Netflix

I admit to not living mindfully when I do some chores, like laundry, so I make it pass a little quicker watching Netflix. Netflix is weak on some subjects, but not on documentaries. If you're looking to watch anything about farming, saving the land, living more simply, there are dozens of options. My "Instant Queue" is full of these things, if only because I like my TV to look green and not grey.

I watched Radically Simple, about an engineer who is trying to engineer his simple life. One of his big pushes is, of course, gardening, and my favorite scene is when he chops up tomatoes in his garden, puts them in a pot and sets it up on a solar slow cooker, then cans the food. It's a remarkably quiet DVD, where there are community discussions interspersed with work, splitting wood or gardening. You forget how personal doing work can be, without music running or constant chatter. (I'm sure it would be the better way to do my laundry.) It stars Jim Merkel, Dartmouth College's Sustainability Coordinator. The general idea is that with current population, we each get about 4.5 acres of ecological footprint, an ever-shrinking number.

Last night I attempted to watch Dirt, narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis. I felt kind of like I was watching Sesame Street, with sound effects and cutting from one specialist to another. Interesting as everyone was, I felt kind of overwhelmed by connecting the details myself, by the speed and the noise. It didn't feel like nature, and I stopped watching it.

The one I've enjoyed most is only a half hour, called Save Our Farm. It's about a 14-acre plot in LA that was a free project run on donated land by the city. 14 acres is about 16 football fields. And in Southern California, you can be growing food all the time. The place was a mix of permaculture and annuals, and their "farmer's market" let folks walk around on the property for gardeners to sell crops still growing in the ground. It looked like a fantastic project. The city then made a quiet deal to sell the land back to the developer they bought it from, in order to build warehouses. The trouble here is that of course the land isn't owned by the farmers. These farmers used the land to cut out half of their food budget and could hardly afford their own land. And perhaps it's the city and developer's right to make their deals.

When I look at my land ownership options in Boston, even with a good salary it is going to be difficult to afford one acre for my future family. If you are in a situation where you are making near minimum wage, you just can't do it. And a couple amazing things happen in the documentary, but the outcome was still disappointing.

I think that it's very difficult to monetize the impact of growing food. I see folks getting sued for growing vegetables (and that reminds me of why my  parents were sued because my neighbor wanted to cut back the branches of our trees growing over into his yard. We lost. It made sense, but I was still sad for the trees.) When folks are skeptical about the health benefits of sustainable organic, it's not just what you put in your mouth. It's also about keeping green spaces and healthy living land, the physical work of gardening (I probably do several hundred squats when I'm in my garden on any given day), the community effort of any big farming project, the joy of ownership of your own work.

At Chestnut Farms, their recent newsletter discussed legislation introduced that would prevent any farm from having their own kids work on the farm. You understand why this might be, but at the same time, it lets a child fairly young see the fruits of labor and run their own finances if they have a business. You appreciate the work going into what sustains you.

The legislation didn't pass, due to massive outcry by small farmers.

This month's Edible Boston features a multi-generational farm in Belmont. The too were pressured to develop the land, to build a train station and parking lot and make a whole lot of money. But they chose to farm. The generally feeling is that it pays off now, for the family.

I wonder how farming is going to look over the next decade. In MA, there are more small farms now than at the millenium, and urban farming is taking off all over the place.

Perennials

Today we received an order of perennials from One Green World. They kindly added a note to the invoice that these plants would offset about 153 pounds of carbon dioxide per year after they are full grown.

Of course, I love edibles. The order included flowing plants such as akebia and Maypop passion flower, both of which produce gorgeous flowers but also produce fruit. Akebia requires two varieties, so we're adding a pretty white variety to our rosy one. There are several huckleberries, a Korean bush cherry, and lingonberry. I also have five saffron crocus bulbs, and I'm hoping to offset saffron expenses.

I'm planning to put the saffron bulbs into a low, wide blue pot I bought at Pemberton Farms yesterday. I also found some pots that biodegrade after a couple seasons. They seem very sturdy now and are made of bamboo, but in two years, you just pop them into the ground as they start to disintegrate. I'm hoping to create an herb garden out of these. I've bought some herb plants and have several seeds for others.

I discovered that my herbs create the best vegetarian lasagna, and can't wait for this season's. This weekend I made a meat and bitter melon lasagna, which was great, but still not up to par with rosemary, thyme, and fennel.

I also picked up a bunch of gorgeous looking succulents for another piece of the garden. I tried it out last year, but they didn't set too well, so this time they'll be in the ground sooner.

Right now the perennial plot looks like a barren wasteland, but in about a month it'll start looking trim and inhabited. Or so says my ambition.

Patriot's Day

Yesterday I went to my garden to plant lettuce and other greens. One gardener remarked, "Oh, so you're one of those people who might think it'll actually cool off." It was 88 out when I left the garden, hardly lettuce weather. And I'm sitting here before 7am the next day, worried that my afternoon-watered lettuce is going to wilt away to nothing before I can next water it. I thought about driving the 45-minute round trip to splash some water on, but decided that maybe this evening would be a better bet.

I read The $64 Tomato a couple weeks ago. It's about the slow dive into insanity as you try to perfect your garden. Battles against bugs, groundhogs, sod, weather. At the end he realizes he is no longer a gardener, but a farmer. And I can see my path clearly ahead of me too.

Sunnyside up

My new go-to ingredient for breakfast is corn tortillas. I really have to learn to make my own, but for now we get packs at the store. 

A couple of recent breakfasts:

Two corn tortillas. Cook on one side, then flip and add a spoonful of refried beans, some avocado, and cheese. After cheese starts to melt, plate and add greens. Fast, delicious, satisfying.

This morning's was more involved. We had extra bok choy, which I panfried with just salt and pepper. Then I cooked two tortillas. I cooked up breakfast sausage from Chestnut Farms. I made a salsa out of tomatoes, jarred jalapeños, scallions, garlic, and some cumin and chili powder. And then two sunnyside-up eggs. Place tortillas, then eggs, then salsa. Add the greens and sausage on the side.

Growing up, after my mom found out about salmonella, we stopped doing things like licking the bowl or cooking sunnyside-up eggs. Since most of my eggs no longer come from factory farms, I take the risk these days and cook sunnyside-up. Such a pleasure.

Garden time

This year, I found an interesting deal online for 100 packets of seeds for $$59 at GetSeeds. Given that theses seeds are organic heirloom, that's a fantastic deal. My packets arrived in a nice big bag. Here's the bag, not that they attached some buttercup seeds to the outside:

And here's the seeds:

It was a lovely variety, great for a large plot. There were tons of herbs, as well as a nice mix of peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, corn, and so on. There were no instructions, but since they put the variety on each packet, it's easy enough to look up.

I started a large tray of peppers and tomatoes this year. Oddly, the peppers are doing better than the tomatoes. Usually it's the other way around. Generally I like peppers better, so I suppose it's a good thing, but I can't seem to figure out why the tomatoes aren't doing well.

The annual garden plots at Codman Community Farm are opening up today. Apparently they had a record number of new gardeners applying for plots. It's great that everyone is so interested in gardening. Looking forward to the new season.

Happy Spring

Spring came early this year. I've done some work in the gardens already, planting snap peas and cutting back an akebia vine that was getting invasive. Still a long way to go there.

Akebia is a beautiful flowering vine, but if planted with another variety, it produces fruit too. Max and I are dying to try out this fruit, so we picked a white variety to go with our rosy-colored flowers. It might not work this year, since the flowers are budding so early and the white hasn't been shipped to us yet, but we'll give it a go. It's a good excuse to tame it and try to make the tangle into something productive.

We went a little overboard this year picking out plants. I've pinned a bunch on Pinterest on my Edible Perennials board. I found out that companies may not send ribes, such as gooseberry plants, to Massachusetts. I checked the trusty Wikipedia article on ribes, and it is because it causes White Pine Blister Rust. I hadn't heard of this, but I don't argue too much with stopping non-native disease. No currants or gooseberries in my garden.

I picked up my ever-reliable meat share this week from Chestnut Farms. Kim was dealing out "extras", including beef bones, pork bones, and leaf lard. I made a pork bone soup by boiling the bones for a couple hours the first day (we ate the broth straight), then removed the bones and added sliced baby bella mushrooms, sweet peppers, scallions, and some bok choy. Pretty good! The beef bones are great just roasted for the marrow or in a soup. I like making sweet potato soup with that broth. And the leaf lard is supposed to be amazing for pie crust. I'm looking to make a gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free crust, so maybe leaf lard is the answer. It's a tough search on Google, and I'm not sure it's been done before.

Max cooked up four steaks in our share for a family visit. For his birthday I ordered miso from the South River Miso Co. They make several non-soy misos, anywhere from rice to barley to dandelion leek. We marinated the steaks with miso and a few other ingredients, which is always a nice treat. (My recipe is usually miso, sake, mirin, and sugar, sometimes with soy sauce and scallions.)

Happy Easter to everyone, and hope you got to enjoy some local food.

Miso zucchini

Last year I was completely, utterly bombarded with zucchini. You know how they say that if you let the zucchini grow too large, the plant stops producing? Not only did the zucchini grow too large, the plants didn't stop producing until the frost killed them. Months of baseball bats. I brought some to work and received an email, "I hear that you have some weapons-grade zucchini on your desk. I would love to take one off your hands." Love.

So this year I did NOT plant ANY zucchini. In a way this is sad. I was always guaranteed a grocery bag of zucchini. But I am using the space for more winter squash, and the patty pan squash I grow is an adorable, round little yellow zucchini. But it's not, you know, ZUCCHINI, stuff of nightmares.

Still, no matter what you do, if you live anywhere near a farm or gardener you're going to end up with someone, um, "gifting" you zucchini. And I just didn't want more stirfried zucchini with garlic, or to put it into a curry. Last year I bought the cookbook Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go, which I love. The book presents a different way of cooking, combining, presentation than traditional big dish American cookbooks. I've cooked a lot with miso this year, partly due to that cookbook, so I decided to try a miso zucchini.

Miso zucchini

Serves 2

One knob of fresh ginger
Splash of sesame oil (for cooking)
2 tablespoons of miso (the paste, not the powder)
2 tablespoon of Mirin (or a sake/sugar mix)
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 smallish zucchini
Sesame seeds

1. Chop the ginger. If you like to chew on ginger, then do a rough chop. If you like the flavor but hate the texture, mince it. 
2. Slice the zucchini into thin rounds. (Gadget alert: If you have a mandoline, this is the sort of thing you should use it for.)
3. Heat a fry pan on medium and add sesame oil. 
4. When the oil is hot, add the ginger.
5. When the ginger has cooked for a couple minutes, add the miso, mirin, and soy sauce. This will form a sort of paste.
6. Add the zucchini and stir to cover with the paste. 
7. Cook, stirring off and on, until the zucchini is floppy, but still holds its shape.
8. Remove from heat.
9. Toss a few sesame seeds on top, give it a quick stir, and serve hot.

It's a sweet and salty side dish that takes about 15 minutes to prep.