - banana
13. Sesames
14. True grasses - oats, brown rice
15. Rosy plants - apple, peach, pear, plum
16. Citrus - lemon
17. Nightshades - peppers
18. Grapes
19. Laurels - avocado (best lunch on-the-go)
20. Myrtles
21. Loosestrifes

Hm, seven plant families to go. Perhaps we'll be having mushrooms, pineapple and tahini for lunch tomorrow. Yum!

Shopping baggage

Late last year I read about a study that made me start to think a lot more about our use of shopping bags. We’ve been using the ubiquitous (in Australia, at any rate) green polypropylene shopping bags for our grocery shopping for years now, but the Woolworths Shopping Bag study, by RMIT’s Centre for Design, made me start thinking about all the bags we consume when we buy or receive goods.  The study looked at the whole life cycle environmental cost of a number of different types of retail shopping bags (paper and several different plastics), taking into account the production of the raw materials and manufacturing of bags from those raw materials, transport, use and ultimate disposal of the bags.

The study concluded that reusable bags had lower impacts than single use bags, but these benefits were highly sensitive to the number of times a bag was re-used. Not a surprising discovery, but more surprising was the fact that despite having the lowest impact on litter, and being made of renewable resources, paper bags had the highest environmental impact due to the energy embodied in their production. You can read more about the study and conclusions here and here. Since reading that, I’ve been carefully hoarding any bags (especially paper) we receive for re-use, and giving a bit more thought to the kind of bags we do use, or perhaps could use.

The shopping bags we use are polypropylene, which is recyclable when they reach the end of their useful life. In theory that is. In practice, I was surprised to learn here that because the thread used to make them isn’t recyclable they have to be unpicked by hand, they need to be shipped from Australia to China, where labor is cheaper, to make recycling economically viable. This is a great example of the fact that even though something may be recyclable, the process of recycling (if and when it is disposed of in a way that enables recycling) is not without environmental cost (and may well have some ethical issues too).

Perhaps I’m a tad cynical, but I do feel that recyclability is increasingly becoming an easy green-washing feature for advertisers, with a whole heap of ifs and maybes being swept under the carpet, out of the consumer’s sight. I guess it’s up to each one of us to consider why we choose the purchases we choose, and to be satisfied in our own minds that they are worthy justifications based on the best information we could access.

But back to bags- there are certainly some opportunities in the shopping bag arena for some environmentally beneficial creativity. First up, if you are lacking reusable shopping bags, make yourself some shopping totes that suit your needs- perhaps something that folds up nice and compact, a big roomy bag, a retro crochet bag (link to .pdf), or whichever size and shape you might need, perhaps re-purposing materials you have on hand (ideally natural materials such as cotton that will decompose at the end of their useful life). Second up, make sure you have them on hand when you go shopping, and use and re-use them for as long as possible.


Our household already has a useful stash of shopping bags, and are in the routine of using them, but I realized we could do with some reusable produce bags. Although we re-use them a lot of the time, I found that we were always coming home with a few more plastic produce bags every time we bought our fruit and veg. Inspired by some handmade mesh produce bags I saw on flickr, and this tutorial from Wisdom of the Moon, I hit our local second hand shops and found a sheer mesh curtain to re-purpose. One evening with my overlocker (aka serger) later I had a set of 10 mesh bags.

I sized them to minimize wastage from the materials I had, and to keep them similar to the plastic produce bags I’m used to, using some cotton yarn for drawstrings. I’ve been trialling them for a couple of weeks now and am really pleased. Responses from cashiers has varied, from the ditzy supermarket checkout chick who wondered if I wanted her to take the produce out to weigh it (Umm, no- that’s fine, they weigh next to nothing), to the ladies at our regular market vendor who remarked how nice they were (Oh thank you!). The only drawback is that we are now dependant on plastic containers to keep our veggies fresh in the fridge. At least they're re-usable, but I do wonder if there is a bag I could make for this purpose... Any suggestions?

Meatless Monday

While I have flirted with vegetarianism all my life I admit I enjoy eating meat. In university, I worked my way through Linda McCartney's Home Cooking, but by graduate school, and after being diagnosed with anemia, I started to eat meat again. I hoped with a more thoughtful approach.

Where does this come from? Did it live a "good life" before coming to my plate. I am trying to instill these same ideas in my girls. I am also working to reduce the meat we do eat. We try to mix it up. Fish, poultry and red meat are not strangers at our table. I am fully aware of the horrors of factory farming. I want to eat more meatless meals and slide a little away from our routine. My goal this year has been two meatless meals added to our weekly repertoire.

My catalyst is three-fold, really: compassion for living things; impact on our health; and the impact meat consumption has on the environment.

In my quest for ideas, I learned of Meatless Monday:
Meatless Monday, along with Wheatless Wednesday, were initiated as a World War I effort by the U.S. Food Administration to encourage Americans to "do their part" in aiding the war effort by reducing the consumption of key food staples. In 2003 the effort was recreated by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future to help Americans adapt to a healthier lifestyle. With an endorsement in 2009 by Sir Paul McCartney - and in turn Gwenyth Paltrow at GOOP - a movement is being built. (Check out the Meatless Monday website for lots of great ideas.) We have added to that "Soup Saturday" (a vegetarian soup) - which I can see morphing into "Salad Saturday" come summer (hopefully inspired by our own garden).

My family - mostly my husband and youngest daughter have made a few groans - but no real complaints. My challenge is two in the house with soy allergies - that makes it tough - and keeping it varied. Lots of lentils in the cupboard!



So, what vegetarian fare scores high on your table?

brown bagging / bento

one of the things i've been thinking about lately is how to pack food economically and safely and in a more environmentally friendly way. it's no secret that packing a lunch is a great way to make sure you know what you are eating and to save money. with my little girl it's also becoming increasingly important to have snacks available at all times ! [nothing like being able to pull out a healthy cracker when she signs eat in line at the drugstore].

i'm trying to avoid using plastic bags of any kind - even ones like evolve - ziplock's "environmentally friendly" bags. i do use recycled content kitchen trash bags - which i feel guilty enough about.

anyway - above is a wrap-n-mat which you can use to wrap a sandwich or snack.



granted, you could make one of these yourself [i was thinking maybe oilcloth would be a good thing to try it out of - double sided] - but i spied these in a store and couldn't resist the ease of purchasing them. i do like how they disclose that some of their product is made in china, and that they have versions that are made in the USA. they also use a plastic for the lining that is BPA, lead, and phthalate free. [more info here ]

they work really well - keep leaky peanut butter and jelly from getting on anything else and are easy to clean up. they also double as a place mat - which can come in handy. if i end up actually trying to make any i'll try and post a tutorial.



i also really like boon's snackballs. they are stylish, hold a lot for their size, and double as a distraction toy with the little if need be.

my husband and i are also just a little bit into japanese bento boxes. we've collected quite a few and my husband actually uses them quite often to take leftovers to work. i wonder if i'll be able to make great bentos for my daughter when she goes to school [i have a few years to practice]. if you just want to be inspired by bentos - try just bento . or if you want all the gear - lunch in a box has a great online store list .

anyone out there have any great brown bagging tips?? [minus the brown bag of course]

holiday cocktail craft

last weekend,
grub & i
hosted
a cocktail craft party...

Cocktail Craft o’rama

we pooled
our resources
and tapped in
on grub's cocktail knowledge
to make
bitters
and special syrups.

you see,
making these things
can be labor intensive
(like pickling & canning)
but
many hands
make less work.
mostly it involves
a lot of prep work
which is fun
if you are working
all together
and sipping cocktails!

* * * * *

here's what we did...

we had 3 different
bitters available to make
and each person made
a combination of any
two bitters:
-Orange
-Grapefruit
-Fig



in addition,
we also made
2 special syrups
-Falernum
-Allspice liqueur

* * * * *



each person was asked to bring:

- Two oranges-preferably fragrant-smell them before you buy them. If they smell orangey, get’em. Valencia is the preferred kind, but fragrant is the best.

- One grapefruit-preferably fragrant. White is better than red, but any kind will do.

- four resealable jars (jam are great) that hold at least 1 cup but no more than 2 cups of liquid. (2 bitters, 2 special syrups)

- a $$$ donation (donation dependent on # of RSVPs) to help pay for everclear needed to extract the essences for the bitters and overproof rum for liquers.

* * * * *



everyone
cut the skin from oranges
and grapefruits



and carefully removed
all the white
from the peel...
we also had people
skinning and chopping ginger
and zesting limes
(for the falernum).



as we worked,
grub made
everyone
tiny cocktails
that featured
the bitters
or syrups
that we made.



Cocktails that were made:

-House Manhattan (featuring fig bitters):
see grub's special recipe card


(click to enlarge)

-Royal Bermuda club (featuring falernum)

-Lions Tail (featuring allspice liquor)

-The Perforated Derby (featuring grapefruit bitters)




if made
a month before
the holidays,
bitters make great
gifts.
decant into
a dropper bottle
and give with
your favorite
cocktail recipe.

if short on time,
give a bitters kit:
droppers, labels,
and
instructions
on the last few steps.

enjoy.

. . . . .

here is the recipe
for one of
our bitters:

Fig Bitters

Botanical infusion
2 oz dried figs, Chopped Very Fine
2 whole cloves
½ Teaspoon of Cinnamon Bark
1 Teaspoon Cardamom Seeds (taken out of their pods)
3 seeds Star Annise
3/4 Cup Grain Alcohol (Everclear or Other High-Proof Neutral Spirit)

Bittering elements
1/4 Teaspoon Quassia Chips
1/8 Teaspoon Powdered Cinchona Bark

Other
1 Cup Water
1/2 Cup Evaporated Cane Sugar


To Make
(adapted from Regan’s Bitters No.5)

Day one (at cocktail craft party)
Clean skin of fruit with baking soda and warm water. Scrub off any dirt. Remove skin (minus white pithe). Finely chop skins into 1/4 thick strips. Bake peel until completely dry (about 2 hours at 200F) let cool. Next place “botanical infusion” in jar and push the ingredients down so that they are covered by the alcohol and water. Seal the jar. Shake the jar vigorously once a day for ten days.

Day Ten
Place “Bittering Elements” in jar. Seal the jar. Shake the jar vigorously once a day for 7 days.

Day Seventeen
Strain the alcohol from the dry ingredients through a cheescloth. Gather the ends of the cheesecloth to form a pouch and squeese tightly to extract as much alcohol as possible. Place the dry ingredients in a strong bowl or mortar; reserve the alcohol in a clean mason jar and seal tightly. Muddle the dry ingredients with a pestle or strong spoon until the seeds are broken. Place the dry ingredients in a nonreactive saucepan and cover with 1 cups of water. Bring to a boil over a medium-high heat, cover, turn the heat down, and simmer for 10 minutes. Allow to cool, still covered (about 1 hour).
Return the dry ingredients and water to the original mason jar that contained the alcohol, seal, and leave for seven days, shaking vigorously once a day.

Day Twenty-Four
Strain the water from the dry ingredients through a cheesecloth. Discard the dry ingredients and add the water to the alcohol. Put sugar in a small nonstick saucepan and place over a medium-high heat. Stir constantly until the sugar becomes liquid and turns dark brown. Remove from heat and allow to cool for two minutes. Pour the sugar into the alcohol-and-water mixture. At this point the sugar may solidify, but it will quickly dissolve. Allow the mixture to stand for seven days. Skim off any bits that float to the surface and carefully decant the clear liquid to separate it from any sediment resting on the bottom.

Day Thirty One
Measure the bitters; thee should be about 9 fluid ounces. Add 3 ounces of water, and shake thoroughly. Pour the bitters into a bitters bottle. Store for up to twelve months.
. . . . .

enjoy
and
happy holidays!

leftover soup

This time of year, the leftovers abound. Around the holidays, I tend to stuff myself silly, but the overabundance is so great that even with overeaters everywhere, lots of food still gets thrown away. My partner and I are trying to get smarter about our budget these days - particularly our food budget - which has meant getting smarter about leftovers, and hopefully a little less waste.

Last week was Thanksgiving, and I decided to take responsibility for the leftovers this year, since I wasn't cooking much. By the time we left on Saturday there was a freezer full of turkey stock and big containers of turkey noodle soup for everyone to take home.

Being a vegetarian, I don't know much about what to do with meat, but I do know that you're not supposed to throw away that big old fatty, meaty turkey carcass after the meal. What a waste! Instead, we made turkey stock.

I had my partner's father pick off all the good-looking meat, and then I stuck the detritus (skin, bones, fatty stuff, neck and jiblets) into a huge big stock pot with a cut-up onion and a few bay leaves, and then filled up the pot with water. I brought the pot to a boil and then simmered the whole thing for the rest of the evening, about 3 hours. Then we pulled out the now-clean bones and all the other solid stuff and tossed it, let the stock cool, skimmed off the fat and then strained out everything else and put the stock into repurposed quart yogurt containers in the freezer. Turkey stock is a good replacement for chicken stock (except richer and tastier, I'm told), and will keep in the freezer for at least six months.

That's how we used about half the stock. The other half we used to make turkey-noodle soup. All we did was par-boil a bag of whole wheat egg noodles, drain them and then put them into the big soup pot with the turkey stock. Since this family likes to eat turkey sandwiches with the leftovers, I left the big slices of breast meat for that purpose, but took all the little funny bits, cut them up smaller, and threw them into the pot. Finally, we dumped in the leftover peas and carrots from the Thanksgiving meal and added some salt and pepper - voila! Turkey-noodle soup.

As I've said, I'm a vegetarian, so the soup was not really on my menu. But I did have a tiny cupful just to try, and now I see why they say that chicken noodle soup cures a cold. I think that soup could have cured much worse - it was about as warm, wholesome and comforting as anything I've ever eaten. Maybe next year I'll have two cupfuls.

There are also lots of opportunities for vegetarian soup from your holiday leftovers. You can make a big pot of veggie stock and then make delicious soup with pureed pumpkin, squash or carrot, or toss in lots of noodles, beans and leftover veggies for a scrumptious vegetable soup with dumplings on top. Just the thing for a simple supper when you've been overdoing it at the holiday parties.

commitment issues

I’ve been reading a lot of Wendell Berry's books lately, and one of the main themes throughout his essays and fiction (haven’t gotten to the poetry yet, but i’m sure it’s there as well), is that of committing to a place—working to protect and improve that place, the land and one’s community. While I am all for that in theory, I have had a very hard time putting that idea to practice in my own life.

I’ve lived in San Francisco for over ten years now, and at various points I’ve tried to commit myself to this city, but have never really succeeded. Part of this for me has to do with having grown up in two places, Sweden and California, and usually missing where I am not. Another part is my wondering if I’m really a city person. I long for more green and quiet. I also wonder if there is a place where it’s easier to build community. Often SF feels like it’s a city for (mostly hipster) 20–30 year olds and/or the wealthy.



I could go on and on about what makes me think about moving away. But one of the things that is really exciting about and makes me want to be in the Bay Area right now is the food movement. There is so much interest in making connections with surrounding area farmers. (We here are lucky to live in an area that has a lot of biodiverse, eco-conscious, farms.) Restaurants that use all locally produced or gathered food are cropping up left and right. People are raising chickens and bees in their backyards. They’re gleaning fruit and meeting their neighbors in the process. They’re building gardens and joining CSAs. Check out how this wonderful woman collects farmers’ market leftovers and distributes it to local food pantries.

I am trying to figure out what I can do to enter this movement more, to commit more to this place I call home. I do subscribe to a CSA and go to the Alemany Farmers’ market every Saturday with two lovely friends. And I sometimes write about agriculture related books here and there. But I want to do something more. Maybe join Slow Food San Francisco, attend some of the Kitchen Table Talks, go to Garden for the Environment events or volunteer at a local farm. I wouldn’t mind hanging out with some sheep. (Would love that in fact.) It would be fun to start a little group of people who go and visit different Bay Area farms on the weekends.



Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) is something I’m considering, though the farm I’ve been thinking about contacting is in Sweden, so there goes the rooting myself here idea.

Starting a backyard garden (for real!) in 2010 will be a growing (oh geez) and rooting (oh geez again) experience.

Or there’s this group, amyitis, that sets up a garden with you.

What are you all doing to involve yourselves in your place more actively?

Some links about new farmers/farming methods
Redefining farming (with video)

A new family farmer (video)

The Greenhorns (trailer)

Wes Jackson is the co-founder of The Land Institute and writes about farming using nature as a model.


{Flowers and leaves all found (mostly on the ground) around this glorious place.}

keeping the harvest

Fall harvest time is just about here! The nip in the morning air, and the new crop of greens, lettuces, sweet potatoes and cruciferous vegetables at the farmer's market and in our garden get me thinking about all the good things I want to cook this fall. I'm also getting a bit wistful already thinking about how much I will miss the fresh veggies this winter, and scheming about how to put some veggies up for those thin months.

Last week we got an inspiring email from the wonderful farmer who runs our CSA, Wild Onion Farms, about easy ways to save some of the harvest for winter. Here's what she said:

"Here's a few tips on how to easily put away some real fall food for later, without any special equipment or a lot of long sweaty hours in the kitchen:

• I've cured the sweet potatoes and butternut squash for storage already. If you want to stock up on these, the squash will last another 1-2 months, the potatoes will last 'til spring. Store them in a cool, dry, dark place (50-60 degrees is ideal). A chilly basement or garage is good. If you want to extend the butternut squash, go ahead and bake up a huge batch, put it in freezer bags, and stash it away in your freezer.
• Basil can easily be frozen: chop it up in a food processor and throw in little bags in the freezer, or go ahead and make a big batch of pesto and freeze that in individual portions (omit the cheese, it doesn't freeze well).
• Peppers, hot or sweet, can be chopped up, tossed in freezer bags, and chucked in the freezer. Nothing more. They won't retain their texture, but it won't matter if you're adding them to winter soups, stews, or sauces.
• Okra can be stashed away by cutting it up into slices, dip it into boiling water for a minute, drain, pat dry, and pack into freezer bags or containers.
• Cooking greens of any sort are really easy to freeze as well. Wash, chop, blanch in boiling water for a minute. Drain them, squeeze any excess water out, and pack away into the freezer.
• You can also cook up large batches of any of your favorite dishes, from garlicky greens to grilled eggplant, and tuck extra portions away in the deep freeze to enjoy months from now.
• Most root vegetables (beets, carrots, radishes, turnips), once you've removed the tops and placed them in plastic bags in the fridge, will last for months."

- Elizabeth Haarer, Wild Onion Farm (shared with permission)

I've been working on some of these easy harvest-extenders, and thought I'd share some of my favorite recipes, too.

Last week I made up a batch of Vietnamese-style hot chili sauce with the hot peppers in our garden, using this recipe. I had plenty to make a jar for us and share a big jar with my sister. This would make a great gift for someone who likes to cook and loves hot food.

Here's a link to my method for making big batches of savory vegetable stock - it's a great way to use up your veggie odds and ends, and makes a delicious, hearty, nutritious broth for winter recipes.

Elizabeth mentioned garlicky greens in her email, and it got me thinking about this wonderful recipe from my dear friend Anne, who loves to have cooking (and eating) parties with friends. If you're not from the Southern U.S., you might not know how wonderful collards can be -- and even if you are from the south, you might have only had them cooked to death with a hamhock. This is a great way to find a new (and vegetarian) appreciation for a humble green leaf:

Sauteed Collards (or any other hearty green you like)

Ingredients: 1 bunch of collards for 2-3 people
4-6 garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil

Rinse collards and remove the ribs from the middle of the leaves. Then stack the leaves in a pile and roll them up like a cigar. Then thinly slice them.

Peel the garlic and slice each clove in half long-ways unless really large, then slice into thirds.

Heat the oil over medium heat. When hot, add the garlic and cook until just getting golden, and remove. Do not let them get brown or they will make the oil a bad (burnt) flavor. Now turn up the heat to medium high and add the collards with whatever liquid clings to the leaves. Stir them with a wooden spoon or tongs, being sure to bring up the ones from the bottom so everything gets cooked. I like them crunchy, but you can cook them to your liking. Just before serving, add the garlic back in and stir them up.

I like to serve these with plenty of freshly ground black pepper, and some apple cider vinegar on the side for purists. Have fun cooking up your harvest this fall!

hungry for books?

considering that almost all of my posts here have been about books related to food and sustainable agriculture, you can imagine my excitement when i found omnivore books on food, an sf bookstore owned and run by book collector celia sack. celia sells new and antique/collectible books on cooking, baking, food + agriculture politics and food history. the very small store is packed (beautifully and carefully so) with gorgeous, shiny new cookbooks like these, alongside often smaller, more faded, but somehow even more alluring rare and collectible books like the (golden pig) one at the top of this post. out on the shelves are many victorian-era books with fanciful and strange illustrations of things like sugar spinning (done on tip toe on a chair if i recall correctly, in a full-length gown, strands of sugar hanging almost to the floor like so much rapunzel hair—this illustration can be found in celia's favorite oldie, a book from 1894 called fancy ices).

i was lucky enough to sit down with celia and talk with her about her store. below is a bit about what i learned, and it is also what makes this bookstore a true gem.


celia on left

celia knows her books. inside and out. especially the collectible ones. i mentioned a recipe from a book my housemate had bought at omnivore, and celia knew right away which book i was referring to (this one)! she made numerous such connections throughout the interview (talking with me and with customers). the store is organized by subject, but without signage. i didn't ask, but i am pretty sure the lack of signs is on purpose, and it certainly makes things more interesting. as soon as you ask celia where to find something or how the books are organized, she springs to action. she can determine exactly what you might like (even if you would normally be shy and not prone to divulging all your food and agricultural passions to strangers). if she doesn't have the book you're looking for, she'll offer one (or seven) others that might be just as good, and more likely better, than what you had in mind.

the events! intimate author readings and pie contests, for example. i attended a pie contest there last week. i don't think anyone expected 48 pies!! to show up. the place was brimming with pies. just when there was no more room for pies, another pie would arrive—blackberry, ginger peach, strawberry cream, banana cream, blueberry and on and on. luckily, there were also plenty of pie eaters. see more photos from this fun event here. (i made a lemon cream pie with a walnut, homemade graham cracker crust.) the winning pie was the banana cream.


paula helps organize pie tables



the many connections. the store is connected to sf's food history. around the turn of the century, the store used to be a butcher shop, and the freezer door, meat hanging rack and scale remain intact. it's also connected to sf's (and beyond) food past through the books celia collects. many of the collectible books were printed in sf or california. celia worked at the sf book auction house for years and knows all those antiquarian book fair folks (or antiquarian hair fair folks as a friend of hers calls them—apparently there are a lot of large beards and intricate mustaches at the fairs.)

celia and her partner paula have owned the pet store next door for eleven years, and celia herself is an sf native, so omnivore books has some deep roots. celia also supports the business of an older lady farmer by buying the woman's free range eggs and selling ten dozen or so a week of them at the bookstore. and of course the in-store events lead to community connections as well. day-to-day customers include neighborhood folks, pet owners (wandering over from next door), local chefs, and people specifically seeking out the store for books (old and new) on food (the ultimate connector).

sidenote per celia regarding events: "the people who are into baking are the nicest." she told me that like bluegrass musicians, bakers let everyone have a turn. they happily share their skills and recipes (and treats). they have a the more the merrier attitude. (this tidbit is not that surprising, right? it's not often that someone who bakes cookies for people is a meanie.) so, baking events=always good events to attend.

here are some of the fantastic upcoming events at omnivore books.

if you're interested in reading a transcript of the interview, leave a comment with your email address and i'll send it to you. (it's five pages long!)

thanks so much to generous celia for a delightful interview! and to diana who loaned me her tape recorder.

cross posted on mecozy.

Urban Foraging

I often fantasize about giving up the city life with all its conveniences and moving to the country to live off the land. I will have a thriving organic garden and happy goats.

When I yearn for this idealized future, I watch a BBC show called River Cottage. The show chronicles Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's journey from a full-time city dweller to a countryside farmer. Through a series of episodes he demonstrates how interdependent the farmer (played by him) is to his neighbors, the community, the land, and the countryside. He paints an idyllic life in the picturesque English countryside- you know the one…think All Creatures Great and Small.



My city life enables me to practice the profession I love, draw inspiration from the cultures around me, and allows unparalleled convenience to whatever strikes my fancy. What was missing from my life was that the cityscape seemed like a vessel for things I want to consume. I felt disconnected from the land around me. Although I have a tiny garden of tomatoes, peppers and various herbs on our small patio above the street, it was learning about urban foraging that scratched that itch.



It all happened one night when I was watching the episode The Wild Larder. In this episode Hugh and his cronies scour the countryside, hills and rivers foraging for wild food. They hunt for mushrooms, wild greens (ramps, watercress, and such), fish and game. The bounty of a healthy environment spills beyond the confines you set for it. Hugh made me realize that I had been myopic. Bounty lays beyond your small holdings in your great surroundings - my perception just had to change. It was in that moment that I realized the similarities my current city life shared with my dream of a country farmer life. My patio garden could be my small holding and the urban fabric beyond could be my Wild Larder.



Urban food foraging involves identifying foods within your city- most often fruits and berries, which are edible and free for the picking. The resurgence of urban foraging is relatively new and goes hand-in-hand with the resurgence of urban farming.

There are numerous websites on the practice foraging, including foraging.com, but the one of the best is the Urban Edibles out of Portand. Urban Edibles helps foragers navigate the unfamiliar physical and ethical landscape.

Here are some guidelines they list:

• Don't take more than you need. A tree full of ripe black cherries can be really exciting but how many will you use before they go bad?
• Ask permission before you pick. We do not condone unsanctioned harvesting practices or trespassing.
• Pick in a balanced and selective manner. The last thing we want is to damage the sources from which we harvest!
• Watch out for pesticides and other contaminants. Paint chips, pesticides, motor oil spills and even car wash runoff can affect the quality of the sources you pick from.

adventures in green babyhood

Being a professional environmentalist as my day job, I always figured that when our baby came along, I'd just naturally be the greenest parent in town. No stress - I'd just know which products to buy or avoid, how to find them, and I'd have boundless energy to explore the greenest ways to raise our Little Pea. Ha, ha. I do know some wonderful parents who fit that description, but despite my best intentions, and my own expectations, I am sadly not one of them.

But I do really, really care about sustainability, the environment, and in particular how pollution affects children's health. So I am struggling to make this green parenting thing work. For those like me, here are a few things I've been able to make work. And for those who fit the green parent profile better than I, please please share some of your suggestions in the comments!

breastfeeding
Breastfeeding is absolutely the most affordable and sustainable way to feed a baby, not to mention the healthiest. The decision to breastfeed is probably the most important step we've taken in terms of sustainable babyhood. I realize that there are many reasons that some families are not able to breastfeed, and nobody should feel guilty if they can't, but I am very grateful to be able to feed the Little Pea this way.

Baby formula is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States, is typically made from soy or cow's milk. Soy and dairy are both huge agricultural industries with all the associated pollution and energy problems that you already know about, not to mention all the packaging, shipping and waste that buying such a product entail. How wonderful that our bodies almost always make this product unnecessary!

gifts
People always want to give you baby gifts, no matter how much you protest or try to avoid it (at least, I tried to). I didn't want people to buy things we didn't need or want, or that contained toxic plastics, etc. But I also found it very hard to say to people, "Don't get anything, but if you do, you have to do a lot of research and spend a bunch of money to get us something that meets our values."

Thankfully, I have an awesome sister, who organized a green baby shower. She asked people to give us hand-me-down or hand-made gifts, or if they bought something, to please consider organic and non-toxic products. It worked beautifully. Many of our friends and family gave us copies of their favorite books from their childhood, something wonderful that they made, a big box of hand-me-down clothes from their kids, or something great they found at the thrift store. We also got lots of organic blankets, burp cloths, etc. I could never have asked for this (there's something too Puritanical about me), but my sister did a wonderful job with it.

stuff
Before the Little Pea was born, we got some great advice from a friend: to never, ever turn down an offer of hand-me-down baby stuff from friends or family. As a result, we have more baby clothes than one baby could ever wear, and we've had to buy almost nothing. Friends have given us a crib, co-sleeper, stroller, high chair, tub, baby seats, toys, books, blankets, towels... it's amazing how many times these things can be used, by so many babies, before they ever begin to even show any wear. We are lucky to have a big community of friends with little ones. Even if you don't, because your family is small or you're new in town, you can get much of what you need from thrift and consignment stores, saving oodles of money and reducing a lot of waste.

diapers: We've covered this area a lot already on Sew Green -- check out earlier posts on diapering here and here.

I am really interested in other folks' strategies for green babyhood. And I'm particularly looking forward to learning more about stuff like making baby food, toys, and how to communicate your values to kids' friends and grandparents. No parents are born knowing how to do all this stuff, and supporting each other has been critical for me - thanks to all of you for sharing what you've learned, too!

the price of food

i grew up in LA.
we were not the farmers market shopping, canvas bag toting, family biking type of family. it surprises me when i think back on it...
my mom was from germany and gravitated towards those things.
she always stopped at the roadside stands on the coast for strawberries & green beans wrapped neatly in white butcher paper.
she bought pasta and cheese at the italian grocer who flirted with my shy, soft-spoken, red-headed mother who always had at least 2 kids in tow.



i care an awful lot about what i eat.
although i am not the chef of the house,
we are always trying to buy (& grow) all organic, local produce.



my partner and i had a long discussion about a blog that he read
which has received a lot of press called $5 dinners.



we couldn't get over how much praise she was getting for making cheap dinners with little regard (nutrition is mentioned) to the quality of food that she was feeding her children.



now,
i totally understand that many families need to cut costs during these tough economic times, some have fewer choices than others,
but there is a cost/benefit depending on where you decide to cut.
i couldn't find on $5 dinners where she usually buys her food, but if she is buying most things on sale or with a coupon at prices, such as chicken breasts, sliced ($1.66), i think it's fair to make the assumption these are mass-produced items.
is this really the meat you want to feed your kid?

certainly you pay a price for buying cheap.

how can feeding the cheapest quality food to kids (or yourself) be the best way to cut cost? yet americans will cut food costs before they cut cable (also here).

my point is not to criticize this woman for trying to keep costs down
but rather to question why cost is the most important consideration.
i also want to emphasize that it is always important to recognize the place (and priviledge) from which our perspectives evolve.
not everyone has access to the same foods or the same choices.
i speak directly about those who DO have those choices.
if you are on the internet, blogging about food and what your family eats, then i think you have a certain responsibility to your readers.

i would argue for taking local vacations, cutting cable, your second car, or unlimited texting on your mobile but not sacrificing the quality of food.

as my partner put it,
the sacrifice that $5dinners talks about is only temporary... real sacrifice is sustainable...it has to be or we (or our children) will wind up here again.

we'd love to hear your thoughts.
xo

note: this was cross-posted here.

box of food links

(photo of the excellent book fatal harvest, from the chapter where they talk about CSAs)

i find myself getting more and more into food/farm books/issues. here are some good links i've come across lately:

civil eats "promotes critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems as part of building economically and socially just communities." (i also love their logo.)

local harvest is a great place to find sustainable farms and CSAs near you.

organic consumers association is a politically-focused site that posts great articles (from various sources). their millions against monsanto page is super informative and important. you can watch the documentary, the world according to monsanto here. i have only watched part of it, but that part was chilling and infuriating.

and finally, some action! if you are interested in getting america to move toward a more sustainable agriculture, you can sign a petition to get some good folks in beneath the agriculture secretary: food democracy now's sustainable dozen.

(cross-posted on mecozy)

abundance and revolution

Last night I watched this documentary on PBS about the Karuk tribe of California. They live along the Klamath River. The logging companies and the federal government’s fire suppression policies have almost destroyed the Karuk. The Karuk cannot gather their medicinal plants, make their traditional foods, practice their ceremonies, etc. like they used to, because the landscape, their home, has been altered so much. Fire suppression and the planting of fir trees has almost wiped out many of the native plants in the area. This also affects the river water (fir trees drain the water) and thus affects salmon and other river flora and fauna.

The Karuk believe that the earth provides everything we need. Watching this documentary, I recognized a lot of similarities between the Karuk’s values and those of the Slow Food movement. There is an understanding that ecology and culture are inextricable, and that the only way to maintain cultures is to respectfully and correctly manage the environment. This is also the only way the earth will continue to provide for us. This kind of value system is not an economic one, but a subsistence one.

Now when we’re in this big economic crisis, I think these values are vital for us to ponder. When we don’t trust that the earth and our community will provide for us all, we become greedy and we try to figure out ways to produce/extract as much stuff as possible at any cost. {As an example, industrial agriculture plants monocultures of crops, because in the short term that is the easiest way to produce a lot of food. This ruins the soil fertility however, which will not only make the land unproductive, but also endangers surrounding communities because the soil won’t absorb water. Thus when there is a flood, it is far more devastating. There are tons of examples how overuse like this not only leads to depletion of resources and the obliteration of biodiversity but also makes us much more susceptible to flood, fire, hurricane damage.}

In the book Plenty, the co-author imagines what the part of Canada he lives in looked like before Columbus. The abundance of animal and plantlife described struck me. Our earth has become and is fast becoming less and less abundant because of our incorrect management of the environment, our shortsighted overuse/exploitation of resources and our blindness (or willfull ignoring of) how we are connected to all creatures and plants. In the focus on profit, we (industrial societies) are killing cultures, we are killing plant and animal species, we are endangering lives by making communities more vulnerable to natural disasters, we are polluting water. The list goes on and on.

I worry that in hard economic times, people will look to the short-term solutions that (the agriculture, oil, etc.) industries offer, instead of re-evaluating our capitalist value system. But I hope having a visionary leader (in America) who seems to want us to fight for community and for what is right, might inspire us to work towards just and respectful ways of living on and sustaining this earth and the earth's abundance.

Cross-posted on Mecozy.

to the next farmer in chief

a teacher of mine tipped me off to this rad article by michael pollan to our president-elect.