Leda’s Urban Homestead

Saturday I get to pick up my winter CSA share, but meanwhile I’m making the most of my pantry, including some of the the canned and dehydrated stuff I put up during the warm months. So what’s for dinner?

Pizza.

For tonight’s dinner I used some CSA onions and garlic, plus foraged hen of the woods (maitake) mushrooms, home-canned CSA tomatoes, and dried oregano and other herbs from my garden. The cheese was one of my favorite local cheeses, Farmhouse Jack. The flour for the crust came from Farmer Ground Flour.

If I had eaten out tonight, what would an all-organic, almost all locally grown (the olive oil wasn’t) pizza featuring a choice wild mushroom have cost? $10? $15? Or if I’d wolfed down a couple of slices at the local pizza joint, how much would that have set me back? $5?

Because I volunteer time for my CSA share in exchange for vegetables, the onions, garlic and tomatoes were free. Ditto the seasonings from my garden and the foraged shrooms. That leaves the flour, cheese and olive oil. I estimate that tonight’s pizza cost under $4. It was big enough to feed two (guess what I’m having for breakfast?).

I’m focusing on the cost because one of the negatives that still haunts the sustainable food movement is the idea that it is an elitist thing that only those with money to spare can afford. It doesn’t have to be.

I realize not everyone is going to volunteer time to get a free CSA share, or learn foraging and food preservation skills. Not everyone needs or wants to. I’m just saying that if you really wish you could eat mostly local, organic foods and don’t think you can afford to, there are ways.

By the way, many CSAs offer discounted shares to low income individuals and families. If you need the help, it’s worth asking to find out if that is an option.

Upcoming Workshops & Events

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Happy New Year!

I started 2012 with an amazing visit to Jordan. We went to Petra, officially one of the Seven Wonders of the World:

The Treasury at Petra - carved right out of the sandstone

another building at Petra incredibly carved directly out of the landscape

That's me on the left sporting the Bedouin-style scarf. The boy and his mom live in one of the caves at Petra, and kindly offered us tea (okay, they also tried to sell us a bunch of jewelry and rock fragments)

While in Jordan we bought food being sold by the highway or on the curb. I was tickled to see common mallow for sale - it’s one of my favorite wild greens for soup and rice dishes, but I’ve never seen it for sale in the U.S.

mustard and mallow greens on sale in Madabar

I wish I could stay rosy-eyed about the beautiful produce I’ve been enjoying since arriving in the Middle East two weeks ago. The fact is that on the way to the fennel-seller below we passed a fenced off farming area clearly labeled Monsanto. Given the recent updates on the thousands of Monsanto-related farmer suicides in India and elsewhere, I couldn’t help feeling both saddened and angry.

fennel for sale alongside the highway in Jordan

On the bright side, in both Israel and Jordan I’ve had the opportunity to visit “eco-farms” that are using organic methods combined with solar energy, composting and other sustainable practices.

If you’re going to be in Israel, here’s a two-thumbs-up recommendation for Goats with the Wind, an eco-farm making wine from their own grapes and cheeses from their goats’ milk.

a selection of the goat cheeses and other treats at Goats with the Wind Farm

Just be sure to call first to make a reservation because it isn’t really a restaurant - but they will cook for you if you call ahead.

I foraged some choice boletes last week, and enjoyed some wood sorrel and chickweed in salads. Looking forward to more foraging in the 2 weeks I have left here this visit.

I finally got the updated schedule of my workshops, foraging tours, etc. for the next three months up.

These are my three favorites that are coming up soon:

Fermentation Workshop in Park Slope, BK

Saturday 11 February 2012 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

Did you know that fermented cabbage has more vitamin C than plain old raw cabbage? That you can ferment root vegetables into tasty beers? Here’s how to turn the ho-hum local storage crops of winter into super-healthy, safe, easy to make fermented foods. We’ll cover fermented veggies like sauerkraut, basic alcohol fermentation, and yogurt - making.

Space is VERY limited (as in at my apt.), so please reserve a spot soon if you’re interested.

Herbs, Herb Gardens, & Herbalism @NYBG

4 Wednesdays January 18 - February 8 2012 1:30-3:30 p.m.

Study the history of herbalism and herb garden design. Take an in-depth look at some of the most historically important herbs, their uses, and cultivation requirements. Ancient as well as contemporary uses of individual herbs are discussed. A visit to the LuEsther T. Mertz Library to view centuries-old herbals completes the class.

Ehtnobotany of Our Native Flora @NYBG

2 Fridays, 27 January & 3 February 2012 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

From spicebush to wild ginger, sassafras to trillium, our region is rich in culinary and medicinal plants largely negelcted in contemporary use. Learn the historical use of these plants by native Americans, the Shakers, and other settlers. Plant identification and uses as well as sustainable harvesting techniques will be covered. Dress for the weather.

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Pear & Butternut Squash Preserves

This week I am in California visiting family. Unfortunately, because of a series of travel snafus most of the homemade preserves I packed to give as gifts did not make it to their intended recipients.

Apologies for sending you elsewhere to read the full story, but this version will give you links to the recipes (including the Pear & Butternut Squash Preserves in the pic above). Here’s How NOT to Travel with Homemade Gifts.

Having survived those unfortunate travel adventures, I went up to Yreka (near Mt. Shasta) to spend a couple of days with my mom and her husband. This is the first holiday season without my Grandma Nea, and it felt especially important to spend time with family.

It was a quick visit though: I’m on the red eye back to Brooklyn tonight. Meanwhile, I’m going to go enjoy the rest of this sunny West Coast afternoon with my dad.

me & my dad after a crazy-good brunch at Tartine's

I wish you uneventful travels and delightful celebrations! Leda
P.S. - Don’t worry. This time I’ve already got my boarding pass printed out. And sorry TSA folks, but there aren’t any goodies left in my bag for you to confiscate.

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Most of the leaves may have fallen already, but the foraging season continues here in Brooklyn.

I’m spending Thanksgiving with three of my foraging buddies and their friends. It’s a potluck, and the hosts are both professional chefs. No pressure.

Since I don’t pretend to be a chef (I’m a good cook, but that’s not the same thing), I’m keeping my contribution simple and counting on one very special ingredient to make it feast-worthy: lion’s mane mushroom (Hericium erinaceus).

Lion’s mane is a tooth mushroom and has a texture like lobster when cooked. The flavor is mild but delicious.

When my mom was here visiting a couple of weeks ago I came up with a Leek and Lion soup that we both agreed was a keeper recipe. Make a simple potato leek soup and puree it. Sautee lion’s mane mushrooms in butter and add them to the soup, but don’t puree the mushrooms. Stir in a hefty splash of local heavy cream (It’s a holiday. You’re not allowed to count calories on a holiday). Garnish with minced field garlic leaves.

Have I mentioned that it’s been an amazing mushroom hunting season this fall? The rain early this week followed by warmer temps coming up should be perfect for ’shrooms. I’m heading back to the park this weekend to hunt for more Oysters (Pleurotus ostreatus).

Jeremy and Allie are in charge of the bird, so I won’t have the carcass to deal once the day after’s turkey sandwiches are gone. But for those of you who will have a heap of turkey bones after the celebrations, here are my favorite ways to make and preserve soup stocks.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Food Preservation

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

The Virginia creeper leaves on the old wires above my garden are turning scarlet. The maple tree around the corner from my subway station is blazing with color. People have pumpkins out on their Park Slope doorsteps. I’ve got eight pounds of apples to do something with before next week’s CSA distro. Must be fall.

Ricky came to visit this month, and we drove up to see Sean, Jenny and Liam in Massachusetts. Hurricane Irene took her toll there, and a lot of the foliage had been stripped from the trees before it had a chance to change colors. But there were still plenty of brilliant hues to enjoy.

We did a bit of mushroom hunting and found a couple of tooth mushrooms and some good boletes.

The excellent company would have been reason enough for the trip, but hey, if you’re in New England in October, there’s some iconic food to celebrate.

Apple cider, maple syrup, chowder (by the water, on our way back to New York)…plus Jenny’s tasty ragu, and did I mention that we drove up with the ingredients for a port-laced rabbit stew?

I clung to New England mode for a few days after getting back to Brooklyn. I made chowder with homemade salt pork, and came up with a maple triple applesauce that turned out really well.

Yesterday I picked up a double CSA share - mine plus that of a fellow member who was out of town (hence the eight pounds of apples). Some of the veggies and fruit I’ll preserve in various ways, but I decided to cook some of them up and take them to Occupy Wall Street tomorrow.

This will be my fourth trip down to Occupy. I’m making a couple of pies and a quinoa salad loaded with locally grown organic vegetables plus herbs from my garden.

I’ve also got a heap of green beans to do something with. I’m thinking I’ll make Mediterranean salad beans, which I’m happy to eat straight out of the jar in winter. Maybe a jar of those will go to Occupy as well.

Other than that, I’m busy teaching, writing, foraging, doing food preservation demos and directing Nutcracker rehearsals…my usual crazy busy fall schedule. What are you up to?

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Food Preservation

I taught two days of food preservation workshops at Genesis Farm last weekend. Genesis is one of my favorite places to visit and share knowledge. They are also generous: in addition to my workshop fee they sent me on my way with eggs from their rock star chickens. Seriously, these chickens looked like they had just come from getting blow-outs at a salon:

They also gave me a variety of garlic called Georgian Fire, which has already become one of my favorites (I guess it’s pretty food geeky of me to have favorite garlic varieties. I don’t care. This one is really good). Oh, and a t-shirt.

But I didn’t go straight home from Genesis. I went from there to Hungry Hollow Coop. They were having an Eat Local Potluck. NOFA-NY got these locavore potlucks going all over the state. I was there to speak a bit and do a book signing.

Good food, good people, and guess what? They also sent me home with a bag of goodness from a local farm. This time it was Jonagold and Jonafree apples from Threshold Farm.

Three trains later, I walked into my apartment and dropped all that abundance (along with the food preservation gear I’d hauled to and from the workshop) on the sofa. It was almost 11 p.m., and I had to be up at 6:30 to go teach the next day. So I didn’t put anything away.

The day after that I picked up my share at the Park Slope CSA. More apples, pears (just remembered I still have pears in the refrigerator from the last share - they’d already ripened at room temp and I stashed them in the fridge before I left for Genesis); lettuce, spinach, bok choy, sweet and hot peppers, green beans (aw heck, I still have some more of those from the last share, too), tomatoes, potatoes, onions, dill…

And in the garden the raspberries and herbs and peppers needed picking (not to mention all the weeding and staking and clean up, but time, time, time…). And I did a little foraging and scored some Hen a.k.a. Maitake.

Today I came home from teaching and went into an urban homestead frenzy. Rosemary oil in the slow cooker, apple sauce on the stove, tomatoes and Hen in the dehydrator, spinach cooked and ready for an omelet or a dip this week, lettuce washed and ready for the now imperative salads, herbs gathered and hung to dry, raspberries in the freezer…

Did I mention that I’m grateful for the excuse to have this urban homesteading frenzy and am actually having great fun with it (beats the administrative stuff I’ll get to tomorrow)?

Or that I’m going foraging tomorrow morning because there might be something awesome out there (it’s peak mushroom season)?

And hey, it’s not like I have any food in the house…

P.S. - No news on the new neighbors I’ll be sharing “my” garden with yet. Thanks to all of you who emailed good wishes on that front - I’ll keep you posted!

Next Brooklyn foraging tour October 22nd.

Stuff I’ve been making lately:

Tawny Port & Pear Butter

Lacto-fermented Apple Chutney

The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes

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I’m still recovering from jet lag and feeling a little disoriented back on my own in NYC, but never mind. The urban homestead needs me now. The garden welcomed me back with some lovely herbs, tomatoes,raspberries and peppers.

But being away all of August meant peak tomato season here started without me and I’ve got only 2 - 3 weeks to get as many as I need for the coming year canned and dried. Good, local tomatoes are cheap at the Park Slope Food Coop right now, just over $1 a pound. Guess what I’ve been doing today?

So far I’ve canned roasted tomatoes and made yellow tomato preserves. I’ve also frozen roasted corn and canned corn cob stock (I missed most of the corn season weeks, too!), and I’ve got some veggie stock started in the slow cooker.

But the big project of the day is garden clean up. I knew it would be crazily overgrown and neglected looking after my absence, but I didn’t know the clean up would be urgent.

Turns out my neighbors are moving out today. I share the garden with the apartment next to mine, and these have been dream neighbors for the past three years. They’ve enjoyed and used the outdoor space, but basically let me do whatever I wanted with the plants.

Now the landlord will be showing the place within a couple of days, and I feel like if I want any sort of say in what happens with the shared garden it had better be looking more loved than it does right now.

So in between canning projects and writing projects I’ve been on damage control duty in the garden. Send some good thoughts my way that my new neighbors turn out to be lovely people who are keen on sharing my slightly wild urban homesteading style.

Also on the schedule today, foraging with chef friend Jeremy in Prospect Park. Yeah, I know I don’t have time. But he says he spotted an oyster mushroom haul. If you know me, you know a hectic schedule never keeps me away from a potentially awesome foraging harvest. The oysters won’t wait, so I’m going.

Last but not least, here are a few pics from my recent travels just because I’m still under their influence and would like to share:

Ricky helping me pick prickly pear fruits, which I made into sabra jelly

Me helping to build a house made out of mud (and straw and horse poop)

Sunset at Kfar Segol

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Wild almonds. Lemon trees. Waist-high rosemary hedges. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas, um, make that Brooklyn, anymore.

me doing yoga after a night outdoors

When I travel, I make an effort to eat as much locally raised food as possible. This is not a hardship: it’s a pleasure. Nothing connects me quite as directly to the place I am visiting as celebrating the food produced by local harvests and cooks.

I’ve been in Israel for two weeks. It’s been a working trip, but with plenty of time for fun and food. Okay, so actually the working part was just a splendid way to pay for a trip to visit the long distance boyfriend.

And yeah, I’m feeling guilty about the heavy carbon footprint this locavore is inflicting on the planet because of all the travel lately. But not guilty enough to skip visiting someone I love. I felt the same way when I flew to California for my grandmother’s 99th birthday.

me and grandma nea at her 99th b'day last month

She passed away three weeks later, just before I went on this trip, and I’m really, really glad I got to see her that last time.

Grandma Nea died on the night of August 4th. A couple of days later I celebrated my birthday with a local foods feast and friends in the garden.

my b'day party earlier this month

Being a 21st Century human can be complicated sometimes.

He also brought walnuts and almonds that he had harvested from nearby trees, and joked about inviting us to pick his prickly pears (they are ripening all over the hillsides here).

While I’ve been here, I’ve continued to write about food preservation, and that has been a challenge. A canning funnel, a jar lifter, some mason jars with 2-piece canning lids - stuff I could find in many hardware stores and definitely kitchen ware stores back home is surprisingly hard to find here.

Or maybe not so surprising. This may be a desert, but the climate is kind to agriculture. When good tomatoes are available year-round, why should people care about canning tomatoes at home?

Of course, the water story is not so simple. The Dead Sea is shrinking rapidly because the water that used to pour into it is being diverted for agriculture. Water in this part of the world seems to be both rare and, when it is present, an especially strong force. More special for its scarcity, I suppose.

a waterfall on a hike at Ein Gedi

Today was the last teaching day of this month for me and Ricky, and tomorrow we’re heading out on a camping holiday. We’ll start our journey north by visiting an organic farm. I have many questions about the sustainable food movement here, and look forward to meeting some people who are actively involved (and, hopefully, getting to see and taste some of their food).

I’ll be doing what my friend Liz calls a “digital detox” for at least the first few days of vacation - no internet, no email, no phone - so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me for a little while.

If you’re in the midst of the late summer food preservation frenzy, please check out the latest articles and recipes I’ve got up on my food preservation site.

Hope you’re enjoying these last weeks of summer!

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Urban Homesteading Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living Rachel Kaplan, K. Ruby Blume

I recently read three books from Skyhorse Publishing on homesteading. All three are valuable resources for anyone already raising or foraging their own food (or wishing they could), as well as folks seeking ways to go as off-grid as possible when it comes to providing their own power. Read on for how to get your free copies through this book giveaway!

Urban Homesteading: Herloom Skills for Sustainable Living runs the gambit from food preservation to solar energy solutions for your home. Written by Rachel Kaplan with K. Ruby Blume, I like the philosophy behind the book as well as its practical how-to’s. As Kaplan says in one of the early chapters, “It’s time to stop pretending that each of us doesn’t have a role to play, and to tend the piece of earth we’ve been given.”

Kaplan also points out that “…a city’s unique and abundant resource is human energy.” Absolutely! Kaplan and Blume’s book provides an abundance of practical advice for anyone trying to live an environmentally sustainable lifestyle in an urban environment.

Homesteading A Back to Basics Guide to Growing Your Own Food, Canning, Keeping Chickens, Generating Your Own Energy, Crafting, Herbal Medicine, and More Abigail R. Gehring

Homesteading Handbook, The A Back to Basics Guide to Growing Your Own Food, Canning, Keeping Chickens, Generating Your Own Engery, Crafting, Herbal Medicine, and More Abigail R. Gehring

These two books are intended to be companion publications. They cover a lot of practical how-to information in a concise but still thorough enough to be useful way. While not specifically intended for urban homesteaders the way Kaplan’s book is, much of the information is applicable in an urban situation.

So…want a free copy of one of these books? I’ll be printing out the names of every one who “likes” my urban homesteading and/or food preservation Facebook pages within the next week and then doing a good old fashioned draw-out-of-the-hat thing. Yep, that’s a shameless plug for my homesteading pages. I’ll announce the winners of the giveaway on Friday, August 12th.

If you are already a fan of my FB pages and want to be entered in the giveaway, message me asking to be entered and you will be.

I highly recommend these books, whether you enter the giveaway or not!

Cheers,
Leda

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