Urban Farming!

Is there anyone out there still? I'm afraid I've lost some steam in my posting here. I continue to live and eat verdantly, but I do not seem to manage writing as much as I initially did. Partly, I am trying to divorce myself from excessive time spent on the computer. I already wreak havoc on my eyes by writing long seminar papers, translating articles, reading pdfs and ... obsessively checking my email (but this is a common obsession, no?). I want to green myself and my eyes (they are actually green!) and enjoy all of my local food sans ordinateur.

Nevertheless, I would like to find a rhythm in my ecovore blogging. I am posting about once a week at Farm to Philly, reporting on my Keystone Farm CSA. So that's something. I have in the back of my mind a fuzzy plan to focus more on budget ecovore living here at "Verdant Thoughts." Money's tight. It always is. And I'm sick of hearing that eating well (ie organically or locally) is only for the elite. If I, who pays more on loan interest than on rent each month, can eat and live as green as I do, than you can too!

For the time being, though, I am going to put in some shameless plugs for my awesome friend, Paula, who is a huge inspiration for both this blog and how I live and eat. Paula (you might remember she is the managing editor of Civil Eats), has really made quite the name for herself in the world of food activism and food politics. Besides regularly contributing on her own site and on the Huffington Post Green Blog, lately she has posted on Mark Bittman's blog "Bitten" about sustainable food blogs, and her roof garden was featured this Wednesday in a New York Times article about urban farms. I was lucky enough to see this roof garden a little over a week ago, and it is impressive! She has a column, "Roof Garden Rookies," where she regularly posts about the progress of her garden over at Civil Eats. Take a look!

I'm gardening again this year too, but sticking to herbs after last years misadventures with raccoons....

Here's what it looked like a few weeks ago (pre never ending rain). Needless to say, the rainforest conditions have made things a bit lusher since then. If the sun ever shines again maybe I'll take another picture!

School Gardens!

It is the end of the semester and I should be writing seminar papers! I am writing papers, but thought to take a quick break to address my potential absence this coming week. I am currently working on a paper about the "post" gendered space of letters in a Romantic novel by Dorothea Veit Schlegel. Once this is done (or nearly done), I'll work on a "thought piece" concerning the structure and organization of my ideal German language program.

I did post a recipe at Farm to Philly (take a look), and in my efforts to avoid cross-posting, I will offer you an article from Sunday's New York Times (of course). The article is about the educational benefit of gardening for children. Alice Waters was a pioneer in creating school gardens to allow children to learn about the origin and production of their food. The children grow the food that they then eat in their school cafeteria. The Times' article goes farther and suggests that gardens could lend themselves to almost any subject (math, science, language arts), and not only reinforce knowledge about food and nutrition (which alone is already a wonderful lesson for today's generation of chemical-food-replacement consumers).

What's Cooking?

The sun has set on this rainy Sunday and tomorrow it's back to the daily grind of teaching and seminars. Despite the few extra days off, I must admit to not wanting to return to the old routine. I'd love nothing more than to stay at home, cook read and spend some more quality time with my cats. Only one more week, though, and then I will be done teaching and will only need to focus on writing papers.

Since I last posted, however, I did find some nice time to cook a couple of good, local meals. Friday I had a few friends over for whom I made a butternut squash risotto, served with steamed broccoli glazed in lemon and mustard (like the brussel sprouts I prepared the other day) and a cabbage salad with pomegranate seeds and apple. I slowly heated some local apple cider, as well, with cinnamon sticks and cloves, which we mixed up with some bourbon for some tasty hot toddies!
Tonight I returned to the leftover butternut squash (it was a big squash) and made a butternut squash soup following a recipe my friend Elisha just emailed me and along with it a potato-sweet potato-turnip gratin following an Alice Waters' recipe. I feel a cold lurking somewhere deep inside me, so the soup should hopefully help curb that (along with all the tea I've been drinking), and there's nothing more comforting than potatoes! I imagine I'll be feeding myself off of this CSA meal for a few days...

Butternut Squash Soup
variation of Elisha's recipe

1 2lb butternut squash, peeled and chopped into medium dice
1 tablespoon sucanat
3-4 tablespoons butter
1 small onion chopped
1 qt water
1 cinnamon stick
2 ounces raw milk (the recipe calls for cream and Elisha has used both soy milk and soy creamer in the past with great success, so use what you want!)
salt and pepper to taste

In a soup pot sautee the squash, sucanat and some salt in the butter, covered, for 3 mins on a med-low heat. Add onion and sautee for another 10 mins. Add water and the cinnamon stick and simmer covered for 30 mins, or until squash is good and soft. Puree (in batches if necessary) in the blender until smooth (I used my hand blender). Finish with milk/cream/soy milk, salt and pepper to taste.


Potato-Sweet Potato-Turnip Gratin
adapted from Alice Waters' recipe for Potato Gratin in The Art of Simple Food

3 small to medium potatoes (I used red potatoes, but Yukons would be good too)
3 small sweet potatoes
3 small to medium turnips
ca. 1 cup raw milk
3 tbs butter
salt and pepper

Thinly slice potatoes, sweet potatoes and turnips. In a baking dish that has been greased with butter line the various roots in an order you see fit (I had a row of sweet potatoes, then turnip, then potatoes). Overlap the slices like shingles. Salt and pepper this layer, then add another layer. Salt and pepper it and add another layer if you have more slices (you don't want to make more than three layers). Chop the butter into pieces and disperse them over the surface of the gratin. Pour in milk carefully. You want the milk to come to the top of the bottom of the top layer. Adjust milk accordingly. Bake in an oven heated to 35o˚F for 1 hour, or until potatoes are soft and top is golden brown. (yum).


Both recipes could be varied infinitely. I can imagine using coconut milk in the butternut squash soup and perhaps adding a dash of curry. Pure potatoes or any variety of root vegetables could be used in the gratin. I like the combination of the warm, buttery potatoes and how the sweetness of the sweet potatoes is curbed by the spiciness of the turnips.

On another note: What's cooking is that I am going to start contributing posts on the Farm to Philly blog a few times a month! Look for me in the coming days. My bio is being set up, and then I guess I'll start posting. I am very excited to participate in this great Philly blog dedicated to eating local!