Meatless Monday: The $5 Meal Challenge

Irene is gone. The sky has never been as blue. The many objects brought in have been brought back out. The debris bags are full and lined up on the sidewalk awaiting pick-up. We are fortunate here. No trees came down. No power was lost. Porches and sidewalks are cleaner than they were before the storm. But Irene did take some of my time which necessitates a change of plans. I was away last week, visiting family and friends, gathering stories. For those you will have to wait.

Instead, let me put in a plug for a special up-coming event from Slow Food USA, a national non-profit that believes everyone has the right to good, clean, and fair food.

The event: The $5 Challenge. 

Slow Food USA is inviting people across the country to share a healthy, affordable meal, at a cost of less than $5 a person. 
The Date: September 17

The Purpose: The challenge is to “take back the value meal,” according to Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA, the idea being that “slow food shouldn’t cost any more than fast food.” Slow Food urges, “If you know how to cook, then teach others. If you want to learn, this is your chance…Everybody should be able to eat fresh, healthy food every day.”

More details about the day and the campaign are available in this pdf.

You can pledge to take the challenge here. 

I have heard about the $5 challenge in a couple of ways. One was from an email forwarded by a friend, and signed by Gordon Jenkins from Campaigns at Slow Food USA. Could this be the Gordon Jenkins I remembered from New Haven? Indeed.

Gordon was the food writer for the Yale Daily News during his four years on campus. Each Friday I would look in the YDN for a new recipe featuring seasonal ingredients. Gordon’s clear and entertainingly written recipes always took a little extra time and effort to prepare (think slow food), but they were foolproof and delicious. Here are links to my two personal favorites: Sweet, sweet (corn soup) Love and Tomato confit is a can-do. Oh yes. The corn soup would surely meet the $5 challenge. Enjoy.

Please check back soon for my travel report(s), and next Monday for sure.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”

Thanks, Steve

On August 24, 2011, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. 
On that day in 1984 when Jobs let the first Macintosh out of the bag, my life was changed forever.




Thanks, Steve.
Godspeed, and long may you reign as Chairman of the Board.

Meatless Monday: DIY Ginger Ale

There are still some hot summer days in store, and Labor Day cookouts will be on the horizon before too long. So I thought I’d post this recipe for homemade ginger ale my good friend Kevin shared with me some weeks back. All you need is a chunk of fresh ginger root, some sugar, ice and carbonated water.

K wrote, “I sampled this at a cookout this past weekend and was amazed it was so simple… [it] requires little effort and no exotic ingredients. All you do is make the ginger syrup, then add soda water. Feel free to increase the ginger in the syrup, if you like more of a ginger kick…. The syrup is also great for a sore or scratchy throat when mixed with hot water & lemon or for calming a wobbly stomach, either as ginger ale or straight, a teaspoon at a time. Though I have yet to sample one myself, I was told that this makes a great Dark & Stormy (traditionally Ginger Beer & Dark Rum served with a wedge of lime; some recipes call for the juice of 1 or one half lime in the drink as well).”

This recipe requires just 3 ingredients, one of which is water:

INGREDIENTS

2 cups unpeeled, washed, fresh ginger, roughly chopped

2 cups sugar

6 cups water

Process ginger chunks in a food processor or blender until finely chopped. Place in a large stock pot. Add sugar and water to the pot and stir. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer over medium-low heat and cook for one hour until a rich syrup is created. Strain the syrup twice through cheese cloth or a sieve into a large jar or bottle. Refrigerate.

To make ginger ale, simply fill an ice-filled glass a third of the way with the syrup, top with soda water and a squeeze of lime, stir and enjoy.

The ginger for one batch should run you about — $1.50.

If you have a SodaStream sodamaker your ginger ale will be nearly local [haven’t spotted any local ginger at the market]. I’ve seen this product in action and have one on my wish list. With one of these fun to use gadgets, you use your own tap water to make fizzy water. No electricity is required, and the cartridges can be exchanged locally. You can have carbonated water whenever you want it, with a small carbon footprint! 

I have tried this recipe with great success. It makes a delicious drink with a good bit of zing, even without the citrus. Be sure to use a lot of ice, and you might start by filling your glass 1/4 full. As K said, you can always add more.

Just think how you will impress your guests at your next shindig when you tell them you made the ginger ale yourself!

Please come back next Monday for more food facts, my latest produce discovery, or a tip you can use. Thanks for reading.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”

Meatless Monday: Vegetables, Chickens, and Bees and More

This is not one of my usual Meatless Monday posts. But I wasn’t quite finished talking about urban farming. Last week I told a brief history of the Victory Garden, its glory days, and its rapid demise, and had just barely touched upon its recent comeback.

So, I'll pick up where I left off. My, how things have changed over the past few years! 

One of the beehives at 116 Crown

Farmers’ markets are popping up on downtown sidewalks, commuter lots, and church lawns around the country. Urbanites are turning their front and back yards into “farms.” Restaurants have taken the phrase “Farm to Table” literally and are growing vegetables, and even installing beehives in their backyards. A few adventurous souls in my city have taken the movement to an extreme — “farming” every inch of their available space, harvesting the rainwater from their roofs, and raising chickens.  The downtown restaurant 116 Crown has two managed beehives just outside the back door. My friend Pam and I learned all this last Saturday on the 2nd Annual CTNOFA (Connecticut Chapter of the Northeast Organic Farmers Association) Farm and Garden Tour in New Haven, a fundraiser for the organization and definitely not the stereotypical garden tour.

The challenges for these farmers are many. One of the biggest is lead in the soil. Before anyone can even begin planting, each plot must be tested for lead and then remediated as required, which in every case requires quite a bit of work. 

Matt Browning has chickens in the back yard…

… and hills of vegetables in the front one.

These industrious farmers are growing amazing amounts of food! Sherill Baldwin, a woman we knew well, estimated that she and her husband were already growing about 40% of their food, with the goal of putting by even more. One of their newest additions? — a fig tree. Matt Browning, a nurse with a 1/10 of an acre plot in the shadow of the Yale School of Nursing and just a few blocks from the train station, raises chickens for meat as well as eggs. [He has them butchered elsewhere.] His front yard is planted with the 3 sisters (corn, beans, squash) in 21 hills. I’m not sure this would fly in the neighborhood in which I live. He said he had already pureed and frozen enough squash to provide for an infant who is not yet born!

There were a number of community gardens on the tour as well, some well established, and some just getting started, all with the noble goal of educating people and getting fresh food to the people who most need it. I have to admit that once it was clear we could not get to them all, we used the GPS to be sure we could get to some of the quirkier sounding ones and skipped a lot of the bigger gardens which are more accessible.

I do wish I had read the flyer more carefully before we hit the road. There is one stop I am very sorry to have missed — the home and garden of young Emily Gallagher, who is trying to become as “self-sufficient as possible.” I knew Emily when she was a little girl and I was a parent volunteer at West Hills School. You can read more about Emily, and the nurse, and my friend Sherrill in this story with excellent photos by Allan Appel in the Independent. Emily, if you happen to see this post, I’ll be looking for you next year.

Our last stop of the day was not covered in the Independent. That was the home, garden, and agricultural building of Vincent Kay, whose Swords Into Plowshares honey has been selling in small markets around New Haven for decades. Vincent has a large backyard garden with hearty, healthy plants growing in very neat rows, white homing pigeons, a beehive which he uses to monitor bee activity, [He has lots of other hives in the area. You can read more in this wonderful blog post by Vincent’s current assistant, another Emily.], and an outbuilding where he processes and bottles his honey and makes beeswax candles. The tour was technically over when we arrived, but seeing that the tour sign was still up, Vincent kindly delayed his walk with his dogs to show us around. The scent of beeswax in the attic workroom was sweetly dense and aromatic, and you had to stop to contemplate the exquisite honeycombs. How is it that bees can work together to make such an intricate and beautiful structure? This little oasis is about 1.5 miles from downtown.If you are curious where Vincent’s honey got it’s name, read this bit of history, in particular the bit about Trident Nein. 

Like I said earlier, this was not the typical Garden Tour.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”

Happy Birthday Dear Blog

OTRTG is 2 today!

On August 14, 2009, I began my blog rather tentatively, with this short, introductory post. Over the next few weeks I got on a roll, and surprised myself (and probably some of you) with my prolificness [yes, a real word]. 

I installed Google analytics in May 2010 so I could track and analyze my blog’s stats. since then my blog has had over 2,500 different visitors, and going on 18,000 page views — not bad for a blog which started out with a readership of just a few people I knew.

I used to wonder if I would run out of material, but not anymore. This is post Number 168!

Here are some of my favorites from the past, from oldest to newest:

• 2.2.10: Wave Goodbye to the Slow Train (on riding the train from New Haven, CT to Springfield, MA) 
• 2.21.10: Pan Love (on my love affair with cast iron pans) 
• 4.3.10: The Very First Earth Day (all you ever wanted to know about how Earth Day came to be) 
• 6.5.10: The Possible Dream (on the wind turbine which helps to power Phoenix Press) 
• 6.16.10 Woodchuck Wednesday (a quirky post which has been discovered by readers from all over) 
• 7.21.10: Where Have All the Codfish Gone? (on the changes to Cape Cod’s fishing industry) 
• 9.1.10: Cooling with the Sun (on the solar-powered roof fan we installed) 
• 9.19.10: Meatless Monday: Golden Beet Love 
• 10.4.10: Meatless Monday: The Incredible, Edible, Egg (written after the massive egg recall) 
• 11.22.10: Meatless Monday: Celebrating the Cranberry  
• 12.27.10: Meatless Monday: Vegetarians Beware (on the hidden ingredient in popular candies)
• 3.8.11 The Ayes Have It (New Haven Alders Say “No” to Bottled Water) 
• 5.16.11 Meatless Monday: Back to the Ramps (in which I describe my first experience preparing this spring treat) 
• and finally
• 8.5.11: Times Are Strange: TOTRTG 2011 Wildlife Report  (which includes an amazing tale of a far-traveling mountain lion) 

Thank you everyone who has visited, told a friend, buzzed or +1d me, tweeted, left a comment, sent an idea, or added a link on a site. Your support is my inspiration.

I hope you’ll continue to follow me on my journey. And if you know someone in Mississippi, please send them my way. It's the only state where I have not had a reader.

If all goes well, there will be a Meatless Monday post tomorrow. I’m doing my best. I hope you’ll visit again soon.

Meatless Monday: Victory?!?

There was a time in the not so distant past when Americans stood united behind their president as he called for the nation to support the war effort by conserving resources (in the first organized recycling program) and growing their own produce so that canned goods could be sent to the troops overseas. In answer to the call, the “Victory Garden” was born. On farm plots, city lots, and rooftops across America, families and neighbors planted vegetables — in every available space. Nearly 20 million Americans rose to the occasion, with gardens producing some 9-10 million tons of food, an amount equivalent to what was being commercially grown! 

To get an idea of what was planted in a 1943 Victory Garden, check out the one which was recreated outside the National Museum of American History’s cafeteria and the info and images included on the museum’s website. 

After World War II ended, many of the plots turned back into lawns or flower gardens, or simply roofs. Some of the community gardens continued on as rental plots on conservation land. [My dad had one for years at Rock Meadow in Belmont, MA.] But most Americans returned to shopping in the store for their produce needs.

With the renewed interested in eating local food, backyard gardening is once again on the rise. [Look for a post in the near future on what is happening in New Haven.] For now you will have to settle for a brief report on what’s been happening in my backyard, which those of you who follow my blog know is very small, heavily shaded, and very near a very busy street.

There is nothing like a fresh-picked tomato. When the nursery school offered grape tomatoes as a selection in the plant sale a few months back, I decided to practice what I preach and give backyard food gardening a try once again. I bought two plants, planted them in two large pots, full of homegrown compost, and placed them in the sunniest spot in my yard. I know I don’t have enough sun for Big Boys : any variety with which I have ever experimented has ripened at least one size smaller than promised. The grape variety, however, has been a huge success. I put the plants in cages and let the vines roam all over. [I know that sounds like a contradiction.] I’ve been picking them by the handful, and they taste great!  There are still plenty of green ones on the vines and lots of new flowers. Just about a week ago it even looked pretty certain that these plants would prove to be a good economic investment.

My pride and joy.

But last Saturday I noticed the andromeda bush out back under the crabapple tree shaking with unusual vigor for a calm day. And then I spied a large rodent waddling through. I watched it disappear through the hole in the fence into the yard next door, presumably to a burrow under the abandoned shed. After hearing the tales of my friend across town I was pretty sure a woodchuck had paid a visit. I Googled, and discovered that the ground is littered with one of the woodchuck’s favorite foods – the crabapples we don’t eat. This could well be what attracted him or her to our yard. While I can marvel at some of the woodchuck’s habits, such as the fact that its den includes a chamber designated as a bathroom, I can’t say I’m thrilled with the possibility that it might stay here and raise a family. Once they like a place, it is very difficult to get these critters to leave, and my yard has lots of amenities.

I know my friend’s “Woody”  ventures onto the back porch to raid her tomatoes. Are mine doomed to be woodchuck fodder? Just in case, I’d been particularly careful to pick all the ripe fruit over the last couple of days. Then early this afternoon I had a close encounter of the woodchuck kind. I had almost forgotten all about Woody when I glimpsed from my garden apartment window what I thought was a gargantuan squirrel [all I could see was its head] peering out from behind a flowerpot and eyeing my crop. It lt stared at me as I stared at it, and then off Woody lumbered. Woody is really big! You’ll just have to believe me for now, but I’ll be ready to point and shoot [a photo that is] next time. I promise to keep you posted.

Have a good week and please visit again soon.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”

Times Are Strange: TOTRTG 2011 Wildlife Report

Bob Dylan’s words,  “People are crazy and times are strange …” are even more true in 2011 than they were in 2010.  I’ll leave politics aside and stick to nature where there is also plenty to talk about.

Last year I reported on beach closings in Cape Cod due to sightings of great white sharks  cruising just offshore. The sharks have once again returned to the waters of Chatham, MA where the protected seals continue to multiply. The local economy has reaped an unexpected boom:  tourism is down 4% in other parts of the Cape, but it is up 15% in Chatham, due apparently, at least in part, to the droves of vacationers who visit the town in hopes of seeing a great white with their own eyes. In early July, operators of Beachcomber Boat Tours were reporting a 20% increase in revenues, and that was before Discovery Channel’s Shark Week which featured Jaws Comes Home, filmed in Chatham by a crew that included Celine Cousteau, granddaughter of the late oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.

The water was perfect, but no one was going in.

Beachgoers on the Connecticut shoreline are currently running the risk of jellyfish stings when they take a dip. The lion’s mane jellyfish have made an early return to the warm waters of Long Island Sound. The stings are painful but not life-threatening: lifeguards keep a bottle of vinegar solution on-hand as a remedy. None of them has duplicated the unfortunate error made just over a year ago by a Rye, NH lifeguard, who removed a lion’s mane weighing nearly 50 pounds from the water using a pitchfork. He did not realize the dead jellyfish’s disintegrated tentacles were still active. About 100 bathers had to be treated for jellyfish stings after the parts dispersed into the water.

Coyotes are still very much in the news in New Haven. In June the Independent wrote about a young one being enticed out of harm’s way by a police lieutenant wielding a turkey sandwich. 

Black bear sightings are becoming more commonplace throughout the state of Connecticut. 

But nothing can beat the dramatic tale of the mountain lion who ventured all the way from the Black Hills of South Dakota only to be struck and killed by a car on the Wilbur Cross Parkway on June 11 in Milford, some 10 miles from here.Tests performed on tissue from the deceased animal confirmed a match in genetic structure to that of the  mountain lion population in North Dakota. When the dead lion’s DNA was compared to DNA* retrieved from the scat [poop], blood, and hair of an animal traveling through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan last year, it was found to be an exact genetic match. The two animals were one in the same.

Young male mountain lions do travel in search of a mate, but rarely more than a distance of 100 miles. Why did this one roam so far? Where was it going? 

DEEP Commissioner Daniel C. Esty stated, “The journey of this mountain lion is a testament to the wonders of nature and the tenacity and adaptability of this species.  This mountain lion traveled a distance of more than 1,500 miles from its original home in South Dakota – representing one of the longest movements ever recorded for a land mammal and nearly double the distance ever recorded for a dispersing mountain lion.”

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “We need the tonic of wildness…We can never have enough of nature.” I would argue that wild and wonderful nature is all around us, with tonic aplenty if we just take a moment to notice and look upon it with awe. 

Please visit again for future reports on my own backyard sighting, an alert about some unwelcome invaders lurking on Connecticut’s borders, and a special update on good things which have been happening in New Haven…

_________________

*To get a better understanding of DNA (and how it can be analyzed), check out the site of personal genome service 23andMe. 23andMe's “mission is to be the world's trusted source of personal genetic information,” while also providing tools and information to understand your DNA. The short clips found in the Genetics 101 section of their site provide an entertaining yet thorough summary of the basics of genetics.  Even though the clips are largely referencing people, not animals, you will get the idea. 23andMe hopes, I’m sure, that you will be so intrigued that you will want to trust them to break your own unique code. Go on, take the plunge, you know you want to.

Meatless Monday: Yellow Things

On Saturday, at the CitySeed market in Wooster Square, yellow was the color of the day.

Two varieties of lemon cucumbers and a yellow zucchini.

I biked to the market in search of the round, yellow cucumbers I’d heard about last week. I didn’t make a particularly early start, however, and was disappointed by my lettuce guy who had indeed brought some cucumbers to market but had sold them all by 11 when I finally arrived. “We open at 9. You’ve got to get here earlier,” he chided me. 

In keeping with the camaraderie among the vendors at CitySeed, he pointed out a couple of other vendors who had brought the yellow cukes that day. And before I left his table he sold me a bright yellow zucchini [yes, really a zucchini], not the one I first picked up, but a different one with thinner skin which I would not have to peel before cooking. It will make a colorful side dish when sautéed with the dark green one I haven’t yet turned into something.

His tip was good. Two vendors still had yellow cucumbers, in two slightly different varieties. The ones I bought first were smaller and patterned. The second were larger, and a uniform pale color. 

Both sets of farmers urged me merely to wash the cucumbers and to eat them like apples. When I got home, I put the fruits [yes, cucumbers are fruits] in the fridge to chill. And later we followed their advice. The cucumbers were indeed crunchy and juicy, but if Macouns were in season right now, I’m pretty sure I’d rather chomp on one of them instead. The cukes had lots of seeds.

As I was leaving the market I made a final purchase — a till of peaches from Chaplin, in CT’s “Quiet Corner.” They were yellow when I brought them home, but are turning a beautiful rosy blush on my windowsill, and exuding a fragrance which should help keep me calm through these stressful days [that is until we’ve eaten them all]. Sometimes  “Wash well and eat” is the best recipe. I love a perfect peach, so filled with juice that it runs down my chin… 

Please come back next Monday for more food facts, my latest produce discovery, or a tip you can use. Thanks for reading.

I often blog on food or food issues on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal  health and the health of our planet.”