Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Oh yeah...
Part of my "What's in the basket" culinary explorations for my 8:00 am sculpture class: Make your own waffles!!!
daylight savings time!
Today was an extremely long day. For the first time in my life, daylight savings time took me by surprise (I usually am excitedly planning its arrival) and although I woke up at 5:30 and thought I had plenty of time to cook some pinto and black beans for my dinner with Bob, his kids, Laura, and Hope, I really ended up being half an hour late to my 7:00 am appointment at the Risley Print Shop. Great way to start the day.
I was so confused when I looked at the time on my computer and saw that it said 7:00 am and then looked outside to see that it was still fairly dark out.
Nevertheless, I had a very successful print shop experience. I tested some nice white ink on brown paper about the color, thickness, and texture of a brown paper bag (its contractor paper that I bought at the Home Depot for like $10 for a huge roll) and really like how the white looks against the brown. Thom had some interesting ideas about creative ways that I could create tear-able posters so that people can take the information with them by tearing off a piece of the larger poster, but I need to finalize the wording of the posters before I can really do much else.
I talk to the woman from the Women's Community Building tomorrow afternoon about using the space for Ithaca Community Potluck (I kind of like the name for some reason, but it is super bland and think that it might be good to come up with a new name), but a major issue I am having is the whole money thing. I want to do this project as cost-effectively as possible; therefore, I really need to find some way to pay for the rental of space without paying out of my pocket. An idea I had was to have a regularly occurring bake sale and use the profits to pay for the space. I suppose I could always just ask for donations at the potluck, but this kind of goes against my idea of open access to everyone (but they could be voluntary).
Another idea is to get local businesses to sponsor the potluck. I could get a different local business to sponsor the potluck each week... hmmm? I think this might actually work , as long as I can find some initial businesses willing to give the initial donations to get the potluck up and running. It seems to me that if I have an awesome potluck up & running, businesses would be more than willing to donate, say, $50, for us to use the space if they could use it as a form of advertising (Thought: I might have to register as a local non-profit to receive donations of money... hmm).
On another note, my seed bomb experiment seems to have gone well (I think). I bought some wildflower mix and some veggie seeds and formed about 120 seed bombs which are drying near my heater as I write. However, I am not 100% sure that they will fit in the gumball machine, and even if they do, I am not sure if they will actually work or not. Today, Hope had the amazing idea of using tea bags as seed bomb packets. I need to look into this more.
Tonight, Bob, Laura, Hope, and Henry & Theo (Bob's adorable kids) all came over for a make-your-own taco/burrito night. We had corn tortillas, flour tortillas, regular and dairy-free cheeses, homemade refried beans, 2 different homemade guacamoles (both Laura and I made some), homemade salsa (Hope did a great job, it was really tasty!), black beans with lime and cilantro, roasted root vegetables, tons of roasted peppers, brown rice, sour cream, tasty blue corn tortilla chips, a ground venison taco filling (brought by Laura, it was one of the deer that had been eating her veggies all summer!), and a vegan tofu filling option. For dessert, we had good, dark coffee, vanilla Haagen Dazs ice cream, and homemade gluten-free, vegan apple crisp (made by Laura!). Bob also brought me some fresh eggs from his chickens and another vegetable filling side dish.
we had a lot of food
& there are a lot of leftovers :)
Since I have been seriously reconsidering my beliefs about food and didn't see any reason why I shouldn't eat the venison filling that Laura brought (in fact, there were many good reasons for me to eat it such as the fact that the deer had been hunted on Laura's property and had been eating all of her veggies in her garden), I decided to have a venison taco/burrito. It was delicious. This was the first time I've eaten meat in about 7 1/2 years, and the first time I've ever tasted venison. I'm glad I did.
Hope & I talked to Bob, and WE ARE GETTING SOME MEAT CHICKENS THAT ARE GOING TO LIVE AT HIS FARM! I am SO EXCITED! Hope is getting her birds for Watermargin, and I am getting mine for my own eating and slaughtering (Bob and Laura are going to show us how to do it when the time comes). This is going to be a GREAT summer... I get to raise my own poultry (well, Bob will be doing most of the work, but still!) and continue my farming journeys (I need to turn in the scholarship application for the Groundswell Farmer Training Program & I also need to find a farm to work at this summer).
Oh yeah, spring is coming!!!
I was so confused when I looked at the time on my computer and saw that it said 7:00 am and then looked outside to see that it was still fairly dark out.
Nevertheless, I had a very successful print shop experience. I tested some nice white ink on brown paper about the color, thickness, and texture of a brown paper bag (its contractor paper that I bought at the Home Depot for like $10 for a huge roll) and really like how the white looks against the brown. Thom had some interesting ideas about creative ways that I could create tear-able posters so that people can take the information with them by tearing off a piece of the larger poster, but I need to finalize the wording of the posters before I can really do much else.
I talk to the woman from the Women's Community Building tomorrow afternoon about using the space for Ithaca Community Potluck (I kind of like the name for some reason, but it is super bland and think that it might be good to come up with a new name), but a major issue I am having is the whole money thing. I want to do this project as cost-effectively as possible; therefore, I really need to find some way to pay for the rental of space without paying out of my pocket. An idea I had was to have a regularly occurring bake sale and use the profits to pay for the space. I suppose I could always just ask for donations at the potluck, but this kind of goes against my idea of open access to everyone (but they could be voluntary).
Another idea is to get local businesses to sponsor the potluck. I could get a different local business to sponsor the potluck each week... hmmm? I think this might actually work , as long as I can find some initial businesses willing to give the initial donations to get the potluck up and running. It seems to me that if I have an awesome potluck up & running, businesses would be more than willing to donate, say, $50, for us to use the space if they could use it as a form of advertising (Thought: I might have to register as a local non-profit to receive donations of money... hmm).
On another note, my seed bomb experiment seems to have gone well (I think). I bought some wildflower mix and some veggie seeds and formed about 120 seed bombs which are drying near my heater as I write. However, I am not 100% sure that they will fit in the gumball machine, and even if they do, I am not sure if they will actually work or not. Today, Hope had the amazing idea of using tea bags as seed bomb packets. I need to look into this more.
Tonight, Bob, Laura, Hope, and Henry & Theo (Bob's adorable kids) all came over for a make-your-own taco/burrito night. We had corn tortillas, flour tortillas, regular and dairy-free cheeses, homemade refried beans, 2 different homemade guacamoles (both Laura and I made some), homemade salsa (Hope did a great job, it was really tasty!), black beans with lime and cilantro, roasted root vegetables, tons of roasted peppers, brown rice, sour cream, tasty blue corn tortilla chips, a ground venison taco filling (brought by Laura, it was one of the deer that had been eating her veggies all summer!), and a vegan tofu filling option. For dessert, we had good, dark coffee, vanilla Haagen Dazs ice cream, and homemade gluten-free, vegan apple crisp (made by Laura!). Bob also brought me some fresh eggs from his chickens and another vegetable filling side dish.
we had a lot of food
& there are a lot of leftovers :)
Since I have been seriously reconsidering my beliefs about food and didn't see any reason why I shouldn't eat the venison filling that Laura brought (in fact, there were many good reasons for me to eat it such as the fact that the deer had been hunted on Laura's property and had been eating all of her veggies in her garden), I decided to have a venison taco/burrito. It was delicious. This was the first time I've eaten meat in about 7 1/2 years, and the first time I've ever tasted venison. I'm glad I did.
Hope & I talked to Bob, and WE ARE GETTING SOME MEAT CHICKENS THAT ARE GOING TO LIVE AT HIS FARM! I am SO EXCITED! Hope is getting her birds for Watermargin, and I am getting mine for my own eating and slaughtering (Bob and Laura are going to show us how to do it when the time comes). This is going to be a GREAT summer... I get to raise my own poultry (well, Bob will be doing most of the work, but still!) and continue my farming journeys (I need to turn in the scholarship application for the Groundswell Farmer Training Program & I also need to find a farm to work at this summer).
Oh yeah, spring is coming!!!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
I spent most of the weekend studying for an exam in my Early Agriculture class (and taking a field trip to Michaels Arts & Crafts), so things are a little less crazy now that I don't have to worry about it (who gives an exam first thing on a Monday morning, anyway!?). I am very thankful to be done (at least until the second exam), but really enjoyed studying because it made me think about human relationships to food thousands of years ago.
A couple of main concerns for people back in the time of the Neolithic Revolution (although it wasn't really a revolution in terms of fast change, but it was a drastic, widely adopted, gradual transition from foraging to farming over a period spanning a few thousand years) were poor nutrition (when people switched from foraging to farming, they lost a great deal of variety in their diets because they only cultivated certain crops) and soil exhaustion (many early farmers would simply cultivate plots of land and abandon them after the soil was nutrient-poor, usually after one or two growing seasons). It is really interesting to learn about the creative techniques people used to manage their fields, such as constructing chinampas (mainly in Mesoamerica people would dig up fertile soil from the bottoms of lakes and create a raised bed above the water which would be naturally irrigated by water seeping into the dirt from the surrounding lake) or utilizing the naturally occurring flooding of an area to fertilize fields (for example, the Lozi people of Zambia moved from the valleys to the higher areas when great floods came in, creating huge lakes in the valley and fertilizing the soil).
Nowadays, it seems that instead of finding creative agricultural solutions which work with natural cycles of the world (and maintaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and the surrounding environment), the goal of most industrialized agriculture is to tame the land (in this case, the humans are in control) without paying much attention to environmental concerns (i.e., spraying harmful pesticides without thinking about their environmental implications).
One of the things that I think is very interesting is that the act of domesticating plants and animals causes genetic changes, so technically, every domesticated food produced today has been genetically modified over a period of thousands of years to suit the needs of humans. Seems pretty similar to what we are doing today with GMO crops, however, instead of waiting thousands of years for a desirable trait to be bred into our out of a food crop (i.e., getting rid of unpalatable toxins in a plant), we can now go in and modify the DNA of a crop and cause more immediate change to the organism. We humans are pretty good at coming up with creative ways to "solve" our problems (or, at least put them on hold for a little while), the question is where is the line between ethical and unethical environmental manipulation? Something to explore...
On another note, I sent Coco a care package yesterday with brownies (that looked like blondies because they were so light in color, but they had chocolate, so they were technically brownies!), meyer lemon shortbread cookies, lots of chocolate, and a birthday card. Hopefully he will get the package before the food becomes stale (I would love to know how people manage to mail baked goods across the country!).
I have been eating really good food lately, and have been trying my hardest to stay away from refined sugars and dairy, both of which have been causing some major issues with my stomach/digestive system. The other day, I made a coconut milk rice dish with veggies and shrimp, and last night, Lyca & I made mashed parsnips with black beans, onions, red pepper, & spinach on top (then we put some fresh salad greens and I added crumbled blue corn tortilla chips)... it was soooo tasty!
Some food brainstorming/ things I want to make:
Pistachio cookies... can I make pistachios into a nut flour and use the flour as a base for a gluten-free cookie?
Pistachio white chocolate chip cookies
Almond milk cornbread
Sweet potato pie!
My own chai tea
Applesauce (I need to get a bushel of apples first!)
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free scone
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free cinnamon buns
...and many other things!
Side note: SPRING IS COMING! SPRING IS COMING! SPRING WILL BE HERE SOON!
I can't wait for the asparagus to come up, the salad greens to grow outside instead of in hoop houses, baby chicks to replenish Bob's destroyed chicken population (the majority of his chickens were recently killed by a mink), rhubarb pie, Dragon Day (I still have to figure out some kind of costume to make), spring break (Lyca & I are going back East to the Hudson Valley for crazy shenanigans!), dandelions (homemade dandelion wine?), MUD, daffodil fields next to Bebee lake, wild cherry trees, birds in the mornings (today was the first day this spring that I woke up to birds outside my window! they are singing so happily right now!), and so many other wonderful things...
Hopefully this will be the last major storm of the winter season:
A couple of main concerns for people back in the time of the Neolithic Revolution (although it wasn't really a revolution in terms of fast change, but it was a drastic, widely adopted, gradual transition from foraging to farming over a period spanning a few thousand years) were poor nutrition (when people switched from foraging to farming, they lost a great deal of variety in their diets because they only cultivated certain crops) and soil exhaustion (many early farmers would simply cultivate plots of land and abandon them after the soil was nutrient-poor, usually after one or two growing seasons). It is really interesting to learn about the creative techniques people used to manage their fields, such as constructing chinampas (mainly in Mesoamerica people would dig up fertile soil from the bottoms of lakes and create a raised bed above the water which would be naturally irrigated by water seeping into the dirt from the surrounding lake) or utilizing the naturally occurring flooding of an area to fertilize fields (for example, the Lozi people of Zambia moved from the valleys to the higher areas when great floods came in, creating huge lakes in the valley and fertilizing the soil).
Nowadays, it seems that instead of finding creative agricultural solutions which work with natural cycles of the world (and maintaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and the surrounding environment), the goal of most industrialized agriculture is to tame the land (in this case, the humans are in control) without paying much attention to environmental concerns (i.e., spraying harmful pesticides without thinking about their environmental implications).
One of the things that I think is very interesting is that the act of domesticating plants and animals causes genetic changes, so technically, every domesticated food produced today has been genetically modified over a period of thousands of years to suit the needs of humans. Seems pretty similar to what we are doing today with GMO crops, however, instead of waiting thousands of years for a desirable trait to be bred into our out of a food crop (i.e., getting rid of unpalatable toxins in a plant), we can now go in and modify the DNA of a crop and cause more immediate change to the organism. We humans are pretty good at coming up with creative ways to "solve" our problems (or, at least put them on hold for a little while), the question is where is the line between ethical and unethical environmental manipulation? Something to explore...
On another note, I sent Coco a care package yesterday with brownies (that looked like blondies because they were so light in color, but they had chocolate, so they were technically brownies!), meyer lemon shortbread cookies, lots of chocolate, and a birthday card. Hopefully he will get the package before the food becomes stale (I would love to know how people manage to mail baked goods across the country!).
I have been eating really good food lately, and have been trying my hardest to stay away from refined sugars and dairy, both of which have been causing some major issues with my stomach/digestive system. The other day, I made a coconut milk rice dish with veggies and shrimp, and last night, Lyca & I made mashed parsnips with black beans, onions, red pepper, & spinach on top (then we put some fresh salad greens and I added crumbled blue corn tortilla chips)... it was soooo tasty!
Some food brainstorming/ things I want to make:
Pistachio cookies... can I make pistachios into a nut flour and use the flour as a base for a gluten-free cookie?
Pistachio white chocolate chip cookies
Almond milk cornbread
Sweet potato pie!
My own chai tea
Applesauce (I need to get a bushel of apples first!)
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free scone
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free cinnamon buns
...and many other things!
Side note: SPRING IS COMING! SPRING IS COMING! SPRING WILL BE HERE SOON!
I can't wait for the asparagus to come up, the salad greens to grow outside instead of in hoop houses, baby chicks to replenish Bob's destroyed chicken population (the majority of his chickens were recently killed by a mink), rhubarb pie, Dragon Day (I still have to figure out some kind of costume to make), spring break (Lyca & I are going back East to the Hudson Valley for crazy shenanigans!), dandelions (homemade dandelion wine?), MUD, daffodil fields next to Bebee lake, wild cherry trees, birds in the mornings (today was the first day this spring that I woke up to birds outside my window! they are singing so happily right now!), and so many other wonderful things...
Hopefully this will be the last major storm of the winter season:
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