DAY 17_BAKE FEST

31 August 2010

I spent a chunk of time today scouring a million recipe books looking for meals made up of local foods (or recipes that can be modified to be only local).  This is only half-fun because I have to look at all the pictures of foods that I can't eat (chocolate deserts, lemon-flavored everything...)  Mitch Omer of Hell's Kitchen (a local foods restaurant in downtown Minneapolis) has a recipe book which also tells the interesting story of his life.  I've also been looking through some Minnesota Traditional recipe books.    There are TONS of excellent sounding recipes for different breads, cheese dishes and potato dishes.  Most of these recipes include either butter or heavy cream. The conclusion I've come to is, basically we don't have a tradition of cooking real healthy meals in local Minnesota culture.  I'm guessing this is for a few reasons: the growing season only allows for fresh produce about half of the year, the produce that CAN be stored through the winter are starchy root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots.  The reality is, these foods don't have a lot of taste on their own, so the solution is often to soak it in butter or cream to make it more palatable.  I'm going to start with some of these traditional recipes and see how they can be modified to be more healthy and to add some of ingredients I am growing on my table-because excitedly things are finally growing! 

Last night I was having a crazy craving for fat and bread and hadn't made any bread this week.  I started out making hash browns for the first time.  I am always amazed at the things I never did before.  Hash browns are just about the easiest thing in the world to make, you grate a potato and fry it in butter and a little oil for like 7 min on one side and 4 on the other.  After that I hard boiled some eggs.  Then I was still hungry :) so I started making muffins (it was the first recipe in the bread section).  My recipe was the following:

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour (Whole Flour Milling)

1/3 cup maple sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 egg

3/4 milk (Cedar Summit)

1/4 cup sunflower oil

I kept them pretty basic for now, and they were pretty good, not very sugary (maple sugar isn't quite as powerful tasting as cane)

My sunflower sprouts are growing like crazy(more than an inch a day) some are already ready to harvest and the others will be done in a day or two.  I cut some off today and tried a new vegetable mix dish.  Beets and mini eggplant chopped and sauteed with shallots, hot peppers and sunflower oil.  I put the sprouts on top (uncooked) and it was EXCELLENT.  Super healthy and the sunflower sprouts add a lot of nutrition and protein.  

The other big thing today is I started growing micro greens.  Micro greens are my new plan for the grow table (at least while the other vegetables are still sprouting).  They are basically young greens (bigger than sprouts but smaller than a full plant).  You can plant them fairly close because they never get too big.  You cut them when they are about 4-5 inches tall.  Young greens contain a lot more nutrients because they are still absorbing a lot to grow quickly.  I planted one seed flat full of green seeds today.  Collard greens on one half and romaine on the other.  My plan is to plant a new batch every week so I have a rotation of greens which can be harvested weekly.  I am a little worried that it is still too hot for them, but I'll try to keep them in a cool place until they have germinated.  Good luck little greens! I'm counting on you!

DAY 16_GIVING OUR POWER AWAY

30 August 2010

I swear I'll stop talking about food soon and focus on other aspects of the project, but I've come into contact with so many amazing resources (mostly reading about raw foods) while researching the affect processed foods (enabled by oil) have on the human body.  Hands down the most interesting book I've read about this is Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko.   Raw foods books are an excellent resource for anyone interested in what kinds of nutrients are found in raw, whole foods, whether you are going to cook with them or not.  While raw food may become integrated into my diet more as I learn about how much energy is required to cook food, for now, it is just interesting to read how far we have detached ourselves from eating REAL foods in a typical American diet.  The more I have become aware of just how much stuff we put in our bodies that just isn't food (preservatives, synthetic colors and flavors...) the more shocked I am at how unhealthy my 'old' diet appears to me.  Its no wonder that even as medicine has advanced that people continue to get sicker and more 'uncurable' diseases become prevalent, a huge part of this is that we are simply not fueling our bodies with real nutrients. 

Victoria's Boutenko is a woman from Russia whose entire family (4 people) was diagnosed with a variety of long-term 'uncurable' diseases in the span of one year.  Doctors told each of them to take a variety of pills for the rest of their lives, and the chances of a recovery were slim to none. They didn't want to accept this as their only option and decided as a family to look really critically at their diets and try to find a way to improve their health through eating differently.  Victoria began to research the diets of chimpanzees.  By studying the diets of our closest relatives she could see how people are naturally meant to be eating, and use them as an example for their own diets.  What she found was this:

She discovered that chimps eat about 35% greens (not to be confused with starchy vegetables which have different nutritional properties).  After realizing this she tried to eat a lot more greens but found that she just didn't like greens enough to eat that many every day.  She began exploring options to integrate more greens into her diet and came up with the green smoothie concept.   Her whole family began drinking a quart to 2 quarts of this drink every day and within a few months, their symptoms all began to decrease.  Her husband began to grow back dark hair and they all felt energized and needed less sleep.  A link to an explanation of green smoothies on their website is here:

http://www.rawfamily.com/green-smoothie

Because I am finding that greens are a really quick and easy thing to grow indoors I am excited to try the green smoothie idea to integrate a a better nutrition balance into my diet and see what the effects of this are. 

Ultimately, it is amazing to find how disconnected we have become to what is in our foods.  A large part of this disconnection has to do with having an energy resource that allowed for foods to be shipped from around the country and the world.  While it is great that we are able to get fresh produce (especially in Minnesota) during the winter when these things can't grow here).  As well as coffee, citrus, avocados, chocolate.  These are all foods which having an abundant petroleum energy-resource has enabled us to do.  However, the downside of this is in order to ship things long distances they need to be preserved in some way (or picked before they are ripe and full of nutrients).  It also allowed us to create all kinds of pre-made meals, and boxed foods which can last a LONG time.  The reason they last, however, is because of the synthetic ingredients added to the food.  Our bodies are not evolutionarily designed to digest these additives and it has affected our health in a negative way fairly dramatically. 

The most interesting part of Green for Life to me however, is a statement she makes in the introduction to the book:

"As we live our lives, trying new things and searching for true answers, we gain plenty of our own experiences.  Our knowledge becomes familiar and practical.  We fell rather confident in any life circumstance and particularly when we need to make urgent decisions.  Contrary to that, when all we have is a compilation of someone else's instructions, the best we can do is to hope an pray that the authors of such instructions were efficient tin acquiring their knowledge and honest in their intentions.  In other words we hope that someone else cares for us more than we care for our own selves. 

When we let other's observe and reason for us, in a sense, we consciously choose to stay blind and deaf.  We become compelled to follow someone elses's instructions, one after another, and perform actions which do not make much sense to us.  We submit to other's authority. We give our power away.

To observe is our birthright.  If we utilize our ability to observe, we can free ourselves from the labyrinth of confusions.  I believe that our own conscious observations are a thousand times more important than any rigid scientific claim." (page 3 Green for Life)

In a world where we have become so disconnected from where our food comes from and what is in it because it is more convienient, it is essential that we take it upon ourselves to understand these things for ourselves and make our own decisions about what is healthy based on how we FEEL not by other people telling us what is good for us. 

We are our own best teachers. 

DAY 15_EATING BIRDSEED

29 August 2010

After some failed vegetable spouts and a rapid depletion of variety of foods available at farmer's markets already, I've decided to re-work my grow table plan a bit.  I have some vegetables coming up as sprouts still, but many were fried when it got too hot (and I left the lid on).  One of the problems I'm having is the sprouts look fine and I transplant them and they seem to die in the middle of the stem.  My basil is shown here, it literally just can't keep itself up anymore and flops over (stem in the middle is really thin now).  A project we studied while doing our greenhouse project this summer was a winter-CSA run out of a greenhouse in Milan, MN.  It is about 16'x22' and feeds 20 families, mostly growing microgreens, without any supplemental lighting and barely any heating.  What is interesting is they grow all the greens in rain gutters (only 4" deep).  They can have a continuous supply of nutrient rich microgreens (greens harvested after only a few weeks) by planting new ones every week.  Being that I am already almost out of greens I can find locally, I am going to make this the new main goal of the grow table.  This way I can grow food fast enough that it is useful to me when I run out of other supplies. 

My friend John donated a gallon bag of sunflower seeds to me the other day.  He buys this stuff in 50 gallon bags at garden centers as birdseed for about $25.  You can buy it at the Wedge for $4/gallon, I'll take the birdseed.  Turns out growing sunflower spouts is a super easy and popular thing for people to do in kitchens in the city.  Its nice because they are ready to eat in less than 10 days from planting.  After watching a few videos, my process was this:

video I followed was this raw lady: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3y7UiGn2-M

1_dump a few cups of sunflower seeds into a mason jar and rinse
2_let sit for 6-8 hours in water and rinse again
3_hang in a mesh bag, or thin strainer to drain all water out till seeds are dry
4_pour back into mason jar and rinse twice a day for a couple days (the seed start to sprout in the mason jar)
5_as soon as most of the seeds are sprouting, put them in a container filled with organic soil (I used a black seed flat, the lady in the video used a plate) doesn't sound like the soil needs to be too thick
6_put seed on top of soil, very densely.  Not so dense they are on top of each other, but John describes it like a 'blanket' of sunflower seeds.
7_sprinkle a little bit of soil on top, not very much.
8_cover with a dark top of some kind (I layered my seed flats, John says the 'cover' flat can actually be resting on the seeds because as soon as they begin to sprout they push the top up they are so densely planted. 
9_allow to sprout for a few days (not sure how long yet)
10_cut with scissors at base of sprout and put in sitr-fry, salad, smoothies, sandwiches
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covered with seed flat on top (keep dark and warm)

after 2 days of growth (still covered)

DAY 14_VISITORS!

28 August 2010

I wish I had some good pictures of today because I got to impose my lifestyle on my old roommate Beth for the weekend who was visiting from San Francisco!  I admit I had a couple slips, I HAD TO, HAD TO take her to my favorite restaurant in the city (Himalayan Restaurant on Franklin), definitely not local. 

We had a pretty perfect (almost) no oil day in Minneapolis.  Wake up to a breakfast at Common Roots (local restaurant close to my house), no coffee.  We walked to Hidden Beach (East Beach) on Cedar Lake.  It always surprises me how quickly you can walk places that I think are much farther away.  Because my bike is my primary form of transportation, I really don't walk anywhere farther than 5-6 blocks away.  Because of this, I always think it will take a long time to walk somewhere 1-2 miles away.  The walk to Hidden Beach is 1.8 miles and it only took us 35 minutes however.  Although our dinner wasn't local, we DID bike there (4+ miles away).  Minneapolis has one of maybe the largest bike rental program in the country (largest?) that was just started this summer here. 
http://www.niceridemn.org/

The program is definitely set up for people to take quick trips by bicycle instead of the bus, or car, or walking.  While you have to put a deposit down (up to $250?) the bikes are $5 a day if you keep each trip you take under 30 min.  This program isn't really helping people who can't afford cars to become more mobile (not everyone has $250 to deposit), and it isn't great for renting a bike for an afternoon if you are a visitor.  But you can take short trips for really cheap. 

I also drank my first green smoothie from the wedge today.  They use compostable cups, so I got one to see how long it takes to compost (or if it actually composts).  I cut it up into pieces except for the lid before throwing it in. The good thing about composting food containers is you don't have to rinse them!  Less water, more food for worms!  Speaking of the worms, the compost is slowly starting to lose its smell, you can no longer smell it without opening the top anymore, starting to smell more earthy. 

DAY 13_TOO BUSY TO EAT

27 August, 2010

With a big deadline and no food prepared already didn't have time to spend even 20 min making breakfast this morning.  Definitely a day I would have grabbed a pop tart and a coffee and ran out the door :)  I need to start making a schedule of what I plan on eating every day and pre-make foods.  EVERYTHING just takes so much longer, but if I had things somewhat pre-made already it would go much faster.  This goes for more than just food: laundry takes time, getting water and carrying to where I need it takes time, biking around doing errands takes time...I need some structure, something like this:

SUNDAY-grocery shopping for week's worth of food (veggies at farmer's market-only buy what you can eat! and freeze anything that is almost out of season (milk and grains at co-op)
MONDAY-make bread for the week (pizza dough, or bread for spreads), cut fruit (melons)
TUESDAY-make sauces (spreads for bread, pesto, tomato sauce etc), hard boil eggs
WEDNESDAY - farmer's market again, run any errands (not as many to do when you can't buy anything)
THURSDAY - work on vegetable garden, plant new seeds, transplant seedlings
FRIDAY - make products (cleaners, lotions, deodorant)
SATURDAY - laundry day week (hand washed with surplus water from previous 6 days, about 45 min)

When I really think of how much there is to do it is overwhelming, breaking it down into doing one thing each day might help. I'll see how this works.

DAY 12_CANDLES

26 August 2010

So I'm playing catch up a little bit here translating my notes into postings....Life has gotten in the way of the project the last few days with other project deadlines, out-of-town visitors and a new roommate.  My goal with the blog is to post everyday, because everyday I come across TONS of new information just talking to people about the project.  Literally EVERYONE I talk to has something to offer, whether it be an article they read, some advice about growing plants or simply putting me in contact with someone I should talk to.  Its really great to see how much people really already collectively know about many of the things I'm doing/learning for the first time during this project.  I feel like I know at least one person who is really an expert on at least one of the categories of this project: friends who bike around the city know the best routes, lots of people who garden and can give me tips on starting plants, people who have home-composting bins....  In an age when we will need to be re-learning how to live more self-sufficient lives its great to know that there is a wealth of information from all kinds of sources and that really everybody has SOMETHING to offer....

Today I started making my own candles.  This is kind of a nit-picky detail of the project, however, by learning to make your own products (of any kind) makes you really think about what goes into those products.  As I run out of conventional products I have (lotions, shampoos, cleaners) I'll be making those as well.   I've been burning off the last of my "oil" candles (made of paraffin wax as most conventional candles are).  I got soy wax chips instead (had to order these because I couldn't find a local supplier).  Its easy to do, and a bunch of small mason jars serve as excellent candle holders.  I had an old candle jar so I used that.  You simply melt the wax, center the wick in the container and pour in.  It took a few hours to harden afterwards but now I have an oil-free candle!  This process got me thinking about the kinds of things like candles made from oil-products that we use everyday.  It is actually really surprising to me that nobody really thinks about air-quality issues with burning paraffin wax in your home.  I don't know much about this at this point, but I would assume that something that is a by-product of oil refining is a fairly toxic material, and burning it releases it into the air to be inhaled.  With so many "holistic therapy" kinds of uses for candles its surprising that there aren't more soy-based ones.  I have seen these at my co-op and similar stores, but the typical candle is made of paraffin wax.  The soy based flavors are plant products and are therefore, not toxic and burn longer. 

Also, I've begun looking into how to stop junk mail from getting mailed to be everyday.  I'm collecting all of my waste for the 100 Days so minimizing waste as much as possible is important.  I mentioned earlier that I wasn't sure what use I had for lots of paper, especially junk mail.  A lot of junk mail is coated in some kind of wax, and uses toxic dyes so composting isn't a good option.  Somebody mentioned to me that a lot of this mail might actually be a vegetable wax coating, I'll have to look into that.  A friend sent me this link to the 'opt-out' website for junk mail: 

http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs4-junk.htm

more 'catch up' posts to come tomorrow!  many people have mentioned that they check the blog daily, which I really appreciate, so hopefully from here on out I can get in the habit of daily posts to get the most organized feedback from everyone :)

DAY 11_WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

25 August 2010

miles biked -21

water used -

Today was a big day for the compost, a new beginning really.  John Steingraeber, a fellow architecture thesis student with me last semester, has done a lot of research (and just in general knows a lot) about local foods and composting.  He came over this morning to assess the compost situation (which I've been afraid to look at for a few days now).  When we opened the compost, it was a bit moldy, but didn't look terrible.  John has his own composting operation that's been going for 7 years now.  Its similar to mine, in a rubber tub with a drainage system in the bottom.  He keeps his in his kitchen. His is a worm-compost operation and he brought me a cool-whip container full of worms to start my own that way.  I was a little wary about the worms because so many people have been telling me not to use composting (red) worms.  They are not a native species, and the worry is they will get out and destroy the soil and forest habitats.  However, as John explained, the worms (not being Minnesota natives) cannot tolerate temperatures below 55 degrees.  They will just die (and apparently smell really bad).  This means that the bin basically HAS to be kept inside if composting with worms because the temperatures are already dropping below 55 at night here (50 degrees expected tonight).  This means that even if the worms did escape into the wilds of Lyndale Ave (where they wouldn't have anywhere to go really) they would die the first time it got below 55 (which is basically all the time here. 

Will Allen, the head of Growing Power (a huge local food operation in Milwaukee) uses composting worms as well.  His are actually outside, but underneath a huge pile of compost.  Because compost (especially huge piles like his) generate so much heat as they decompose, the worms can stay alive in this environment through the winter.  Because the worms are getting food from the compost and heat, they don't have any reason really to go anywhere else, and if they did-they would freeze.  This made me feel better about the worms. While I'm a little scared about having my bin inside, John explained that you can tell if compost is working if it doesn't smell bad.  Well-my compost smells pretty bad right now, but he says his just smells like soil.  So we put the worms in.  I told John that I had seen maggots in the bin a few days ago, and as we started turning the compost ALL THESE DISGUSTING MAGGOTS WERE UNDER IT.  Gross.  And it smelled so bad, we were both gaging.  So we decided it was best to just trash the nasty stuff, especially because I was going to be bringing it inside, and start over with the worms.  John fearlessly dove into the maggoty (actually considered a word according to spell-check) compost with his bare hands and scooped all the nasty stuff out into a bag.  Oh my gosh John, thank you SO much, there is no way I would have been able to deal with that.  Gross. 

With a new start, we put the worms in again I shredded a couple City Pages of newspaper bedding for them.  We got the bedding wet (not soaking, but not at all dry) and put in some new organics from my kitchen composter (99 cent can from Goodwill).  It is important that the bin keeps wet, and that the liquids have a place to drain.  The bin still has a bit of a rank, but hopefully after a week or so of worm action, that will get taken care of.

The other really great thing I learned from John was that he has about the same size tub as I do (18 gallons) and has only taken compost out of it ONCE in seven years.  Basically, the worm population self-regulates itself and just eats so much of the compost that it literally disappears.  Magic.  Worm Magic.  Amazing.  This had been one of my concerns because I was planning on using a bit of the compost for my indoor garden, but was thinking I would end up with way too much and would have to find a way to get rid of it. 

When I first learned about composting I had my doubts that it really made a difference in the waste stream.  Questions I had were:  (1) Since the stuff is organic, doesn't it just decompose in the landfill anyway?  and (2) If you turn it into compost and don't have anywhere to put it, are you really helping to reduce waste (if you have just as much compost soil as you did organic matter?  I now understand that: (1), organic matter put into landfills cannot decompose because it is in an anaerobic environment at that point.  Organic matter needs air to decompose (which is why you have to mix newspaper and other things into it) and in a landfill it is packed so tightly without any air (anaerobic) that it just turns into a sludge, taking up space.  Secondly (2) According to John, the worms are eating so much of the waste that it doesn't really accumulate.  The more food you give them, the more they eat.  Apparently they eat just about everything in John's compost (egg cartons, newspaper, sawdust...)  If you are planning on using it for vegetables you need to keep toxic things out (such as printer paper with ink) but it can go on flowers or houseplants just fine that way.  So I need to figure out if my purpose for it is for the garden or just to help me eliminate waste (especially paper waste which I'll have a lot of).  Also, the worms should be able to eat the butcher paper the meat is wrapped in at the co-op (allowing me to buy it!).  Oh worms, thank you. 

Its really been a day of people helping me out (and giving me food), which I am really really grateful for.  John left me with sunflower sprouting seeds.  He buys these for about $25 for a 50 lb bag labeled as birdseed at garden centers.  I found it going for $4 a lb at the Wedge.  The sunflower sprouts, which I sampled at Common Roots the other day are delicious and nutritious.  They have some of the highest protein content of plants, and are most nutritious as sprouts.  And wait-it gets better!  The sprouts can be spread in a seed flat as a thick blanket and are ready to eat in 10 day.  John just cuts them like grass and puts on sandwiches, stir- frys, salads. etc. Other contributions today were: A co-research assistant at CSBR has way too many vegetables and left me her mini eggplants, hot peppers and herbs in the office today.  My friend Katy left me some of her parents famous garlic on the window sill.  And some other friends- Jessie and Mark - have a friend with a hobby farm who hooks them up with eggs every week.  Although I can get local eggs at the co-op, they are 39 cents each meaning a dozen is $4.68.  Jessie/Mark will give them to me for $3 a dozen, and it gives me a reason to run around the city looking for food :)

The egg pass-off location today was Birchwood Cafe (I'm exploring local food restaurant options).  Birchwood Cafe (http://www.birchwoodcafe.com/)  is known for their founder Tracy Singleton's efforts to provide Minneapolis with fresh, local foods.  Located in Seward, its about a 4 mile bike.  We got a wild rice salad with fresh veggies and some bread (flour from Whole Flour Milling).  Pretty good, busy atmosphere and not much outdoor space.  Also, of their beer/wine, no wines were local (though there are a lot of options) and only about half of the beers were local.  We asked the lady working at the register if EVERY ingredient was local or just some of them.  She said that was difficult to determine.  For example, they use olive oil for anything needing oil.  This is surprising because on their website they have a list of CSA's (Community Support Agriculture farms) they are supplied with.  I get my sunflower oil (local olive oil substitute) from Driftless Organics (a CSA on their site).  Why can't they use sunflower oil made from a CSA that is already providing them with fresh produce?  It seems like some of these small details could get worked out more completely.  I am hoping to meet with Tracy at some point to get her perspective...