Curbside veggies. In Arkansas?!

This is not a post about frugal living. Nor is it about Oklahoma, although very close to us. This is about accidentally discovering a place that is a gem of a sustainable restaurant model where veggies are vogue. Last weekend we went to a family wedding in Fayetville, Arkansas. And thanks to Urban Spoon, I stumbled upon a little green restaurant called The Greenhouse Grille. The building was actually green and it was very near to the University on one of the busiest streets in town in one of the most modern and chic shopping centers in town. No wasted space here. Even their green islands in their parking lot were overflowing with edibles. (This is also an important type of space cities need to utilize as bioretention sites to prevent waste water runoff in parking lots)

Their front space was not adorned with purposeless plants like Asian bradford pears or azaleas but with strawberries bounding out to greet me, asparagus crowns towering up, fennel fanning out, parsley making a landing pad for sleepy butterflies, and Swiss chard sporting it's rainbow style. Their side space had more veggies and peas dutifully standing at attention and in the back they had several raised beds about fifteen by four inside of a mini hoop house. Let's go back to these gardens of yore because doing so would be really a victory. Wow! Talk about curb appeal, talk about fresh to my plate. This is the kind of thing I have read about at sites like Alice Waters Chez Panisse world famous restaurant and would encounter snippets of when I lived in Santa Barbara, but to see such a restaurant model in the mid-west in an area dominated by businesses making everything bigger and outsourced from as far as possible- one does clucks and one is the biggest retail world within our world-was refreshing. 

Additionally Greenhouse Grille sources their meats, veggies, and grains from other local producers. Including the War Eagle Mill, which is an outstanding historical fieldtrip in itself. They also actively work to support local musicians and to abate local hunger in an area that is cursed with simultaneously being the richest and the poorest region in Arkansas. And what better way to abate hunger than to start from the ground up. And yet, many cities outlaw front yards that could contribute to the hunger solution or provide an ecological stopover for native birds and butterflies. Our cousins outside of Joplin told me that their mowing ordinance is to keep their grass at one inch or less- oy!

Does your city allow veggies to be front and center in urban landscapes, yards, and businesses? Do you and your city use your urban land to it's maximum potential, especially as one acre of viable farmland is lost every minute to urban sprawl in this country? What acts of gardening civil disobedience have you or your neighbors performed secretly or overtly? How do we tell our city commissioners and home owner's associations that we deserve the freshest food for our forks and spaces reclaimed from the tyranny of bermuda grass and japanese honeysuckle?

Tell them we need veggies front and center.

Garden folk

 

A couple of Saturdays ago I got to be on the other side of the table at a Farmer's market event at the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Food Cooperative store. For the first time I was there as a vendor. Wow! What a beautiful day doing business the way it was done for many years at this location in it's prime. Getting to know these farmers and regular variety garden folk was really touching to me. Plants make people happy, pure and simple. And I got to give part of that happiness. I was there selling cards and garden seeds but I got to sit next to the plant people- those who know hospitality, heirlooms, and handshakes.

 

My newly found friends are amazing. My friend Dev Vallencourt and her husband Kip Francis at High Tides and Green Fields grows 147 different varieties of peppers. Pretty sure you will never see a tenth of that many varieties in any grocery store. She also was teaching me about some innovative (or perhaps wise, antiquated ways) she has begun to grow winter crops in hugelkultur method from Germany that creates so much heat by planting on top of old wood that she was able to grow crops all winter long, uncovered.

I met a young farmer, Samantha Lamb who was managing a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) endeavor on her grandparents homestead in the Medicine Park area. I met Michael Ruzycki who is farming and hosting a store in Choctaw, The Veggie Lounge who said he started because he was always amazed at how much leftovers his grandfather always had from his garden. Two other guys have started an event composting and zero waste company, Fertile Ground in Oklahoma City. Others, like Renrick farms are working diligently to provide more drought tolerant, native, and butterfly loving flowers. Double R farms  was there  selling pastured lamb and eggs and Barb was trying to figure out what growing things looks like in Oklahoma after living for years in Alaska. There was experience and there was youth, but above all there was energy. Urban Agrarian hosts an all local market five days a week and their staff was busily working indoors sorting crates of tomatoes and processing local foods from all over into a wide assortment of baked goods while the old dog swatted flies with his tail on the porch. While we sat in our store outdoors community organizers from a "Better Block" project had gathered and were literally painting the town- covering over years of neglect and breaking ground for new beginnings.  

And then there were the customers. The lady who got a "pet" fern. The radiant Reverand who had been healed from a stroke. Everybody who marveled over how strawberries grow. Those whose garden was an epic fail last year, but they were trying again because they were determined to get their eight year old to like vegetables. And then the lovliest of my day, a young girl who had just come from a workshop where she had made a planter box a few inches wide by about three inches deep. She was absolutely bursting to find a way to plant things. No one had showed her the dirt in her own yard. She was so enthusiastic she could have made seeds sprout just by sheer wish. "I just want to grow something I can eat she told me." So we made a deal and I sold her two packets of lettuce and peas... And, hopefully, a share of the garden.

Rainbow Cassoulet and a bright easter lunch

Spring is here! The good and the bad are showing themselves everywhere. Yesterday I was a little annoyed to find my veggies covered over with aphids. This made me overly excited to see a ladybug nymph and then a lady bug- until my baby was eating the ladybug (and was subsequently very confused why he no longer crawled). Bleck! However one very delightful part about spring gardening remains that no mosquitoes are out yet. How I hate those little bastards! (One even found me in England, in the winter).

But when it comes to Spring, the best part is the delicious food that is starting to emerge fresh everywhere. I just had my first garden salad of the season last week! But my absolute favorite is asparagus. Those crispy pencil stalks that must be tended so carefully for two to three years. I vow that one day I will have a bed of them! Those bouquets, all too often wrapped in that "made in Peru" band. You know the one that we so easily throw away without thought that it has traveled three thousand and five hundred plus miles to get to us? Here is a sobering look at what agriculture without water looks like, alongside some very innovative water saving methods. Why, oh why, do we grow water hungry plants in the desert, or for that matter insist on over populating areas with very little water? Maybe there is hope for asparagus yet.

I, for one, was so hopeful that the local asparagus would arrive in time for Easter, but it didn't quite make it. I was so eager, that I had to give in at the market. My coop friends at Fisher's Produce, will, however, have a bit this month. I couldn't quite do the price of the not so local fresh organic so I made a hard settle for the frozen organic.

Easter lunch was so egg-citing. We wish you could have been there!

(L)Cali with her Easter dress. Cris and Connor. (Bottom Right) Calyn hunting eggs in the rain with Evan

And because it was Easter, there were several splurge foods making our total a little more than usual. But this was still just over $4 per person!

Asparagus with hollandaise sauce

• 2 lb of asparagus $10 (coop price for fresh, frozen was considerably less)
• 1/4 cup of butter $1.12
• 1 tbsp lemon juice $0.10
• 2 egg yolks $0.34
• pinch of sea salt

If there is fine dining in heaven, I am certain that it includes hollandaise sauce! It is the grown up excuse to eat butter- butter that has been made tangy and velvety and that stays on your spoon. (Note, this should be the last thing prepared in your meal because it works best hot, and is rather hard to reheat)
First steam your asparagus.

Separate out your egg yolks. Add the lemon juice to the whisked egg yolks.

Then separately melt your butter. Put the melted butter on the stove on lowest heat and whisk all of the ingredients together until they make a thick cream. Drizzle over your asparague.

Sweet brussel sprouts with bacon

• 4 pieces of bacon $2
• 1 lbs of baby brussel sprouts $6
• 1-2 TBSP of honey $0.44
• 2 TBSP rice vinegar $0.17

Cut the bacon into bite sized pieces. Add baby brussel sprouts and honey and rice vinegar. Cook until bacon is crispy, about 10 min sauteeing continuously.

Rainbow Cassoulet

• 1/3 cup of corn starch $1.60
• 3 TBSP of bacon lard (from the bacon package above
• 6 cups of (homemade) broth
• 1 lamb shank  (ours was around 1.5 lbs) $10.50
• 12 oz great northern beans $1.10
• 8-10 medium rainbow carrots $2
• 2 potatoes $0.50
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 3 garlic cloves $0.30
• 2 bay leaves
• herb bundle of 2 sprigs of rosemary, 5 sprigs of oregano, 2 sprigs of thyme (from my garden)

This soup became a cassoulet of sorts, a traditional French soup that is often made with white beans and goose or other dark oily meats in a stone pot (which I do not own).

First mix the corn starch and bacon lard over low heat stirring continuously.

Add the cubed meat and the spices. Lightly brown and coat the meat. Slowly while stirring add the vegetable broth.

If you can find them, the rainbow carrots really make this dish unique and flavorful. Each variety has it's own unique taste and almost made it look like little bits of mixed Easter eggs floating in the soup. We had purple, yellow, orange. We are hoping to grow some in our garden this year. Here is a seed source. Slice the carrots into thin circles and dice the potatoes. Stir occasionally simmering for 45 min to an hour until carrots and potatoes are tender.


Serves 8. Menu Total $36.17
$4.52 per person
A great addition is hot cross buns. This year we tried a more wholesome one from another blogger, but it needs some work. I'll let you know when I've perfected it!

What are your Easter traditions? What's for lunch?

I'm not your wookie. I'm your wife.

So the snow stopped just short of us. There was some major disappointment here. But for something completely different...

Dear E,
Recently while the kids were running around the house playing Star Wars and assigning roles and you said "mom should be the wookie", I did have to politely and humorously remind you "I'm not your Wookiee, I'm your wife." (I'm also not your wench). 

Perhaps I overlooked shaving, but geesh! You must promise me you won't ever look at this site ever....(What?! You are doing that right now?! Okay. At least report back). So I'll indulge you and here are some ways you could have easily confused us. First of all, like Wookiees, I too value loyalty, morality, and monogamy. I hope we mate for life and look we had two three  offspring. I like being the co-pilot on this crazy ship.   I am also willing to endure moderately spicy food (check back soon for something on that front).

But perhaps the coolest resemblance is that we both really love trees. I too am a long haired aboreal animal. I fantasize about some of these actual grown up treehouses.

This one uses all repurposed woods and already has tin roofs that would be perfect for rain water harvesting. 

Modified from

http://cyntiafernandes.tumblr.com/image/38929889782

This one modified from Blue Forest Barcraft media would appeal to the hobbit lovers in our house with it's buttressed windows. 

http://www.mostbeautifulpages.com/2012/12/the-worlds-15-most-stunning-tree-houses.html

We'll call this one the Thomas Kincaid Treehouse.

Modified from
http://pinterest.com/pin/103160647686745806/

Could our sustainable house look a little bit more like these? The quickest way to this woman's heart may just be through a tree (yikes, that sounds painful).

So I may just have to get over my fear of heights, become much more adept at technology, and learning to fly things. I may have to get over being such a light-weight- especially since Wookie's specialize in home brews. But I don't really anticipate getting over this pacifism thing anytime soon.

 And also... P.S: Secretly, I have six breasts, but don't tell anybody that.

Love,

Your tree hugging wookie wannabe

**********
Grroooaaawwwr!  I would live in any of those tree houses.   Tree houses are amazing!  

Again, you really should read more of the Inheritance stories by Christopher Paolini.   The first book is basically Star Wars set in Middle Earth but then the world he creates grows in beauty and complexity with the subsequent novels.  The elves are especially fascinating, they make me think of you.  They kill nothing, but "sing their food" from the plants.  They also "sing trees" into the shapes for their houses so that you can barely tell village from forest.   It's like your ideal community right? 

So I'll get to work on that magic-house-out-of-a-tree thing… I should have it figured out by, say, our 30th anniversary 

I love my wookie.

E

Simplicity in Snow Soup: Crockpot beans with pumpkin

It's sopping outside and icicles are beginning to push through, stinging like an emerging child. Snow will follow to quickly drop on us. And for a short time all things will be hushed in newness covered in a clean slate. Covered will be the molding leaves, crisped branches, and dormant seed heads from last year. Covered also are the new growth and the daffodils will still poke out their heads to see this new world. The birds will be shielded in their nests and maybe the moisture will bring us a little closer to normal water levels.  All these hidden seeds will be on an equal playing field before some emerge greedy pushing their way over the others, taking a large share of the water and nutrients.

Yesterdays Quince blooms that may be covered by tomorrow's snow

For those of you who celebrate Lent, it's a good time to simplify your meals a bit and reflect on the ecological impacts of your food chain. During a season of lent or reflection and to address that question of why some of these disciplines may prove fruitful I love Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. For me, I try to focus a little more on whether my food abundance, and yes, excesses, are overtly or covertly impoverishing others or their land. If you are interested in seeking some communal resources that have many external sources to explore some of these issues I would recommend the curricula Just Eating? Finding Faith at the Table. Sometimes we try to eat more simply, in hopes that others may simply eat. I know this is idealistic, but still collectively could be very powerful.  I often think about those one billion around the world living on less than a dollar a day. Once I heard a challenge: To think about solidarity with the poor, have your family have one meal or one day a week when you try to eat just rice and beans and then to donate what you would have spent on a meal towards a hunger charity.

I love this concept. So I think that throughout lent I will try and bring in some meatless recipes that feature legumes with or without a grain. A great source of inspiration for this kind of bare cooking is Francis Moore Lapel's Diet for a Small Planet which has grown into this book and also Mennonite cookbooks.

So it's snowing, and everyone I know seems to be cooking up a pot of beans. So here is my contribution to that trend. Tasty, simple, and savory.

• 3 cups of 10 bean mix $2.28
• 12 cups of homemade vegetable broth (for this one I think it tastes best with minimum onions (sweet onions are okay) and tomatoes). Carrots tops and mild greens and celery tops. ~$2 of leftover vegetables
• 2 cups of pumpkin puree $1

Total: $5.28
Cost per person $0.88

Set your beans out to soak for a solid eight hours.

We still had a medium pie pumpkin left over from Halloween so I cut and scraped it. Then I cut it into large chunks. Put in the microwave covered with water for about 12 minutes on high. This makes the skins just peel away and it can be mashed with a fork to used for any pumpkin recipe. Put it in the crock pot on lowest setting along with the beans and broth. I cooked mine for 10 hours and then just left it warming all day, barely cooking till dinner.


Now make a cozy drink and go watch the snow!

The Book of Bob

My friend Bob Waldrop is equal parts John the Baptist and John Muir-he is a voice crying out in the wilderness. A voice for wilderness spaces and a voice against the wilderness of conglomerate agrobuisness. He is a burly guy with a bushy beard that hasn't been trimmed in decades and equally likely to say things like "ya all bon appetite ya hear" or to curse under his breath.

The Bob Waldrop

John Muir. Wilderness Warrior. Photo public domain. (Don't you think they could be related?)

When I first moved back to Oklahoma nearly ten years ago he was probably the first person and the most dedicated that I met towards the goals of living a sustainable lifestyle. If you drive by his house it is probably the first one on his street that has no grass in the front lawn (Hurray for the grassless lawn!) but is filled to the brim with edible plants including native elderberries long before front yard gardening was the in vogue thing to do. And I have been quietly watching and learning from him for quite a long time.

Bob is the one who is continually fighting for anti-mowing laws which unnecessarily prevent habitat from being made, wildflowers from being planted, or more native and drought tolerant grasses from being encouraged. While one might be inclined to write him off as an eccentric hippie, he is tremendously wise.

Founder of the, then very new Oklahoma Food Coop he has been a great voice for local farmers, producers, and artists. He understands community and he understands the need for each of us to reduce our global footprint, and for him it is very greatly relevant to his faith. A question I have been plagued with since college is, Why isn't sustainability at the forefront for ALL faith communities? And to those that have choosen to make this a front page issue in their church community, my hat to you. Bob was the first person to ever introduce me to the concept of permaculture. And it is just the kind of holistic thinking we need. To learn more about Bob's wise insights into our diminishing energy and water resources check out his blog, Bobaganda!

If you have never heard of permaculture (and don't be surprised if you haven't) it is a holistic way of thinking, designing, and integrating your environmental ideals across multiple areas of your life and your communities (physical places and personal connections). It is about gardening, energy use, homesteading, simplicity, and interconnectedness. It is about examining waste in every sense of the word. It is about making our yards and our households useful and achieving maximum potential. It is all about reducing our need for fossil fuels and stepping back a little from such a global economy.  You know the one that imports peanuts from Africa to make peanut butter in Minnesota to put labels on it in Canada before it is shipped to Arkansas to be distributed to my simple sandwich...

So I was happy, delighted, ecstatic to start working my way through Bob's new ebook ipermie. For $1.99 this 399,000 (very bite-size) work of words deal that you can not beat. It is a workbook, a guidebook, a focal point,  a series of reflections about what matters in your life and how you can make your space (no matter how small) livable and productive. But more so than many, this one give tools particularly to those who are nearly space-less, the student, the elderly, the apartment dweller. And it is about developing the infrastructures around us to support sustainable communities. It is about starting to change your life, one page at a time. Begin today.

Thank you Bob for being a mentor to so many and for being a strong voice for what is right, for justice for others and for our fellow creatures. I can not wait to see how my life will change as I continue to delve deeper into the permaculture world.

Presto pesto

Image from La Grange college library

One of the things that I have grown to love nearly above all else is pesto. (And it is especially great when you have the foresight to freeze some of your summer basil bounty. So perhaps this post is a little unfairly tantalizing in February, but I have been hoarding it since September... I’ll remind you again in June how much you love pesto!)

 My large bushy bouquets of basil in my garden were such a source of delight. Pine nut pesto is delicious, but usually a non-local luxury. Plus  many of the pinion pine trees that produce this delicious nut are dying (Boo you, climate change).

1908 Milk truck in America. Image from Wikimedia.

Here in Oklahoma the land is still dotted by orchards of huge old pecan trees. In some cities, like mine, the land has been developed but remnants of the orchards still dot the landscape in mighty towering shady rows. They stand like the crumbling columns of ancient buildings, the bones of former civilizations.  Such a beautiful reminder of the adage that wisdom is planting trees, the shade of which one will never see.

I wonder about what my city was like then- 100 years ago when my land, now one block from a bustling main street, fed cows in a very large dairy for the milk delivered daily by horse drawn cart, to houses with wooden ice boxes and an additional delivery of ice.

Where did the water come from to grow these trees in our frequently dry, often unpredictable, landscape? Did some farmer's daughter carry it one bucketful at a time, for her whole adolescence, maybe through her whole adult life, from the life giving well? For how many long years did she have to wait, to even taste the fruit from her labor? And how astonishing would it be to her that now these nuts are shaken down, skinned, packaged, and pulverized by machine. Perhaps I need to savor them just a bit longer.

Sun dried tomato polenta (Start the night before or morning of. So easy, don't be intimidated)!

• 4 cups of water
• 1 cup of coarse corn meal  (I omitted the Parmesan to save some money)
• 1/2 cup of sun dried tomatoes (free from last summer's garden)

I can buy a small log of polenta at my grocery store for around for Polenta $3.75 or make your own for about $0.75 

Roasted pecan pesto

0.5 lbs of roasted pecans $3 (Local price if you pick them from a free source but take them to a sheller . Lucky lucky me my sweet grandparents had just given me several pounds from their tree that they picked and shelled by hand). For some other posts about my grandparents and my Granny Smith's sweet petite pies go here.

• 6 large handfuls of basil leaves(free from garden) or $2.00
• 0.5 cups olive oil $1
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast 0.25
•  1/2 tsp sea salt

$6.25

So, when I make pesto I love to add a degree of richness to it by first roasting the nuts. Lightly coat them with olive oil and roast in 375 degree oven for about seven minutes or just until they smell pungent but not burned. Sometimes, to save energy, I do this in my tiny toaster oven. Sometimes when I do this, I also almost catch the house on fire, but those incidents are another story...

I have also found there is an unmistakeable but mystifying difference in the taste between pounded pesto and chopped pesto. If you have a mortar and pestle or even the back side of a cup or rolling pin handle crush the basil. Your pesto will be so much more fragrant. If you don't have the time to pound it completely just do it a bit before putting in food processor with other Ingredients.

The nutritional yeast is a powder that can be found at health food stores and is a cheaper (vegan alternative), also rich in B vitamins, alternative to hard cheeses traditionally used. It can be overpowering so use sparingly.

Roasted vegetables

• 1 red pepper (frozen) $1
• 2 summer squash (or about 1 pound of other seasonal squash)$1.50
• 3 large carrots $1.00]]  

$3.50 
*********

Menu total: $10.50 or $1.75/ person

Set broiler to low. Cook squash and carrots for about 7 min and then add pepper and corn for 7 more min until barely browning and blistering. Set aside to cool.

While the veggies are cooling slightly Pan fry the polenta in 1/4 inch slices for 4-5 min each slide with pesto added to the pan about halfway through to warm it. Rub the skins off the vegetables and mix them.
Simple one dish meal.
For more "golden nuggets", ie ultra cheap meals, check out others in our 10 for 10 series.