Susan Mernit: March 2009 Archives

My Meat CSA (and what the hell is that, anyway)--and do I buy a freezer?

By
Susan Mernit
on March 30, 2009 10:23 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Back in February, flush with reading Nourishing Traditions, I joined The Bay Area Meat CSA, a buying coop where local folk coordinate around buying pre-orders parts of pigs, cows, lambs, sheep and so on.

I love this site, love the idea, love the opportunity to buy more direct and at a fair price, but...I have not bought a thing. Why? The little issue of a freezer.

You see, our household is small, two-three at a time, and we're not big animal eaters. So...the benefits of acquiring a chunk of a pig would have to be played out with a place to store it. someplace bigger than our tiny little top freezer of the fridge.

Only, is that really worth it? Would the electricity and expense we'd incur to run the thing (and presumably put fruits and veggies we'd process in, along with meat) be worth it?

Or are we better off buying our occasional doses of pastured meat retail?

Pondering this question has led to doing nothing. Doing nothing is fine for now.

The newbie mind

By
Susan Mernit
on March 22, 2009 1:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
I moved into this house in November, with my sweetie, excited to be in a new community and excited about having a yard. Somehow, as the economy continued to crash--and crash--and I started to read more blogs about sustainability, I become interested in doing more urban homesteading, following a diet closer to Nurturing Traditions and Weston Price's theories, growing vegetables and making more of our food, or trading for it.

At the same time, I became fascinated with permaculture, the study of environmental and agriculture systems. There are some great Yahoo groups around permaculture that I have been reading and I've tried to put some of what I learned into practice.

Here's what my goals are for this spring and summer:
  • Recycle/compost food scraps
  • Cut down on using bags and plastic of alll types
  • WALK MORE, DRIVE LESS (this is a pleasure)
  • Establish and maintain an herb garden we can cook with
  • Develop a worm bin and keep it going to we can use the compost
  • Build a series of container beds w/ fresh potting soil, manure, and gravel/stone(the bottom layer)
  • Plant vegetables: sow carrots, radishes; plant tomatoes, squashes, peas and beans
  • Keep the lettuce, chard and aragula happy; plant more of it
  • Plant vines along the fence: japonica, jasmine
  • Establish the lemon tree and keep it alive so it fruits
  • Establish a pattern in trading for eggs--offer marmalade(it is coming out great), cake, soup, cornbread, all of which I make really well)
  • Get involved  more with fruit foraging and with Forage Oakland-I love what they are doing.
  • Start going to the East Bay Permaculture Guild meetings and learning more by doing with others
  • Have fun with the above, this is a marathon, not a sprint, as we say in start up land.
Meanwhile, there is so much to read, and to learn; I have to remember this is change for the long haul, and it can't all happen at once.


How do you get your neighbors to grow food?

By
Susan Mernit
on March 20, 2009 3:27 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
I'm in the very start of my first garden in at least 8 years, and I have alot to learn(relearn). So my plans this season are really about establishing my own garden,  Having said that, I love the idea of cllaborating with neighbors to grow (more) food.  One of the folks on the East Bay permaculture list (a great list!) shared some ideas around motivating neighbors and agreed to let me paraphrase/repost. So. here are some thoughts from Rebecca:

Get a neighborhood group together.  Do a raised bed raising action--make the same sized beds at multiple houses, working as a group, The size Rebecca recommends is
 3x6x1 foot. She saus "This makes it easy to purchase materials (requiring six 2 in x 6 in x 6 ft boards/bed and maybe a 2x4 for stabilization)and nails and screws. Including compost it'll be about $50/bed."

The idea is to collaborate with one another to share space (maybe a disabled person has a great plot they can trade with for the food, etc.)

In addition, R has been going house to house in her area talking about gardening--she says she's gotten 18 neighbors to plant tree collars(to keep trees from blowing over?)

I like these ideas alot; I am asking friends to help plan our garden and to work in it and water in exchange for food and herbs. I hope we have enough of a crop that we can also share with folks on the block and incent them to participate next year.

The herbs are in!

By
Susan Mernit
on March 12, 2009 5:13 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
I just planted all the containers, window boxes and so on that will hold our herb garden this summer.  We have the following plants now:
Coriander
Thyme
French Thyme
Sage
Curry plant
Cilantro
Chive grass
Rosemary
Oregano
Mint
Chocolate Mint
Lemon Mint
Lavender
(and probably a few others!)  
I also planted nasturtiums, poppies,  and ranculus.

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Welcome to my yard, I mean my garden, aka in the process of becoming

By
Susan Mernit
on March 11, 2009 7:45 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
It's a start.
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And my dog thinks the containers are for him

By
Susan Mernit
on March 10, 2009 10:28 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
3336980812_983c12be9a.jpg went out today to check the newly planted lettuce, chard, and arugula, Only something wasn't right. The lettuce looked messed up, thrown about the container.

Que pasa?

The dog buried his bone down between the lettuces, in the container.

Now the bone is back in the yard, the container is hgher up on a bench and the lettuces, I hope, get to grow undisturbed.

Update: I haz marmalade, no cheating

By
Susan Mernit
on March 10, 2009 10:22 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
So, I spoke too fast. 36 hours after I canned the marmalade, it jelled. It's not jello, but it has a nice thick heft.And it looks great, like--marmalade.

So, no cheatin' w/ the pectin this time.

The Marmalade failed (so I am doing it over)

By
Susan Mernit
on March 10, 2009 2:56 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Sunday Cheg BJ came over and we made marmalade. This was my second go round with 3 fruit citrus and I was excited. However, BJ and I didn't synch on how to cut the fruit; she peeled the ring VERY thin, like the chef with great knife skills she is, and we ended up with a very loose jam that hasn't reall jelled (I like it when a fork will stand up for a few seconds, but not for forever.)

So now I have 12 jars of runny marmalade, all neatly canned. UGH.
What am I going to do?  Cheat.

Yep, I am going to throw thmarmalade.jpgese suckers back in the big pot, pull out the candy thermometer and shoot a load of pectin into the mix. Then re bottle and can again.

PS The oranges in this batch are foraged from a friend's neighbor in Mountain View, and the lemons are local. The grapefruit....bought.

Organic Chicken stock, an obsessive confession

By
Susan Mernit
on March 9, 2009 10:24 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
So I am a soup junkie.
Especially in the cooler weather, soup, like stew, is so comforting. And so affordable.
Over the past three months, I've evolved a routine for making soup a couple of times a month.
First, I buy organic chicken backs, usually at Mangiani's, my favorite butcher (tho out of my way), then onions, parsnips, carrots, greens. The next steps are to make organic chicken soup stock, and then to turn that into all sorts of yummy soups.

Here's how you do it:

Ingredients
2 lbs organic chicken backs
1 lb chicken parts, thighs preferred
1 parsnip
1 large onion
3 carrots
3 cloves garlic
Water to fill kettle (8-10 cups)
Pepper corns
Sea salt

Method:
Wash the chicken and put in kettle.Peel the veggies and put in kettle. Add 8-10 cups water and bring to a low boil. Skim off the scum, reduce heat to medium simmer, cover and cook for 2 hours.  Taste and when flavorful, take off stove and strain. Put the liquid in a container, then put the other ingredients into another container.  24 hours later, skim fat off the chicken stock and throw out or put aside. You're now ready to make soup.

I usually take half the stock and make a soup, and freeze the other half for a later date soup.
For about $5.00, I have super flavored stock and the ingredients both for a great chicken soup and the stock for another soup.

We haz greens (in containers)

By
Susan Mernit
on March 7, 2009 5:16 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
I drilled holes in the bottom of plastic recycling bins I got at Urban Ore, added a layer of rock for drainage, mixed potting soil, compost and manure together and then planted my first batches of lettuce, arugula and chard. So far, they seem happy (ie they did not die over night).

Fingers crossed!

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Sheet Mulching the Beds

By
Susan Mernit
on March 7, 2009 5:07 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Although most of my Oakland garden is going to be in containers this year, I decided to sheet mulch the two flower beds that were here when we arrived, partly for practice, partly to use as weed control, and also because I do expect to plan them with flower and food later in the spring.

My sheet mulching method was to save lots of the cardboard boxes from our move, stack them outside where they'd soften, then tear them up and use them to mulch the beds.

Here are some of the shots of the beds during and after the sheet mulching.
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The movement toward local, urban farming

By
Susan Mernit
on March 5, 2009 8:24 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
The amount of work people around the Bay area are taking on in terms of helping neighbors create gardens with food to feed themselves and their communities, foraging fruit trees to share and redistribute unused food, offering meals and prepared foods as fund raisers to create operating funds for organizations and so on is amazingly powerful.

Here in Oakland, we have a set of community gardens and food justice/community empowerment programs--City Slickers, People's Grocery, Oakland Roots Garden--among them. There's also the amazing and wonderful Forage Oakland, which is dedicated to locating and redistributing local, unused fruit, and the fascinating and knowledgeable permaculture community, not to mention many people with their own gardens.

There's also lots of equivalent activity going on in San Francisco, which I am less aware of, but equally eager to learn about.  18th and Potrero is a local group in SF that is creating a garden and will grow and share food there; sfglean is redistributing fruit; the free farmstand is a blog--and gardener--driving much of this great activity.

For me,  who works with the bits and bits that ultimate connect people, issues around food, neighborhood and commuity are very compelling, that's why I started this blog.

Starhawk and Permaculture: Videos

By
Susan Mernit
on March 4, 2009 6:24 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Excited about these!
Starhawk: Perrmaculture Principles at Work
An introduction to permaculture principles, featuring the work of Erik Ohlsen of Permaculture Artisans and Earth Activist Training.
YouTube--The short version features one of Erik Ohlsen's projects.
 

A longer version, featuring two amazing projects, can be found at:
http://livingmandalas.ning.com/video/permaculture-principles-at


Tabor Tilth: Permaculture in the City
Connie Van Dyke's inspirational urban garden in Portland, Oregon.


Sunday breakfast, March 1

By
Susan Mernit
on March 1, 2009 9:44 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
The rainy, Sunday morning, early spring breakfast:
  • Lemon Ricotta pancakes made with 1 tbl evaporated cane sugar, vanilla, whole wheat pastry fluour, raw milk.
  • Rhubarb-strawberry compote
  • Bueberry-apple conserve
  • Home made chai
  • Sectioned fresh grapefruit and naval orange
Much joy

lemon pancakes.jpg

Pancake recipe here, with my modifications: Ricotta-Lemon Pancakes (originally published in Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Healthful Cooking).
Makes 10 pancakes

1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1/4 cup raw milk
3 large eggs, separated
2 tablespoons evaporated cane sugar
1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
Pinch of cream of tartar
Organic butter

Place the ricotta in a large bowl. Add the milk, egg yolks, vanilla, and sugar and whisk together until blended. Add the flour, lemon zest, and 1/4 teaspoon salt, and using a rubber spatula, fold until just blended.

In a separate bowl, combine the egg whites and the cream of tartar and, using a whisk or a handheld electric mixer set on medium speed, beat until soft peaks form. Using the rubber spatula, carefully fold the beaten whites into the ricotta mixture just until blended. Stir in the lemon juice.

Place a large nonstick griddle or frying pan with low sloping sides over medium heat until hot enough for a drop of water to sizzle and then immediately evaporate.

Brush the surface with butter. For each pancake, ladle 1/3 cup batter onto the surface. Cook until small bubbles appear around the edges of the pancakes and the bottoms are lightly browned, 4-5 minutes. Turn and cook until the other sides are lightly browned, 2-3 minutes longer.

rhubarb.jpg

Serve with any or all of the following: maple syrup, honey, jam, stewed fruit, nuthin'.



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