blog (category: food)
but can you tok the tok
My neighbors produce ungodly amounts of trash. Most of the time I curse them when I see the pile at the end of the driveway, but if there's something good, I'll curse them, then grab it.
Apparently, they didn't want this wok anymore. I didn't ask if they wanted the dinner I made with it tonight.
It sat on my living-room floor for a few weeks because I didn't know what to do about its stickiness and propensity to rust. A few short YouTube tutorials, though, and I learned how to properly wash and season it.
It makes a nice stir-fry. I wonder what they didn't like about it, or what they did to it... and if they have a hoak to go along with it.
Urban Harvest Garden Tour 2007
Saturday was one of those adventure days I enjoy so much.
I bicycled to eight gardens on the Urban Harvest Garden Tour. Met good people doing good work, transforming (mostly-)urban lots into fertile vegetable gardens, to feed themselves, their families, and their communities.
Re-learning, teaching, growing.
Some (like the Barkwill/Doloff Community Garden, above,) are transformations of once abandoned lots.
The community garden maintainers I spoke with seemed less interested in expanding their own gardens than in suggesting that Clevelanders interested in doing the same:
- find an abandoned lot in their hood,
- ask their councilperson to support its reclamation, and
- get started, with help from Summer Sprout:
Summer Sprout is a collaborative effort between OSU Extension and Cleveland, through the Division of Neighborhood Services, Department of Community Development. Community gardens registered with Summer Sprout receive vegetable seeds and plant starts, soil preparation services such as plowing and rototilling, assistance in getting fire hydrant permits and equipment for watering, and garden fertilizer and leaf humus.
Growers keep their vegetables for themselves or to share. The rest of the produce goes to area hunger centers and agencies.
For details, 216-429-8246.
-- Community gardening sprouting up all the time in the Cleveland area (The Plain Dealer)
To know that Summer Sprout consists of some 170 gardens in Cleveland is inspiring. To see just a few of them and meet the people behind them, even moreso.
I've put all the photos I took in a set on Flickr: Urban Harvest Community Garden Tour 2007. The descriptions list which garden they're from, and each photo's location is geo-tagged; look for the map link.
Maurice Small Meets the Bloggers
I knew from brief encounters at Fresh Stops that Maurice was righteous ripe, just not which flavor. Urban farmer, bearded dready in overalls, quiet riot. Softspoken, some, but unabashed, deliberate, wry.
George opened Meet the Bloggers: Maurice Small posing to each participant a baited question Maurice had previously delivered: what are you eating?
The details aren't important. The key is your connection with your food. It gets juicy when you go beyond traceability. Link with the land, the people involved. Don't just know where it came from, know intimately. It'll taste better in every dimension -- tongue and soul.
(If you are what you eat, and you don't really know what you eat...)
Maurice had some rants prepared, but didn't quite get to finish them. His love is children and growing food, and he's learned to follow his heart. There are kids who think milk comes from jugs, and eggs from cartons -- and he's reconnecting them.
The hour was up too soon for everyone, but I get a sense that any interaction with him would leave a person filled but hungry for more.
trace your food's past
Asked twice in one day last week why I'm vegetarian, I found that my usual answer -- that I want to be a little more responsible -- might come off as presumptuous. So I'm thinking of adding because I'm lazy to it, to balance it out.
The only (rare) prayer I'll say alone before eating is to contemplate the lifespan of each thing I'm about to consume. Garlic, bean, rice: imagine seeds being spread, fertilizers applied, guy in overalls on tractor, machines grinding and packaging and loading and delivering.
More unknowns and unpleasantries with an animal on the plate (what was it fed, and where did that come from?) stretch contemplation duration while the food cools. I'm a hungry fool.
I'm lazy, and I want to be closer to the source.
take responsibility for [your] food -- no matter what it is -- by tracking its path back to the sun. If you can face the path of your food in full knowledge and be at ease with it, then happy eating!
-- Kevin Kelly, [Review of] The Omnivore's Dilemma (Cool Tools)
this week's Fresh Stop
My share bag this week from the City Fresh Fresh Stop. All locally produced, quality, and fresh:
- 1 basket of cherry tomatoes
- 1 taxi (yellow) tomato
- 2 green tomatoes
- 3 red tomatoes
- 2 green bell peppers
- 1 hot pepper
- 2 yellow sweet peppers
- 2 sm/med zucchini
- 3 sm/med yellow summer squash
- 5 peaches
- 2 med yellow onions
- 7 ears corn
- 2 romaine lettuce hearts
- 1 bunch of turnip/beet greens
- 1 small bunch of cilantro
- 1 sandwich-bag of basil
...$20. I'm curious to know what this would cost at a grocery store, but not curious enough to do the wandering legwork. Another advantage, here, over supermarket shopping: the CityFresh folk just smile, chat, and hand me my bagfull.
Still finishing up what's left from my last bag, including a giant zucchini I enjoyed baking half of into a bread this morning.
Ever-fresh words from Jack:
We have added a new dimension of happiness when we look for joy equally in the cooking as in the eating. Because life on many days is 90% journey and 10% arrival, deferring joy to outcomes only diminishes our potential by 90%. The choice is ours.
grassroots and beetroots
Since returning home to an environment where I'm at least sharing responsibility for the provision and production of my meals, I've been making an effort to buy locally-grown produce.
Working on small-time organic farms (through WWOOF) in Spain earlier this year, I had a great introduction into the world of family farms and a more natural and sustainable means of agriculture. I'm doing my best to hang onto the habits and ideals I inherited.
An interesting parallel is drawn in the O'Reilly-hosted interview, Supporting Family Farms with Open Source Software, by Guillermo Payet, of LocalHarvest(.org):
Both open source proponents and "buy local" people are advocates of diversity and the absence of centralized control. There is the idea in both realms of the underdog fighting the status quo to build a better world that empowers individuals and offers wider choice. It's been great for me to use tools built by a virtual community of hackers to build a system that strengthens real geographical communities, and that in some ways embodies such a similar system of ethics.
-- Guillermo Payet
LocalHarvest "makes it easy to find family farms, farmers markets and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area."
I'm inspired when I see the internet adopted in this way. Individual empowerment, health, and ecological sustainability brought about by technology, (sometimes a seemingly lifeless and unnatural enterprise.)
ease myself down, comin up brown
In consumption, I annihilated many of the food combination rules I know of, but these little triangles of unearthly Mexican delight had called me from their unformed state of tortilla, tomato, mozarella, black bean, onion, lettuce, and salsa, charging me with the duty of their construction -- only then to fuel the very temptation for and exaltation in their own demise.
day off
Just left the playa desnuda in Almuñecar. My first (skinny) dip in the Mediterranean was short as the water is still quite cold, but all in all quite a tranquilo day. Lots of fun and relaxation. We passed innumerable tourist-oriented restaurants on the walk from the beach back into town and I tried to take in all of the smells and sights I could. I'm still unsure how much I'm going to stick to this mode of eating (100% raw) when I leave this place. I am quite convinced of many of its merits and benefits, but I'm not sure how much I'll be able to give up, and that the life I want to lead (socially, etc,) fits well. Dishes of ice cream, beautifully designed plates of rice and steamed vegetables, cervezas, coffees -- even signs with the word pizza -- made me a little bit forlorn.
I wish I had the time and inclination to talk more about the diet; it's consuming me as much as I, it, right now. I have the same kinds of regrets as after reading The Good Life; that there's a way of life I should be following, but know I won't be able to (ignorance is bliss.) I have to remind myself that I'm only better off for knowing more, and with the knowledge I will only improve my situation...
Reasoning
I woke up this morning with more than a small feeling of regret. I came home from The Huntsman yesterday evening knowing I had once again overeaten -- it's so easy, working in a kitchen -- I've got food at my fingertips all day long. But there was a barbecue on at the hostel, and I proceeded to take care of three hamburgers, probably a dozen little fried fish, some rice-haddock salad, french fries, and god knows what else. I could've thanked myself for stomaching so much food as it probably prevented a hangover from too much cheap red wine, but a hangover is just a punishment for overindulgence; and mine was of food not spirits.
Anyway, I woke up early and walked around Galway, with the excuses of buying my weekly bread, eggs and milk, and visiting the Social Welfare office to collect my new Social Services card, and my thoughts were focused on my overconsumption and what I would do about it. My decisions were in depth, and I tried to think up a good way to express them here, but couldn't seem to get past the idea of how stupid it seems for me to write about how I ate too much, and that I actually spent a morning's walk meditating that.
I just got another email today asking me why I'm here. The Philipinos I work with can't grasp the idea that someone holding a computer science degree is washing dishes. I am not sure myself much of the time what I'm doing. But this morning I feel certain that I'm simplifying my life for awhile, so that I have an opportunity to actually observe myself and my world. I have fewer worldly obligations here and now, (though I'm neglecting some,) and so am able to concentrate my attention on little things like I did this morning; address a tendency of mine with observation, and come to some kind of a conclusion.
My temperament swings up and too far down for my liking, (strikes and gutters, as The Dude would say,) and it's nice to take some time out to try and balance myself a bit. So, there ya go, Renatto at the Huntsman, and Tim at Harvard, and Mom at home... and Me. That's why I'm here... in Ireland... washing dishes.