WYSIWYG Jenny

*Sigh* I wrote this on Saturday, back when they were all alive. Since then three (including my dear Bowie) have been dragged off by a fox — all in one night! — but the two that remain are being safely guarded, I assure you. Anyways.

We got chickens!

Hylla (the chicken lady at Green String) has been complaining about these five young roosters for a couple weeks. They were *supposed* to be hens, but 5 out of the batch of 75 day-old chicks we got in April turned out to be boys, and they’ve been harassing the poor ladies ever since they got their combs. When you walk into the henhouse where their group lives, you see lots of bare butts and feathers absolutely everywhere. For the first time, Hylla suggested to Bob and Ross that they harvest some chickens.

She wanted them gone right away, but they’re still so small! In another few weeks, they’ll be respectably sized roosters with a heck of a lot more meat on them. So yesterday, Ross, Katrina, and I loaded them into the truck (well, really I watched while Ross and Katrina did all the work. I still haven’t gotten the hang of catching chickens) and drove them up to our house. Ross helped Chris set up a makeshift home for them, and suddenly Chris and I were the proud owners of five beautiful young roosters!

Four of them are a local hybrid (egg and meat) breed, Sonoma somethingorother. When they’re big enough, I’ll finally learn how to kill, pluck, gut, and cook a chicken. Yup, I’m planning on interrupting my 11-year stint as a vegetarian soon. Just for these guys though. I really have no interest in eating meat, but I *do* know a ton of people who do, and I have a lot of interest in supplying people with healthy, decently raised birds. The commercial poultry situation is so sickening, even with a lot of the supposedly organic and sustainable local companies. I’d like to be part of the solution to that.

Besides, living at Green String for six months changed the way I think about a lot of things. We saw a bigger part of the circle of life and death there than suburban kids like Chris and I usually do, even though it’s mainly a vegetable farm. Animals die all the time, whether they’re going to be someone’s dinner or not, and it’s a heck of a lot more useful for everyone involved if they can be dinner. And as I try more and more to only eat what’s grown locally and sustainably, and as I do real work more often, I feel less and less like I can meet my body’s needs through grains, legumes, and veggies alone. I haven’t had tofu in months! The eggs and dairy that have become a necessary part of my diet are locally and well-produced (and all the more delicious for it!), but they still have some death implicit in their production. What do you do with a hen who’s a few years old and has stopped producing? Wait until her sisters peck her to death? Or slaughter her a little earlier, throw her in the stew pot, and put her to good use? And what about the calf born to each dairy cow every year to keep her producing milk? How unsustainable (in the literal sense) would it be to to try to keep every one?

Anyways, back to our new chickens.

The other guy is a barred rock, and there’s no way we’re going to eat him anytime soon. He’s beautiful! My previous favorite rooster at Green String was a barred rock too. (See the story of his death for more on why I’m okay with killing chickens.) This guy looks a little bit like a hen, with his androgynously dinky comb, so we’ve named him Bowie. When we get hens, he’ll be the one in charge of fertilizing eggs and protecting our little ladies. But for now, he’s just the pretty one.

So we loaded them into a big cage that the previous tenants had left close (but not too close) to our house. Ross and Chris wrapped the three sides in some sheep fencing, since some of the gaps between the bars are a bit too wide. This held them for about an hour.

I went to check on the guys, and one of the little whiteys was cruising around outside the cage! I thought he must have squeezed through a gap, so I re-wrapped the sides with a roll of chicken wire I found, and resolved to catch the son of a bitch. Chris and I chased him around and around for half an hour, and when we finally got him close enough to the cage, I held the door open while Chris walked him toward it. That’s when the second rooster got out.

We tried in vain to herd them for a little while longer, and then decided to wait until it got dark for a second attempt. Chickens get so calm once it’s dark that you can pick them up easily and they’ll only cluck a little. We went back just after sunset, and one of the roosters was perched right on top of the cage — but the other one was no where in sight. We searched for the missing guy until we couldn’t see anymore (no flashlights, d’oh!), then shouted into the darkness that he was on his own, and returned to the cage.

I thought I could grab that one sitting there. He looked so peaceful! In fact, when I reached out to grab him, I was so surprised that he hadn’t reacted that I fumbled, and by the time he did start freaking out I could only grab his tail. He was flapping around like crazy, trying to run away, and I was holding onto his tail feathers. Unable to get a better hold, I let go (afterward, I realized I should have held his tail in one hand while I grabbed a leg in the other), and we lost another chicken to the night.

We did another quick walk to look for the two, and right before bed I checked for them again, but we couldn’t find them. I felt horrible for losing two-fifths of our flock within the first few hours, and was sure that between the mountain lion, bobcats, foxes, and other nocturnal predators we have prowling our woods, neither of them would survive the night.

At 5:30 this morning the sun came up, and holy CRAP were our roosters excited. Chris didn’t wake up, but I sure as hell did. I guess during the week it’ll be nice — we’re supposed to start work at 6 most days, so if we’re still in bed by the time the roosters get started, we’ll know that we’re running super late. For Saturday though? Ugh.

Luckily they calmed down quickly and I went back to sleep. Two hours later I was properly awake and went to check on them. I laughed as soon as I saw them.

The escaped roosters survived! And they came back! It looked like the two of them were visiting their brothers in jail. We’ve since let all of them out to roam for the day, figuring that they’ll come back when it gets dark and we can just let them in without having to herd and chase and catch the little bastards.

I’m looking forward to taking care of these funny little creatures, and it feels good to have animals again, even if they can be a pain in the ass. After the harvest we’re going to get a few hens so we can have our own eggs — and that’s the really exciting part. These guys are just practice.

I overdosed on salad as a young child (if you know my mom, you’re not surprised), so the only vegetables I don’t get excited about are the ones that are used exclusively in salads. I know this is probably blasphemy for vegetable farmers, but I could do without lettuce entirely. Micro greens and sprouts? Dumbfounding. And radishes –  well. I had written them off entirely.

That was, until this week, when I mistook some long, white, radishes for baby turnips. And then I realized it.

YOU CAN COOK RADISHES! Why hadn’t anyone told me?

I don’t know if this particular variety is better than others, but I’ll find out when I get my paws on some more. They’re really spicy when they’re raw, but once cooked their heat melts away into a buttery, creamy, slightly earthy taste. Good lord it was good. I’ve used ‘em twice so far:

1. Glazed Radishes: Slice the radishes very thinly, and gently cook in melted butter over low heat until they’re pretty good and translucent. Add a little bit (½ teaspoon for 4 big radishes) of honey, and stir for about a minute, then serve.
2. Soup Toss some sliced or chopped radishes into a soup as it comes to a simmer. Think of it as being kind of like using carrots or turnips to give a nice background flavor, but without the distinct, sometimes distracting flavors that those other root vegetables would provide. I made an amazing black bean soup like this the other night with just cooked beans, broth, radishes, salt, and a dried cayenne pepper.

Yummmmmmmmm. Best leftovers ever, and it took all of 5 minutes to make!

Creamy tomato couscous

Ingredients

• 1 T butter
• 1 small shoot green garlic, chopped
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 pinch dried basil
• 1 T flour
• 1 C milk
• approximately 1 C leftover Tomato couscous
• nooch and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. In a small skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Once foam has subsided, add garlic, salt, and basil. Toss or stir to coat and cook until garlic just begins to soften.
2. Stir in flour. Cook until roux barely changes color, about 2 minutes.
3. Add milk and stir vigorously until it begins to boil.
4. Add couscous. Cook until thoroughly heated.
5. Remove from heat and season. This is one of those dishes that’s really hot when it’s hot, so let it cool for a minute unless you have a tongue of steel — in which case, you shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble in the first place.

I’ve got a steaming mug of the most ridiculous hot chocolate right here. I’d recommend waiting for a really crappy, rainy day to try this out. It’s stupidly rich, but it’s doing a good job at melting away my bad mood.

Rich as shit Mexian hot chocolate

Ingredients

• heaping spoonful dutch process cocoa
• heaping spoonful sugar
• teensy pinch salt
• pinch cinnamon
• dash ground cayenne pepper
• 1 t sugar
• ½ t vanilla extract
• ⅓ C heavy cream (oh yeah, I went there)
• 8 oz boiling water

1. Combine the cocoa, heaping spoonful of sugar, salt, cinnamon, and cayenne in a 14 oz mug and stir.
2. In a large-ish bowl, combine 1 t sugar, vanilla, and heavy cream. Whisk and whisk and whisk until you’ve got something a little more liquid than proper whipped cream.
3. Slowly pour boiling water on top of cocoa mixture, stirring to make sure you don’t get any lumps.
4. Fill the mug the rest of the way with WHIPPED CREAM. If you want, fill it up ¾ of the way, then stir to get it all good and incorporated, and then top with the rest of the cream.
5. Sneak in a shot of whiskey if you feel the need.

Oh my goodness, my lunch is so freaking good, I have to share the recipe right now. EVEN THOUGH I’M NOT DONE EATING IT. That’s how good it is.

Bowl O’ Protein

Ingredients

• 2 T cooking oil
• 1 leek, chopped fairly finely
• heavy pinch of salt
• 1 C cooked (or canned, I suppose) black beans, with liquid
• ½ t dried oregano
• 1 or 2 eggs (I used a small egg and a banty egg)
• 2 T water
• (optional) 1 t butter, softened

1. In a small skillet or frying pan, heat half of the oil over high heat. Add the leeks and salt, and stir or toss constantly for two minutes to sauté without burning.
2. Pour in the beans with the liquid and oregano. Stir and mash with a masher or the back of a big fork until you have no whole beans left. (This will take a while.)
3. Continue stirring until the beans leave a very clear path in the wake of where you’ve stirred. (This is hard to explain.) You’ll be able to see the bottom of the pan for a couple seconds before it fills back in.
4. Dump the beans in a bowl to cool, and scrape out most of what’s left in the pan. Don’t freak out about getting it totally clean, though.
5. Return the skillet to the burner and heat the remaining oil, over medium-high heat this time.
6. Add egg(s).
7. When the bottom of the whites are set, pour in the water and clamp on the lid. Cook for about 30 seconds more, then top the beans with your beautifully runny sunny-side-up eggs. Top *that* with a sliver of butter if you’re a little piggy like me. Don’t be ashamed.
8. Wait for everything to cool down for a minute, or you’ll burn your damn tongue off. Just be patient.
9. Devour.

I’m not much of a cheapskate by nature (I don’t raise an eyebrow at the price tag on a well-made skein of yarn) but I sure am when it comes to basic necessities that are made very cheaply by gigantic companies. Spending five dollars on sliced sandwich bread with scary ingredients, or buying a box of bandaids, or even spending a couple bucks on pasta makes me feel cheated.

I’ve been slowly but surely dispelling some of my own ideas of what “basic necessities” really are, and in every instance, my cheap, made-from-scratch solutions have been better than the purchased versions. No scary ingredients, no trips to the big box, no packaging to try to recycle, and, best of all, no gigantic corporations benefiting from my inability to provide for myself. Well, less, at least.

Of course, there’s a reason most people have allowed these things to pass from the realm of homemade to pre-made: it takes time! And making certain things, like clothes, requires serious skill. But for those of us who enjoy craftiness and practical applications for creativity, why on earth would we opt for convenience?

So here it is, Jenny’s List of Shit I’d Rather Make Than Buy, and How To Do It (part one).

• bandaids
• bread
• broth
• eggs
• mayonnaise
• pasta
• toothpaste

Bandaids

Use a tiny scrap of paper or cloth (the size of the cut) and a strip of masking tape. The tape will stay on when wet far better than a bandaid, and doesn’t hurt as much when you take it off. I also like that you can make the perfect size bandage depending on what you need, instead of maintaining a ridiculous supply of pre-made ones.

Bread

Now that I’ve been making bread fairly regularly for a couple months, I can’t imagine going back to the supermarket crap. I do still like the occasional loaf from a local artisan bakery, but it really doesn’t get better than homemade. I can’t decide what it is about homemade bread that I like best; the money-saving, that there’s no crap in it (just look at the ingredient list of your next supermarket loaf), the act of making it, the taste and smell of it, or the smug satisfaction and total ego-boost that comes when I pull two perfect loaves out of the oven. Homemade bread is just magical.

I’ve come to think of white “all purpose” flour as being special occasion flour—I use it for some desserts and specialty breads like challah and popovers, but that’s about it. For day-to-day bread, muffins, quickbreads, and pancakes, I just use whole wheat flour. (And none of that “half all-purpose, half whole wheat” bullshit that so many cookbooks recommend. If you have a good quality, relatively fresh whole wheat flour, you don’t need to dilute it to get good texture.) Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food convinced me that refined grains, like white flour, ought to be the exception, not the rule; we simply haven’t evolved to handle the white stuff. Besides, whole wheat flour really does taste better for most applications—try some yeasted whole wheat pancakes and you’ll see what I mean.

Like so many skills I’ve picked up, I didn’t have an experienced baker to teach me. Certain books have been indispensable, though. The Tassajara Bread Book has a gajillion recipes, nearly all using whole wheat flour, but the best part is the 40-something page illustrated guide to the basic method of bread making. It covers how to mix, knead, shape, and slash the dough, plus everything in between. Their basic “Tassajara Bread” recipe has been my go-to since I started baking in earnest.

The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book was one of the first tomes of whole wheat baking, and while I despise the ethereal writing style (what exactly does the dough look like when it “sighs”?) and have had exactly zero luck with the recipes, it’s packed with information that will help you understand some of the science of bread making in an approachable way.

Last week I picked up The Bread Bible at the library, and within a minute of flipping through it, I knew I had to buy it. It is incredibly precise, incredibly informative, and incredibly thorough. My only complaint is that the author is far more exact than I would ever want to be in my own kitchen, but that problem is easily remedied by not following instructions to the letter. I’ve only made two breads from this book so far—a loaf of braided challah and two loaves of cinnamon swirl bread—but both have been exceptional. I’m looking forward to trying dozens more.

Broth

This has got to be the best one yet. Since Chris and I have been making our own broth every few days from kitchen scraps, I’ve looked back on my years of buying vegetable broth with shame. How much money have I wasted— hundred dollars? Two hundred?—on underflavored, overpriced, overpackaged broth?

The recipe is so simple: take all your vegetable scraps that you think might taste good, and put them in a big pot. Fill the pot with water and some salt, and put the lid on. Bring it to a boil. Then simmer it. When it looks pretty and smells insanely delicious (anyone who walks into the kitchen should breathe deeply and say, “Ohh, what smells so good?”), turn it off. Strain or scoop out the solid bits (great for worm compost, once cooled) and put the liquid in mason jars. Use it for everything: soup, rice, quinoa, sauce, bread, muffins… now that I’m not shelling out big bucks for packages of broth, I feel free to use it to flavor everything, and my cooking is all the better for it.

I once read instructions for broth-making that warned against using scraps, reasoning that if you wouldn’t want to eat it, you wouldn’t want to make flavor-juice out of it. When it comes to scraps that are truly past their prime (like, if they’re fuzzy), sure. But leek tops? Carrot peelings? Completely dead, wilted celery? Papery onion skins? These are some of the best broth ingredients around. Prolonged boiling can coax flavor out of even the most pathetic looking veggies, and since you’ll take all the solid stuff out anyways, it doesn’t matter what the texture’s like.

There are some guidelines though. Unless you want a bitter broth, I’d stay away from brassicas entirely (e.g. cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale). Any kind of leafy green is just going to get limp and bring no flavor to the party—unless it’s good and herby like basil, of course. And make sure you get all the dirt off your veggies before they go into the pot, unless you don’t mind relinquishing the last inch or so of your pot o’ broth—I often don’t bother, since we have so many vegetables around here, and whatever we don’t manage to eat will go to the chickens or the compost.

The best part, of course, is that you can turn waste into deliciousness. The second best part, though, is that you can throw out the one-flavor-fits-all mentality of packaged vegetable broth and get into customizing. Imagine a vegetable broth made to complement its intended dish! Chris made an amazingly savory broth last night out of dumpstered mushrooms and wild fennel, and I can’t wait to find the perfect application for it. I’m thinking of trying an earthy, herby pilaf… or maybe turnip soup?

Eggs

Supermarket eggs are downright nasty (and useless) compared to the good stuff. Pastured eggs cost a bundle, but hens don’t! Seriously, now that I’ve gotten used to having a chicken coop in the yard, I can’t imagine going back to store-bought eggs. Having your own chickens is super easy (most days it they take less time to care for than kneading a loaf of bread) and incredibly rewarding. You can’t beat it for freshness, and properly pastured eggs (i.e. eggs laid by hens who get to eat plants and scratch around for bugs and grubs) are more nutritious, flavorful, and easier to cook with than the industrial versions. Besides, most egg-laying chickens in commercial settings live horrible lives. (Yes, even organic, vegetarian-fed, so-called “free-range” ones—check out chapter nine of The Omnivore’s Dilemma if you don’t believe me.) And who wants to support that?

Mayonnaise

No, Best Foods ain’t the best. Homemade, mayonnaise is actually edible, believe it or not. And easy. If you’ve got a whisk and a bowl, you’re already halfway there. Read my previous blog post on making mayonnaise.

Pasta

Homemade pasta is even easier to make than homemade bread, with many of the same benefits. It’s dirt cheap. It tastes about a million times better than anything you can buy. And there are no mind-boggling ingredients! Granted, it takes way more time than dumping a plastic bag of factory-made stuff into a pot, but it’s very nearly always worth it—especially if you have farm-fresh eggs.

Toothpaste

My last tube of Aquafresh ran out a few weeks ago. I thought I’d experiment with using straight baking soda, and I haven’t looked back since! Two dollars for a new tube every few weeks is hardly an exorbitant amount of money, but it’s still my money that’s going to GlaxoSmithKline, the second largest pharmaceutical in the world, and that tube still has some ingredients I’m not so sure about it. Of course, Arm & Hammer isn’t exactly a mom and pop operation, but two dollars of baking soda ought to be enough for a year’s worth of clean teeth.

Using it is just stupid simple: rinse your toothbrush, dip it in the baking soda, and brush. It took me a couple days to get used to the slightly salty taste, but now I prefer it to the artificial, tongue-deadening faux-mint flavor.

I took these out of the oven during Bob’s afternoon lesson (held in our kitchen, as usual) and put them on the table with some butter and honey. We all dug in, and Hannah silently wrote “WOW” with an arrow pointing at the plate of muffins.

These guys don’t rise a whole lot, but they’re plenty moist and tasty. Serve them piping hot with butter and honey.

Whole Wheat Molasses Oatmeal Muffins

Ingredients

• 1 C whole wheat flour
• 1 C rolled oats (not quick-cooking or any of that bullshit)
• 1 T baking powder
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 T safflower oil
• ¼ C black-strap molasses
• 1 C water

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2. Combine flour, oats, and baking powder in a large bowl and stir to combine.
3. Add the egg, oil, molasses (tip: measure the oil in a tablespoon first, and then measure out 4 tablespoons of the molasses — it won’t stick!), and water, and stir until just combined but still lumpy.
4. Spoon into greased muffin tins.
5. Bake for about fifteen minutes or until the muffins are springy to the touch.

The other night I couldn’t sleep because I was lying in bed running through all the things I have to and want to do. In an attempt to stop freaking out about it, I wrote down everything I could think of in one ginormous list. Damn.

I’ve already done some of it though.

• * make English muffins
• * make a new noteboook
• get our own place & a dog
• start journaling regularly so I can remember the days
• do Aaron’s mobile gallery
• plant around the house
• * March newsletter
• get kitchen knife sharpened
• work with the high school agriculture program
• set a standard recipe template for the farm blog
• Bob’s yarn-spinning lady?
• ask Bob about hops farming
• make peanut butter cookies
• get Aaron to visit
• in_the_store.xml to Blogger?
• organize farm workdays
• harvest/make mustard
• lead a chicken workshop for kids
• make granola bars
• read everything in the world
• work for Carole on the weekends for $$$
• get peppermint oil for delicious baking soda
• brew beer
• finish Chris’s sweater
• make oregano mayonnaise
• make toothpaste
• bake lots of bread
• get bristol board from art store
• clean room
• make Mom a scarf out of that Cashsoft yarn
• get a Klezmer book
• grow hops
• hatch some baby chickens
• website insanity
• learn about having goats & sheep
• get Dave to visit
• get Dad to visit
• * write competition control copy
• learn to sew
• go to Italy for the harvest
• English essays
• draw my favorite rooster
• * print/bind calendar
• greenstringinstitute.org
• organize workshops
• knit Chris some slippers
• sell crafty stuff again
• visit Hidden Villa
• volunteer for Petaluma Bounty
• reorganize the mudroom/tools
• read the most recent “Best American Science Writing” book
• go to Point Reyes
• make Allie a calendar
• * SLEEP. Man, I’m exhausted.

This morning we had the most incredible brunch at the farm for a crowd of 17. Jeff made two massive piles of pancakes, someone brought fancy sausage, and Julia, Jessica, and I made eggs florentine with crazy fresh eggs, garlicy sautéed Swiss chard, velvety hollandaise, and made-from-scratch English muffins.

I’d never made English muffins before, and I was pretty sure they were going to come out more like hockey pucks than anything, but they were absolutely amazing!

I used the Artisan Bread Baking directions, but modified them so I could, you know, go to sleep. I set up the poolish after lunch, did the initial knead after dinner, and left the dough in the fridge overnight to ferment. I skipped the next couple rises and went straight to dividing the dough into 3½ ounce balls in the morning, shaped them, pressed them into the cornmeal, and cooked them on a baking sheet set over two burners.

If you have any sort of experience making bread, this recipe is absolutely worth the effort. The only tricky thing about it, really, is that you need to cook the muffins on very low heat, and flip them almost constantly — that way the inside will cook evenly before the outsides burn.

English Muffins

Ingredients for Poolish

• 5 oz AP flour
• 5 oz whole wheat flour
• ½ t dry active yeast, dissolved in 10 oz warm water

Ingredients to add to Poolish

• 19 oz AP flour
• 3½ oz milk
• 1½ t dry active yeast, dissolved in ⅓ C warm water
• 1 egg
• 1 T vinegar
• 2 T sugar
• 2½ T oil
• 2 t salt

1. Combine the ingredients for the poolish in a large mixing bowl. Let it sit on the counter or a draft-free, warm place, for 6+ hours.
2. The poolish should be nice and bubbly. Add all the remaining ingredients except the salt. Mix it with your hands — it’ll look like all there’s too much flour and not enough liquid, but just keep folding it in until everything is incorporated.
3. Knead, in the bowl, for a few minutes. Don’t worry too much about kneading it thoroughly — you’ll do that later.
4. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes.
5. Sprinkle the salt onto the bowl, and knead until you can stretch a bit of dough thin enough to almost see through without tearing.
6. Cover with a towel and place in the fridge to ferment overnight.
7. When you remove the dough, it should have increased in bulk tremendously. Fold each side of the dough into the center and press down, so that you end up with a ball about the same size as before it rose. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes in a warm place — a gas oven with the pilot light on is good.
8. Divide into 3 1/2 ounce / 110 gram pieces. The trick to making English muffins is to avoid overworking the dough. The less you work the dough, the flatter the finished English muffins will be. If you take the dough as it’s cut from the main dough and just pull it into shape, you’ll have a flatter English muffin. However, if you like higher English muffins, with loft between a regular English muffin and a round loaf, then round the dough and flatten it with your hand.
9. Round the doughs into balls and let them rest for 5 minutes.
10. Take each dough ball and gently pull it around the edge and in the center as if you were pulling the dough to start a pizza. They should wind up about 4 inches / 10 cm in diameter for this weight. Place cornmeal in a bowl and press the doughs flatter in the corn meal, turning once or twice to assure that you have cornmeal on both sides. The flatter you can get the doughs the better, within reason. They will puff up when you cook them, but if you start too round, they will be thick and may not cook on the inside.
11. Place as many muffins as will fit (you’ll cook them in several batches) on your griddle, if you’ve got one, or sheet pan, and turn on the heat to something between low and medium. Cook, shifting the muffins and turning them over every minute or so, until the muffins are done to your liking. The longer you can cook them without burning, the better they will be.
12. Allow the muffins to cool before splitting and heating. These freeze very well; put two or three in each plastic bag and freeze.

YUM.

Nooch Sauce

Ingredients

• 4 T butter
• 4 T flour
• 2 C broth
• 4 T nutritional yeast
• <1 T salt
• crushed black pepper

1. Melt da butter
2. Stir in da flour
3. Cook for a couple minutes, and whisk in da broth
4. Bring to a simmer, and stir in everything else

Good for a dipping sauce or a pouring-over-food sauce. I also suspect if you substitute oil or margarine for the butter you could use it to make a damn fine vegan grilled cheese.

The year’s off to a lovely start.

The interns’ New Year’s Eve party was very fun and somewhat grown-up. Nyte joined us, as well as three of Melissa’s friends and one of Julia’s. Rigo and Pedro came out too. Andrea hosted, for the most part, and made three kinds of ravioli and three kinds of sauce. I made lentil soup and Julia made amazing (and colorful) beet latkes with yogurt sauce. We had tirimisu and quite a stash of Christmas candies for dessert while we opened our Secret Santa presents. (Andrea and Julia had wrapped up cabbage and squash in newspapers and ribbons so that our guests would have gifts too.)

A minute before midnight we lit the bonfire that Andrea had set up earlier — a mountain of curly willow branches and a broken chair, that Andrea assured me was tiny compared to a true Italian bonfire. It was ablaze as we did our countdown, and then screamed, banged pots and pans, drank champagne, and ran and skipped and danced around the fire.

Yesterday was a singularly lazy day. It started with mango mimosas and tiramisu at a quiet breakfast table. Nyte stuck around for most of the day. Jeff and Andrea worked for a few hours, helping Bob refinish the big wine-tasting bar at Jacuzzi Winery.

Today’s starting with the same laziness. I made pancakes after chicken duty, and am just now finishing some oak-leaf/rose-petal/lemon verbena/oregano (for cramps, on Melissa’s advice) tea while we wait for Bob to show up. It was raining hard earlier, but it’s mostly stopped, so we’ll be sheet composting around our house and maybe learning about pruning some more.

I couldn’t be happier. Our fellow interns are all such fun, warm, and smart people. I can’t imagine a better place to find myself at the start of a new year.

I wrote this about a week ago and have only just remembered to type it up. =D

Green String Farm is THE SHIT. I swear it’s like summer camp in the winter, but with cooler people and a paycheck.

We (the interns - there are now six of us) live in a good-sized house surrounded by a handful of other buildings housing some Italian brothers and their iron shop. We supposedly work 30  hours a week and get a minimum four hours of lessons, but it’s been more like four hours of work a day and at least two hours of lessons. Very cushy.

The food is the most mind-blowing part. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but it makes sense that a good number of the people who are interested in responsible agriculture are really into food. Every night here is a gourmet treat, and nearly all our food — save grains and dairy — is from the farm. Tonight we had “easy” food: foraged mushroom, fig, and goat cheese pizza, a mozzarella, onion, and “squash pepperoni” pizza, a salad with persimmons and pickled beets, leftover peppery eggplant with stewed tomatoes, and rosemary shortbread cookies with tomato jam, all washed down with a couple nice bottles of red wine that Fred Cline gave us at the end of our lesson today. Learning to cook within the limits of season and locale is going much easier than I had expected, and making everything from scratch is incredibly rewarding.

Rounding out the holiday carb team:

• Corn-free Blasphemy pecan pie
• Apple-sage stuffing
• Rosemary focaccia
• Some other bread — maybe sage or garlic?

Chris and I are in Portland.

On Wednesday, we will be in Seattle.

A week after that, we will be back in San Francisco, trying to find seasonal jobs and a cheap place to live. We haven’t had any luck finding farms to take us in winter time, so I figured we might as well save up a bit of money and try again in the spring — you know, when farms are actually *farming*.

So. Seattle people, I hope to see you next week. San Francisco people, I’ll be back soon.

I started typing this for the Facebook iRead application, but it ended up exceeding the 1000-character limit. So here it is!

How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth

The preface and introduction promised so much, but by the end of the book I was disappointed. Kempf says his intent with this book is to convince environmentalists to care about social justice, and convince the Left to care about the environment. If his book accomplishes this, it is because he expounds on the environmental and poverty crises separately, rather than by showing the connection between the two.

That’s not to say this book is without its merits, though. To say it’s “fact-filled” doesn’t begin to convey the boggling amount of statistics and research tidbits crammed into each page. And there are delightfully snarky quips scattered throughout, for instance, “Like a junkie who can stay standing only by shooting more heroin, the United States, doped up on hyperconsumption, staggers before it drops.”

I’d recommend this book to environmentalists who haven’t quite grasped the horrors of global poverty, or to leftists who echo Marxism’s old line that maximizing exploitation of Mother Nature can help solve social injustices. For those of us who have already realized, as Kempf says, “that the ecological crisis and the social crisis are two faces of the same disaster,” this book has little to offer aside from oodles of statistics and occasional dark humor. But if you, like me, find the title irresistible, reading it isn’t a bad way to spend a few hours–just be sure to pass it on to an oblivious friend or relative when you’re done.

If reading the book leaves you feeling unfulfilled, I recommend Wendell Berry’s essay “In Distrust of Movements.” To me, it feels like the missing last chapter to Kempf’s book.

And I thought I was just getting confused. Thanks, Wikipedia!

The series features many continuity errors, including:

• In season one, Cory, Shawn and Topanga are in sixth grade and Eric is in tenth grade. Cory, Shawn and Topanga are able to graduate by season five (when they should be in tenth grade). Eric, however, graduates during season three, when he should graduate.

Season	Cory, Shawn, Topanga	Eric
1	Grade 6	Grade 10
2	Grade 7	Grade 11
3	Grades 8-10	Grade 12
4	Grade 11	Year Off
5	Grade 12	1st Year of College
6	1st Year of College	2nd Year of College
7	2nd-3rd Years of College	3rd-4th Year of College

• Shawn has a sister in the first season, Staci, and a half-brother, Eddie, in the third season, but later it is stated that Jack is his only sibling.
• Topanga has a sister, Nebula, during the first season, but later refers to herself as an only child.
• Topanga’s mother’s name is Chloe at the beginning of the series, but Rhiannon at the end of the series.
• The age that Cory and Topanga were when they first met (everywhere from birth to age six) and how they met (parents were friends to meeting at a playground when Cory couldn’t get off of the monkey bars) changes each time the issue is discussed.

Chris and I recently spent two and a half weeks on Harmony Hill, a WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms) host that was less of a farm than we expected. The place is the home of an attorney and his wife. They have two dressage horses (dressage has got to be the bougiest sport in the world), four Nubian goats for milking, and an incredible amount of chickens that only manage to produce one or two eggs a day. The husband, Allen, has very, very little to do with the farming activities — in fact, he whole-heartedly refuses to consume any home-made dairy product — so it’s really just the wife, Elena, running the show.

Like I said, we expected something more than one woman who produces some of her own animal products — we thought we were going to be farmers! Fortunately, my disappointment faded after the first couple days, when I realized that we were somewhere much cushier than a farm. I kept a log of what I did every day, and most of it was relaxing: napping in the hammock, reading, swimming, cooking, re-watching episodes of Good Eats and Home Movies on my laptop, and more napping. We only had to work for six hours a day, and when you start at 6:30, that means you’re done awfully early.

A lot of the work we did was chores: sweeping miles of pavement, cleaning the common areas, weeding, weeding, weeding, cleaning up cobwebs, and lots of poop-scooping. We milked the goats once a day in the beginning, and upped it to twice a day later on when there were six WWOOFers there and we were going through milk like *that*.

The goat-milking was fun, (goats are pretty fun in general) and I got pretty quick at it, but the best part was the gardening. When we first got into town, we spent part of an afternoon working on a garden they have in Visalia, in the backyard of the house that serves as Allen’s office. We harvested pear tomatoes, chives, parsley, and did a heck of a lot of weeding on the unkempt garden. After that, though, there wasn’t much more to do — there weren’t any gardens on their property. In a walk around one day, Bridget (another WWOOFer who was there for two weeks before we arrived, and is staying through the middle of October) suggested that we turn a large, currently empty goat pen into a nice big vegetable garden, and a few days later, we had begun digging. (And digging. And digging.) We also turned a cracked koi pond in front of the house into a winter garden. The hardest part of that work was building a fence out of odds and ends (every tried to make a door using scrap chicken wire and staples? Ugh) and digging up cement-like dirt from the other side of the house to fill the two-tiered pond. Before Chris and I left, we had started a bunch of broccoli and lettuce seedlings indoors, and sown rows and rows of radish, Swiss chard, bush bean, turnip, spinach, scallion, and lettuce seeds. I’m not sure all of them will survive the last few hot days, and I’m even less sure it was a good idea to start everything at once (man, I hope they feel like eating a million heads of lettuce in a few weeks), but it was fun to research and try to figure out everything with Bridget and Chris.

We’ve spent the last few days doing even more vegging at Chris’s parent’s swanky house in La Qunita, watching their sweet but timid dog. The time off is just making me excited about the next farm we go to. We’re looking for a real farmy farm this time, preferably one that has a CSA program or sells at farmer’s markets. I’m so pumped to learn more!

As far as traveling goes, we’ll be here through the weekend, then out in Riverside till the 20th, and up to Santa Barbara for a few days, maybe a week, maybe more. Then we’ll be off to the Northwest till Christmas, but Chris wants to stop in the Bay Area for a couple days to see some folks, and I suppose I’d like to see some folks too. =D

More photos, if you’re interested, on Facebook. (Erm, for those who aren’t reading this on Facebook.)

Chris and I are about to leave town — the train to our first farm leaves very early on Wednesday, September 17. It’s occurred to me that what I’ve loved most about living in this world-class city isn’t the food, the sites, or any sort of metropolitan vibrance thing. What I’ll really miss is living close to so many awesome people. So in between the frantic packing and last-minute planning that I need to do in my last nine days here, I want to cram in as much good-people fun-time as possible.

Let’s get together! Chris and Gabbi and I talked about having a MarioKart themed going-away party, but there are no real plans yet. So maybe if people let me know what their schedules are (mine’s wiiiiiide open) we could do lunch or something on an individual basis? I’d love to see you. =D

Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest has a story arc going on now called “Imperil the World”. I highly recommend it to anyone who feels up for some cheap but cute Sarah Palin-bashing.

Comic strips included below for the lazy.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake