Urbal Tea

Very Busy 8 Months

2011-07-09T07:13:00.007-04:00

Eight months and a lot of flour.....

Getting the rustic loaves down.

I'm now baking with a friend (the one who gave me that first batch of starter). We formed a company--The Bakery at Riverside Farm--and bake to order once a week. But with recent VA Dept. of Ag. approval we can now bake for resale to local businesses...which means adding a baking day.

Ahh, croissants.

Our home's cool winter climate was perfect for rolling out croissants. Summer croissants? Fahgetaboutit.

Rustic variations don't stop. Featured here is a Greek olive rustic. Also popular is a blue cheese and caramelized onion rustic.

Strawberry cakes.

When we started baking we decided to make seasonal treats, using only locally grown fruits and vegetables. These strawberry cakes were a big hit. I had to hire child labor for strawberry slicing to keep up with the demand.

Swarm in the fig tree. That's a column of solid bees.

Meanwhile, outside things heated up way, way too early. Bees started swarming. We had four swarms this year--caught three. The first, and largest swarm, happened while we were away. I received an interesting text message from my baking partner who happened to be collecting eggs that morning. The bees had landed on the chicken coop in what was the largest swarm we've ever had. Of course, the queen at the center of it all happened to be the one we bought last fall.

Below are bees from the fig tree swarm being introduced to their new home.

Future dinner guests.

Yes, we now have sheep. We started off with five--two ewes (the moms) and their offspring--but invited Lucy to be guest of honor at a Memorial Day dinner. Andrew and a friend helped dress her. Graham (future Top Chef contestant) also helped. Due to mechanical error with our thermometer Lucy was overcooked so wasn't so great.

The Twins.

These adorable little guys were a few days old when they arrived on our farm. They are now much bigger and not as cute. Once they hit 100 pounds they will head off to that cold place...

Stand off.

Rico (also known as Houdini Cow, Pig, T-bone) came to us from friends whose pasture couldn't handle him. He's a handsome Jersey that needed to gain a good 200 pounds. I really, really like having him. He's like a big dog. I just didn't realize that cows eat things other than grass...such as roses, grapevines, plum and pear trees, and whatever is growing in the garden. There is something special about watching a 9-pound dog chase a 300-pound cow Out of the Garden. Once Rico moves to our freezers this Fall, we'll let the pasture recover and then work on reinforcing the garden fence before letting anymore cows in.

It Lives

2010-11-17T11:46:00.008-05:00

We live in a rural place. We don't have a movie theater, there isn't a decent restaurant for miles, and if you want the NY Times you gotta get to the drugstore early. We have one grocery store and it isn't a good one. In fact, 8 years 5 months ago when I first walked through those sliding doors I held back tears. But all this is easy to deal with. We're a relatively short ride to Virginia Beach and Norfolk where movie theaters, grocery stores, and the NY Times abound. The problem: there isn't a good loaf of bread to be found anywhere. Sure, fake Italian bread is on the shelves next to French-style baguettes that are flown in from La Brea bakery in California. Yes, we can make do with this, but the thing is, we want local.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands. My quest for a loaf began with a container of starter from a friend. This was a type of sour dough starter that my friend had kept going for some time. In fact, she was quite grateful when I shared my desire to bake because her oven had stopped working and she was starting a kitchen renovation and well, she had a lot of starter with no place to go. You see, starter can live happily in your refrigerator for a week but then it needs to be fed. Feeding increases its size and before you know it, your life is Full of starter.

Using her starter, I made white loaf after white loaf. I practiced shaping techniques (learned to make a boule and continue to struggle with a baguette) and oven techniques. But there is only so much white bread you can eat before your system starts to complain, so I started doing things a "little different," as my Uncle Vinny used to say. I experimented with whole grains, oatmeal, flax meal, cranberries, walnuts, and olives. There were many disasters but also a lot of successes. And then one day, I baked all of my friend's starter. It was a bold move, but I felt ready for the next step: Starting my own. My friend looked at me as if I were nuts. "Why do that? My fridge is full. Take it, I can't bring myself to kill it." And then she came over and left me with, oh, six pounds of starter and a bottle of wine.

It took a week of nurturing but I did what Michael Pollan did for his famous local feast, I built a starter from wild yeast. How cool is that? When I first saw signs of life I was blown over. I nurtured the seeds (one white, one whole wheat) until they grew into mothers. I used every ounce of the seed to create these mothers--afraid that if I left any it wouldn't work. Unfortunately, it takes very little starter to make a loaf of bread. Worried that our home would be consumed by these bubbling, gassy mothers I can't stop baking. Yesterday I made eight loaves and prepped for 17 more that I'm baking today. The featured loaves are white and wheat pain au levain. Half of all the loaves were made without any commercial yeast. I am thoroughly enjoying myself. I feel part scientist and part artisan.

Hoping For No Freezer Burn

2010-09-28T15:20:00.005-04:00

Thanks to hundreds of these critters, our butternut squash harvest this year totaled four—as in, four squash. Last year we harvested over 125 pounds. Every time someone stopped by the house we'd hand them a squash. Thank goodness I still have some in my freezer. But how do I get rid of these destructive insects?

Maybe next time I will try capturing and cooking, since I understand eating insects is all the range with those favoring sustainability.

You Can't Rush Mother Nature

2010-09-02T12:16:00.003-04:00

This summer was rough for us in Virginia. Not only did temperatures reach and stay in the 100s for days and days, but we also suffered from a complete lack of rain for around six weeks. The ground was like a rock. Several tomato plants shriveled and died. The yard looked like it had been torched—leaving nothing but sharp bits of dead grass that cut bare feet.

Meanwhile, I couldn't stop thinking about our honeybees; I was low on honey as were a lot of my friends. I wanted the golden goo. Against all common sense and Andrew's concerns, I decided that mid-August would be a great time to do a little harvest, so we donned our suits, lit the smoker, and headed in. In spite of the drought, the bees had been busy. Sort of. Okay, not really. We took from them 11 frames of capped honey. I don't know what I was thinking. Even though the signs of drought and the stress of extreme heat were all around me, I thought there would be buckets of honey. Duh. If nothing is blooming, the bees just hang. It didn't hurt the bees that we took the honey (although every disturbance slows production), it just caused us lot of extra work. Lesson learned.

Since then we've had some rain. The fields around us are filled with cotton and soybeans. The bees are back in business. In a few weeks (during our normal harvest time) we will attempt to harvest again. I'm certain the stores will be full and we'll be back in the goo.

Here are the honey helpers spinning the small August harvest.

Civic Duty

2010-08-23T21:27:00.006-04:00

OK, caught in the act of snipping the buds off basil while walking through a community garden in DC. I couldn't help myself. Our children were appalled. "This isn't your garden; stop touching!" "Didn't you learn anything in Queens?!" Hey, it was a community garden on federal land or so I was told by the runner who stopped to stretch. So I considered it my civic duty and all that. Besides, it looked like it could use some TLC: lots of weeds and plenty of ripe peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and other treats. How sad, all that food just sitting there. If anyone is interested, the garden is near the Air & Space Museum.

Harvest Recipe #2: It's Da Bomb

2010-07-27T09:18:00.009-04:00

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When I first saw this recipe in Food & Wine I thought it looked incredibly boring. Cherry tomatoes piled onto a crust with nothing else? Right. But then I read the rave reviews and decided I had to give it a try, besides, the cherry tomatoes were piling up fast.

I modified the recipe a little. For starters, I made individual tarts. I brushed the bottom crust of each tartlet with egg yolk to seal it (a tip from Therese). When the tarts were done, I drizzled some spicy olive oil, a little kosher salt, and a few drops of this balsamic glaze I picked up the last time we were in Cape Town. I then offered a creamy French feta to anyone who wanted it. The tarts were delicious—with and without the feta. The tomatoes burst in your mouth loaded with flavor. Do heed the magazine’s warning: Don’t serve this when it first comes out of the oven. Let it cool a little. The tomatoes are like little bombs and will pop and burn when stuck with a fork.

You can follow their crust recipe or use your favorite. I like Julia Child’s recipe that uses both butter and shortening (gasp, shortening! I know, but it’s PIE we’re talking about). I use it for sweet and savory pies. The recipe (see below) makes a lot of dough. Just wrap leftover dough in plastic or vacuum seal and freeze.

Tart Crust

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Salt

7 TBS cold, unsalted butter, cubed

1/2 cup cold heavy cream

Filling

2 pints cherry or grape tomatoes

2 TBS shredded basil leaves

Butter a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. In a food processor, pulse the flour with a pinch of salt and the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the cream and pulse until the dough nearly comes together. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead a few times. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 325. Roll out the dough to a 14-inch round. Press the round into the tart pan; trim off any excess. Mound the tomatoes in the shell. Bake for about 1 hour and 40 minutes, until the dough is evenly browned. Let cool. Season with salt, garnish with the basil and serve.

Flaky Pie Dough
5 1/4 cups pastry flour
1 TBS kosher salt
6 ounces cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 3/4 cups solid vegetable shortening, chilled
1 cup ice water

Mix flour and salt together in a large bowl. Add butter and cut it into the flour until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Break up the shortening and cut it in until mixture has small clumps and curds. Add ice water, stirring with a spoon to incorporate. Turn dough out onto a work surface and fold it over on itself a few times. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 2 hours. Dough may be frozen. Defrost in refrigerator.

Peaches Coming Out of Our Ears (Recipes for the Inundated)

2010-07-12T11:54:00.003-04:00

When we bought our house in 2002, one of its selling features was a 30 year old peach tree in the backyard that gave off hundreds of fruits each summer. Thirty years, though, is about as long as a peach tree lives, so within three years or so, we had to take it down.

In the meantime, baby peach trees kept sprouting all over the yard, growing from the thousands of pits that fell from the tree. We root them up as religiously as the Little Prince does his baobabs (our yard is about the size of his planet), but Peter left one offspring to grow along the fence, with idea of espaliering it as a decorative tree. We understood that it would not bear fruit; only grafted trees did that.

Well, four years later that tree is yielding us more fruit than its mother ever did. This year we harvested a thousand peaches, and I’m not being hyperbolic. See that picture above? That’s our dining room table covered with over 300 peaches, which have been left to ripen before we process them (unlike other fruit, peaches ripen off the tree). We’ve done this three times now – and there are still peaches on the tree.

It’s been too hot to do much baking or preserving, so I’ve mostly been cutting the peaches up and freezing them for cooking/processing when the temperature goes down. (Turner Classic Movies, Wimbledon, the World Cup were very helpful to me as I cleaned and sliced my way through a millenium of fruit.) But I have done some baking and preserving – my two stalwart peach recipes that I can make in my sleep. I share them here with you.

The most important thing about cooking with peaches is to start with really good fruit. Mealy peaches make mealy desserts and preserves. Obviously, most of you don’t have peach trees in your backyards, so the best advice I can give you is the buy local peaches in season. And remember – peaches ripen OFF the tree, so don’t worry if they are hard when you buy them (in fact, if they’re soft, you probably won’t even be able to cook with them). If the peaches are local, that means they were picked just a day or two prior to your buying them. Lay them out – not touching each other – for another day or two until the peach flesh gives when you gently press your thumb against the area around the stem and at the base of the fruit. It should also smell like a peach. Now it’s ready to be eaten or processed.

One other piece of advice: I do not peel my peaches. That’s partly a self-preservation strategy: I have over a thousand to deal with, remember. But peach skins have all the pectin, so if you are baking or preserving, the skin is a critical ingredient for thickening and texture. I, however, really don’t like peach fuzz (it actually makes my skin crawl), so what I do is take a damp, tight-weave cotton cloth and gently wipe the fuzz off the peaches (this will also clean them of dirt and residue pesticides if those were used in the farming).

OK, enough preamble. Here are my two stand-by, stand-up peach recipes.

Curried Peach Chutney
(Note that these ingredients are to taste, which is why I give ranges; there is no science to this recipe)

4-5 cups chopped peaches, with skin (I generously fill up my quart-size Pyrex measuring cup)
1 small to medium onion, roughly chopped
1/2 - 1 cup raisins (golden, Thompson, whatever your favorite; you can also use currants or dried cranberries)
1/2- 2/3 cup white wine or apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 – 1 cup chopped red pepper
1/2 – 1 chopped jalapeno or other hot pepper
1/4 – 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh ginger (you can substitute a heaping teaspoon of ground ginger if you don’t have fresh)
1 TBSP mustard seed
1 to 2 TBSP curry
1 tsp. salt
1/2 – 1 cup brown sugar (you can also use white; note that I use WAY less sugar than most chutney recipes, which I think are egregiously over-sugared)

Throw everything but the dried spices and sugar in a large pan and stir over high heat until it comes to a boil. Add the spices and sugar and boil hard for 5 minutes, constantly stirring. Turn down the heat and cook for another 5 minutes or so.

This recipe yields about 3 pints of chutney. If you want to preserve, pour it into cleaned and sterilized jars (fill to a 1/4 inch from the top) and process in a water bath for 10 minutes. You can also make half this recipe just eat it right away. Definitely keeps in your fridge for a couple of weeks. Great with pork, chicken, and lamb.

Peach Cobbler
Filling

3 lbs. of peaches, in slices or chunks, tossed in a tablespoon of lemon juice
1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar, depending on sweetness of peaches and your taste
2 TBSP of tapioca flour (my thickener of choice; you can buy in Chinese markets) or corn starch. Or grind instant tapioca in a spice grinder and use that.

Preheat oven to 375. Grease a 9x9 baking pan. Toss the peaches with the sugar and tapioca flour and spoon into the pan.

Topping

1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 cup sugar (or a bit less if you don’t like too sweet)
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 egg
2/3 cup buttermilk, sour milk, or yogurt (all work perfectly well)
6 TBSP melted butter, cooled.

Combine the dry ingredients. Then beat the egg with the buttermilk and butter. Fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture until combined. Do not over mix.

Drop the topping onto the peach filling in large spoonfuls to cover the surface. IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT heap the filling on too high. You may have more topping than you need and if you just heap it on, the batter closest to the peaches will not bake. If you have too much batter, make a personal-sized cobbler in a ramekin.

Place the pan on a cookie sheet. Bake for 40 minutes or so until it is golden brown on top and the filling is bubbling. Best served warm with vanilla ice cream.

Living La Vida Localiente

2010-07-11T11:19:00.003-04:00

If you’re not on the East Coast, you may not know that we have had a heat wave for the first ten days of July. Do I have to tell you that a hundred degrees in New York City is not pretty? I didn’t think so.

What’s even more worrisome to me than the heat itself, is the fear of a power blackout. Peter and I got off easy in the last one (the Northeast power outage of 2003), but the image of those people who were on the subway when the power went out has never stopped haunting me. (To this day, I travel on the subway – always – with a water bottle and a Maglite.) I just don’t want to contribute to the possibility of that happening again, even in my own small way.

So, in a fit of social responsibility, Peter and I have been trying to live without air conditioning. Because the first floor of our house is slightly below grade, the living room is actually not unpleasant. And as long as I don’t use the oven or stove, the kitchen is fine too. The second floor, with three really powerful ceiling fans and the judicious lowering and raising of blinds, is manageable enough.

When we get to my office, however, which is an extension on the back of the house, that’s a different story. By 1 pm, when the sun has made its arc over to our backyard and is beating down on the tar roof above my head, my fingers start to stick to the keyboard and my entire body is coated in a body paint of itchy sweat.

My way of coping has been to take off the afternoons and go to the movies! I figure that the air conditioning is already on in these places and the more people who partake of it, the more efficiently it runs. (I think that’s called rationalization, but it may be true too.) I saw four matinees last week: I Am Love and Winter’ Bone, both of which I highly recommend; Please Give, which I think is fine and definitely better than sitting in an unairconditioned* office; and Great Directors, a pathetic movie that I can’t believe actually got funded and distributed (the director/producer must have her own trust fund).

Peter has been a relentless urban farmer throughout this humid hideousness, waking every morning at six to hand water (see above; did I mention that we’ve also been in a mini drought?), the result of which has been that we have been eating salads from our garden every day, not to mention peaches and raspberries, and basil by the truckloads. Breakfasts have been peach-blueberry-raspberry yogurt smoothies (made with cantaloupe ice balls that we froze at the end of last summer).

Not so loco after all, I guess.

*The spell check function in Word does not recognize the word unairconditioned. Is that a cultural statement or what?

Harvest Recipe 1

2010-07-10T18:19:00.017-04:00

We haven't had a real rain in about four weeks. But the garden, in spite of looking a bit brown, is producing. We've already harvested about 50 pounds of tomatoes, onions, and all the garlic. Tomatoes on toast for breakfast. Tomato sandwiches for lunch. Gazpacho for dinner. Tonight we feasted on tomato, onion, and cheese tart.

Unlike most tomato tarts, this one is not loaded with pounds of gooey cheese or mayo (both of which make my stomach churn). This is nice and clean. Once the zucchini and eggplant come in massive numbers we'll grill it and layer it into the pie, too.

Tomato, Onion, and Cheese Tart
1 (9 in) deep-dish pie crust
Dijon or grainy mustard
3 TBS olive oil
1-2 large onions, sliced thinly
salt & pepper
6 oz crumbled goat cheese, brie, feta or other favorite cheese
2-3 tomatoes, sliced thinly
fresh basil leaves

Place crust in tart pan with removable bottom or a regular pie dish and prick bottom and sides with fork. Line shell with foil and pie weights or dried beans. Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake 10 minutes longer or until crust is golden brown. Cool on rack. Brush mustard on cooled crust. Heat oil is heavy skillet and cook onions until golden brown, about 15-20 min, stirring frequently. Add salt and pepper. Spread onions over bottom of tart shell and top with most of the cheese. Arrange tomatoes, slightly overlapping, in concentric circles over cheese. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and bake at 350 until cheese melts, 5-10 minutes. Put foil over edge of crust to prevent over browning. Top with torn, fresh basil leaves.

Buzzed

2010-06-25T06:51:00.004-04:00

We started keeping bees about three years ago primarily as a way to repopulate a disappearing community. If we got some honey, all the better, but it wasn't our goal. Of course, now that we have had two successful honey harvests I want the honey, too. Anyway, a couple months ago I needed a work break and stepped outside for a walk in the garden. I noticed a lot of activity around our two beehives and I got nervous. Last year our bees swarmed five times. Each time around 20,000 of the little buzzers took off to set up house on their own (which we always hoped was not in the side of one of our outbuildings). The upside, we were doing our part to help the honeybee by repopulating the community. The downside, we were worried that the queen who was left to reign might not be up to her calling and thus, leaving us with no honey to harvest. Turns out, we were lucky and the bees were successful all around.

But this was another season. Not eager to get back to my desk, I stood and watched and soon realized the bees really were swarming. Not again, I thought. I've grown to depend on the honey as have many people in our community. Who knew what sort of queen we'd be left with (if we were left with a queen at all). Andrew saw things a little differently. He was convinced that once they landed, I could capture the swarm. This was easy for him to say because his arm was in a sling from a surgery and he would be unable to help. He was talking about me catching thousands and thousands of bees. Part of me wanted to let them buzz off, but another part of me was craving excitement and more honey. It just so happened that we had an empty hive body that was built last winter just in case we decided to expand. I gathered the equipment and donned my bee suit while my one-armed husband watched and directed me catching the swarm.

It was a remarkable experience. I walked away feeling like a rock star. We checked on the hive a week later and there was proof that the queen liked her new digs. Larva filled the cells. Now I'm totally buzzed.

Garden Etiquette

2010-06-25T06:47:00.002-04:00

I spent this past weekend in Queens, NY, at a family party and found myself wondering what is proper garden etiquette. Say you walk through someone's garden and see a bunch of things that aren't right but could be fixed in a second. Do you say something? Do you take matters into your own hands? Or do you just keep your mouth shut? And what if the garden belongs to a family member?

There I was, at a party when I was accosted by a cousin from Bensonhurst. Because he's from Brooklyn, I think he thinks he has license to carry on like dere's no tamorrah. If yous gets whad I'm sayin'. Surprisingly, he reads this blog. He called himself "our third reader" and kept referring to me as "the sustainable one" or something along those lines. He complained that I hadn't written anything in a long time but said it was probably because I was spending all my time screeching at everyone for not composting their teabags.

While he carried on, as only someone from Bensonhurst can do, I looked around the party girl's yard. Like Therese and Peter's garden in Brooklyn, my cousin had done a lot with her small growing area in Queens. Her garden held several thriving basil, tomato and pepper plants, and garlic with scapes that were as long as my arms. My cousin was standing next to me and said the garlic came from my parents. Lovely. But what was she thinking? Those scapes should have been cut a week ago. I tried to hide my horror from Cousin Bensonhurst but he was too quick. He caught my gaze. "What's the problem," he laughed. "She didn't compost something?" I wanted a knife. No, not to stab my cousin with, to cut those scapes. I scanned the yard for another cousin—who I know always carries a knife—but couldn't find him. Besides, Andrew was whispering loudly in my ear, "It isn't your garden. What if she wants her garlic to blossom?" I mumbled back, "Clearly, she doesn't know she's supposed to cut them. She's Italian, she planted a sauce garden! Her sauce will be ruined. She needs help!"

I forced myself to look away and focus on her container garden. She had the most gorgeous pot of coriander I've ever seen. The plant was huge, full, and bolting! I couldn't take it. I gently nudged Cousin Bensonhurst out of the way, bent over and snipped. I plopped the stem onto Andrew's plate and moved on to the dill. Caterpillars. Two little guys. I thought they might be baby swallowtails (and would have left them) but I wasn't positive so I snipped the little stem off and brought them over to my father. He took one look, said they weren't swallowtails and then dunked the branch in a cup of red wine. I couldn't take it anymore and was afraid at what else I might spot. I think Cousin Bensonhurst may have bet another cousin that I was going to collect all the food scraps and take them back to Virginia compost. The thought hadn't even crossed my mind. But I did decide that if you like the person whose garden you're in, it's okay to point out little things here and there. Of course, I didn't learn until later that my cousin hates coriander and had actually purchased it by mistake thinking it was parsley, she wanted it dead. Oh well.

Beach Balloon Bingo — A Trashy Story

2010-06-13T09:22:00.003-04:00

Peter and I spent our 10th anniversary last month on the South Fork of Long Island, home to the fabulous Hamptons. We had a bit of a mishap with the car we had borrowed from his sister, which caused us to spend a few unplanned hours walking the shore between Westhampton Beach and Quogue, while the car was being fixed. No problem. It was a beautiful weekday, the sun was shining, there was nary breeze, and the beach was empty, except for…

Balloons. We encountered our first washed-up helium balloon fairly soon into our walk. I picked it up, punctured it to get all the air out of it, shook off the sand, and stuffed it into an outer pocket of Peter’s backpack.

We soon ran out of backpack pockets. I happened to have on me my handy-dandy-trusty Chico bag (I carry one in every purse and backpack now), so I started stuffing in it the all the beach trash we found: soda cans, liquor bottles, bits of rubber tires, string, rope, and general marine detritus. But balloons were by far the most persistent trash item we came upon.

And unfortunately, they’re also the most insidious. According to Save the Whales, thousands of marine animals are killed every year by balloons that have escaped birthday parties, baby showers, and the like, and end up in our oceans. “Balloons are ingested by whales, dolphins, turtles, seals, fish and water-fowl, who innocently believe they are food such as jellyfish or squid.”

I knew about the dangers of balloons to marine mammal life before last week, but I never had such a vivid illustration of the pervasiveness of the problem. This beach was relatively pristine — I’m sure the multimillion-dollar home owners who live along it make a point of keeping it clean — so I can’t even imagine how many balloons end up on a really trashed-out shoreline.

I know balloons are fun and celebratory, but Save the Whales suggests equally festive alternatives, such as wind socks, kites, flowers. And if you do use balloons, avoid helium ones and use the old-fashioned kind that you blow up with your own breath. Those have far less a chance of ending up in the ocean than helium balloons.

You might ask what we did to dispose of our collection of balloons and other beach trash. I’m proud (or maybe a bit sheepish) to report that we dumped it in a garbage can of one of those multimillion-dollar homes. I’m sure the owner would have approved.

The way a beach should look (handsome guy included).

P.S. If you want to a see a really vivid portrait of beach trash, check out this online exhibition from TreeHugger.com.

Blithe Impermanence

2010-05-27T15:34:00.001-04:00

I've decided that peonies are the best Buddhist teachers. They open in spectacular blooms and then, just as I am getting so attached to them, they start to fade, reminding me that however much I want things to remain as they are — everything changes.

Thunderstorms were threatened for today, so I went out and cut the most vulnerable of the blooms, and brought them inside to protect for another day or two. But even that effort is futile — as I write this, peony petals are falling onto my desk. They're lovely, though, even in their blithe impermanence.

Feels Like Summer

2010-05-18T15:35:00.004-04:00

I'm not going to get into a whole thing about global warming and how much Fox News is to blame for polluting our air with their toxic gases, but something is definitely going on with the weather. For starters, we had an unusually wet winter. And then, when we were still supposed to be snuggled in our sweaters in March, we're suddenly forced to expose our blue-white legs because it's 97 with about 120% humidity. The sun beat down on us as if it were August. If it weren't for the garden I wouldn't know it was spring.

Responsible Cruising?

2010-05-15T13:32:00.019-04:00

It’s been a good stretch since I’ve last written for Urbal Tea, the reason for which I can at least partially attribute to the month I was traveling with my mother.

Now, one of the topics I’ve wanted to write about for Urbal Tea is sustainable travel, to which Peter and I and Louise and Andrew are totally committed.

I am therefore chagrined to confess that the some of travel I did with my mother was anything but sustainable—I took her on a four-day cruise.

Holy Cow! My mom in front of the Carnival Imagination:

Gross Tonnage: 70,367
Length: 855 feet
Beam: 103 Feet
Cruising Speed: 21 Knots
Guest Capacity: 2,052 (double occupancy)
Total Staff: 920

I had never been on a cruise before and was a bit trepidatious about the whole thing, but it’s what she wanted to do and truth be told, it’s a very easy way to travel with an 86-year old woman. It’s also a very easy way to travel with kids, which I guess a lot of parents have figured out: it was spring break week and there were 957 children on our boat—which was less than ideal for an elderly woman and her 50-something daughter (whose idea of a cruise involves Cary Grant, Paul Henreid, or Charles Boyer). But I digress from the point of this story.

Which is the issue of environmental impact and cruise ships. In theory, traveling by boat is far less impactful than flying or driving—it takes a lot less carbon-based fuel to move a person by boat from Port A to Port B than by air or car. But the problem with cruise ships is that they are floating, luxury mini-cities and so whatever carbon emissions you might save by sailing, you more than make up for by all the waste you and your fellow passengers generate on board.

According to responsibletravel.com (quoting the United Nations Environmental Program), “On a typical one-week voyage a cruise ship generates more than 50 tonnes of garbage and a million tonnes of grey (waste) water, 210,000 gallons of sewage and 35,000 gallons of oil-contaminated water. On average, passengers on a cruise ship each account for 3.5 kilograms of rubbish daily — compared with the 0.8 kilograms each generated by local people on shore.” (In non-metric terms, that’s 7.7 pounds vs. 1.7 lbs.)

I believe it. The amount of food waste alone on our ship must have been staggering. My mother loved the endless dessert tables, but I was fixated on the unfathomable amount of food that was left on people’s trays or that I saw being carted out by waiters after each evening’s dinner.

Add to the fact that cruise ships tend to visit ecologically vulnerable areas, like coral reefs (ours went to Cozumel, for example), where both ship sewage and anchors can harm the fragile environment, and the proposition gets even dicier.

Is there a responsible way to travel by cruise ship? It’s true that lots of cruise ship lines are trying to adopt ecologically responsible practices, like converting cooking oil into diesel fuel (which gets used by farming equipment). And companies like Holland America have programs in which they donate reusable goods (linens, toiletries, dishes, mattresses) to charities.

But honestly, I think these efforts are mere drops in the bucket. Responsibletravel.com asks a really good question: What interests you in a cruise in the first place?

If it’s the chance to visit lots of different places, they suggest a number of far more eco-friendly overland tours that one can take. (Besides, most cruises spend just a few hours at any port of call, which I found absolutely frustrating. Don’t ask me how I found Cozumel because I couldn’t say after a six-hour stay.)

If you’re interested in a cruise because you want take a sailing vacation, again, there are more sustainable ways to be on the water (like renting your own barge to travel the river and canal system in England, which we did a few summers ago).

If it’s the desire to be pampered, have all your needs taken care of while your children have a safe and entertaining environment in which to let loose, there are more and more eco-friendly resorts popping up in the Caribbean every day.

Of course, what I want out of a cruise is to wind up in a stateroom with Jeremy Irons—not exactly a sustainable vacation, at least as far as my marriage is concerned.

P.S. The New York Times did a good article on this topic about a year ago. Here is the link.

Hello, my name is Louise and I suffer from OCSD

2010-03-08T14:17:00.002-05:00

Now that Therese's term, obsessive-compulsive sustainability disorder or OCSD, is starting to hit the mainstream as a true disorder (what? a mention in the Huffington Post doesn't count?), I feel it is time that I publicly recognize that I may fall within the spectrum of OCSD sufferers. To be honest, I hadn't realized that I had OSCD until I read that Therese felt cutting open an "empty" lotion bottle was a bit obsessive. I thought it was what everyone did.

I recently came to the realization that I may be deeper into the OCSD spectrum when I spotted a tea bag hiding in the trash and nearly fell over myself yanking it out. I tried to ignore it but couldn't. Yes, I reached in—between the plastic raw-chicken wrapper and used tissues—grabbed the lonely bag, and dropped it in the compost bin. What was Andrew thinking? Was he playing a game? Like he does by loading the dishwasher incorrectly? (Small plates in front, big in back—that's not so hard to remember.) Anyway, after relocating the tea bag I began wondering what else might be lurking in the can but then my nose got the best of me so I just hauled the trash bag out and cinched it shut. There were an awful lot of tissues.

For me, thanks to OCSD, even a perfectly lovely dinner party can be cause for a throbbing, guilt-ridden ache in that large section of my brain devoted solely to agida. And the only one I have to blame for this is me...for inviting guests who just don't get it. Okay, okay, maybe my expectations are too high. Just because we live in a rural community surrounded by farms doesn't mean that everyone should understand the importance of composting (recycling is another thing that gets my OCSD bubbling). I know I shouldn't really expect kind guests who jump up to help clear the table to know that the red bucket sitting in our sink is for food scraps. Those castaways help feed the chickens which in turn produce those amazing orange-yolked eggs that everyone loves. Seriously, guests clearing the table put a damper on my spirits. I hear you thinking: You're a nut! Why don't you just ask them to leave the dishes? I do. But you know how guests are. Or, why don't you just tell them how you'd like the dishes done? Because if I do that they'll think I'm bossy and obsessive. I know, you don't need to say it.

So I let them scrape the dishes directly into the trash, prewash the plates in hot water, and load the dishwasher incorrectly. I thank them profusely for their help—trying my best to sound cool and gracious—but can't stop wondering why the heck they must waste so much? Sure, the first time we had guests over I wasn't so cool. That would be the dinner where I was caught diving into the trash to retrieve the veggie scraps. A guest caught me with a handful of pastalettucebreadpudding and gave me a look of surprised disgust as she backed away and went searching for her coat. I felt awful. She was a guest after all and I didn't want her to feel bad for helping. I just couldn't help myself. But that was then. I've developed various coping mechanisms since. If they don't take my cue and insist on helping, I wait until they leave before scooping out what I can from the trash and rearranging the dishwasher (ask Andrew about that).

Of course, there is still the problem of how to handle myself when I go to someone else's house and volunteer to help with the dishes. I find myself searching for a composting bin. If they don't have one, I can't stand it. But what can I do? I'm not about to preach to anyone other than my sister (really now, she should know better; we grew up in a house with a compost bin permanently located next to the sink). Instead, I keep my mouth shut and mutter to Andrew about the unnecessary waste of it all. And when I return home, I make myself a cup of tea.

Last night, we had another dinner party. Lovely time all around. Although I'm not sure how Andrew and I managed to dirty every single plate, the good news is that our dear friends volunteered to help clear the table. I made my noises, blahblah, some listened, but others cleared and chatted away as the plates were carried into the kitchen. Guess what? The plates were scraped into the composting bin without me saying a word. Talk about fast learners, I mean, good friends.

Some Recent Additions to Urbal Tea

2010-03-07T13:34:00.000-05:00

Book Recommendations:
Various friends have been recommending books to us, which we've added to the Urbal Tea Store. Check it out in the sidebar at right.

FLASH-----NEWLY PUBLISHED
Animal Factory, author David Kirby
Yet another terrifying exposé of CAFO (and much more)

Slow Death by Rubber Duck, authors Rick Smith and Chris Lourie
A thorough exposé of chemicals in our every day lives

Resource Links
We've added several links (in the sidebar at right) to resources that readers might find useful:

The Red, White, and Green: Caring About the Environment is Patriotic: written by a green advice columnist for The Huffington Post (Eco Etiquette), this site offers up everyday green living tips and explores matters of environmental ethics and policy.

Grist: A Beacon in the Smog: Provides interesting articles on the environment, survival, etc and includes the useful column: Ask Umbra

Eco-Brooklyn: We've included this ONLY because they often post interesting articles and videos; when Mr. Eco-Brooklyn, himself, sounds off in his posts, it's probably time to turn this off.

Eating as a Sustainable Act

2010-03-05T16:29:00.001-05:00

In January of 2009, my husband and I returned from a 4-month trip to Australia and New Zealand, where, in spite of the fact that we ate and drank our way across both land masses, we hiked our way as well, and therefore returned strong and fit.

Through a succession of colds and flu, and getting out of the habit of walking (which is our primary form of exercise), yet eating and drinking as if we were still the intrepid hikers, I put on a good 10 pounds over the course of the year. Peter put on at least that much.

January 2010 comes along and it’s diet time.

Now, I’ve done this before. After we got married, we turned into fat honeymooners that required a year’s worth of Weight Watchers to take off the 25 or so pounds we acquired through our love-food fest. And a few years ago, we did the South Beach diet to take off that biennial creeping 10. So I know diets “work” — in the short run. But in the long run, they don’t work — at least in the sense of keeping the biennial 10 at bay.

So this year I decided to do it differently. Yes, I did Phase 1 of South Beach religiously for three weeks (for Peter and me, it is a very easy and rewarding diet), which dropped a good six pounds right there. But I did something else as well – I decided that eating sustainably is as important as any other sustainable act of living.

Why do I need to consume more food than I need? On occasion (and I mean, occasion, like a birthday) that’s fine — in the same way that I allow myself to buy strawberries occasionally in winter. But day in and day out, why do I have to eat more food than my body calls out for? I’m against over-consuming things like plastics and gasoline. Why is food different?

I don’t think it is. I realize that the second pork chop that I might forego is not going to end up on the plate of some starving child in China (as my mother tried to get me to believe when I was younger). But I am part of a country that over-consumes food—and the truth is that if we stopped doing that, we’d not only be healthier, but we’d be able to farm our land in more sustainable ways. For instance, if we just limited the amount of beef we eat (not even give it up altogether) we could substantially cut back on the 96 million methane-producing cattle we currently graze. We’d not only use that land more productively, but put a substantial dent in greenhouse gasses as well. (Check out the Meatless Monday movement here.)

So I started paying attention to what and how much I eat. (I meditate and a book on mindful eating by Jan Chozen Bays from my friend Shell was extremely helpful here.) I started taking what seemed like a reasonable portion of food—I’m not into starvation after all — and eating it slowly and mindfully, letting my brain register my satiety. I found that I usually didn’t need or want seconds, and if I did, I took seconds of vegetables.

I also started paying attention to my hunger, and like everything else in life, I noticed that it changes. HUNGER, I have learned, is not some static state THAT MUST BE SATISFIED. For example, I work at home, so I’m just steps from my fridge. For this experiment, when the usual 10:30 a.m. hunger pangs came around, instead of responding to them, I chose instead to watch them. And sometimes (not always) they went away. They didn’t really need attending to. I didn’t have to eat.

I also started noticing the emotions attached to my hunger. One time I was out doing errands and when I felt a little bit of hunger, I noticed that I also felt panic. “What are you going to eat? When? How?” my mind started hissing with conspiratorial urgency. But instead of reacting to the panic, I just watched it—and saw both the panic and the hunger dissipate under inspection.

The upshot is this: I’ve lost 10 pounds since January 4 and – more important – I eat a lot less. Not because I am on a diet. I’m just a mindful eater now. I’m mindful of food’s impact on me and I’m mindful of my impact as an eater on this Earth. And you know what? I feel good about both.

Simplicity Can Work

2010-02-04T11:37:00.000-05:00

I agree with Mary's comment that we should be concerned about what we put on our skin, as well as what we put in our mouths. I ran my lotions and beauty potions through the Cosmetic Database (of doom). I discovered that it is highly likely that under one of those purple crime-scene lights I will glow a brilliant green.

Why are these products loaded with toxins we don't need? Do we really need all these ingredients to help us look and feel good? For years, people worldwide have used natural oils, such as olive, coconut, marula, and argan, as moisturizers and hair elixirs with great success. I'm not sure why we've moved so far away from simple. I'm just as guilty as the next person, until I travel, and then I use next to nothing. For instance, this past year, my family and I were on the move for five months. I took along a product we made using beeswax (from our beehives) and olive oil. It's a thick, rich balm.

It was exciting to use something made from only two ingredients (the fact that we made it was also key). Not to turn this into some sort of infomercial for our balm, but the Cosmetic Database has brought this all to mind so I feel like sharing. Our balm (so far I haven't read anything that says it wouldn't pass government regulators) works and, according to friends and family, its basic ingredients are working wonders. One friend used it to rid her baby of a small patch of eczema. Another shared it with a family member who is going through chemo; the simple ingredients are the only thing her ultra-sensitive, very dry skin can handle. Seasonal drying and cracking of skin around fingernails, heels, elbows, and lips have all been relieved by the balm. I'm tickled by the feedback. Simplicity works.

Which brings me back to my question: Why is it necessary to include so many ingredients (and if the Cosmetic Database is to be believed, so many toxic ingredients) in these beauty products? Shelf life? Antibacterial properties? I don't know. I just know that our little tins, containing two nontoxic ingredients, are showing results. Is all the extra stuff gimmick? And do we really need cleansers, toners, exfoliators, scrubs, and specific lotions for every body part before capping it all off with a collection of makeup products? When we think about what is good for our bodies (inside and out), the environment, and our wallets, it may be a good idea to step back and think about what we really need. Maybe if we did use fewer of these products we would be suffering from fewer allergies, skin problems, and the like, not to mention that our wallets would be fatter. I'm certainly guilty of falling for the claims—it happens every time I walk down a store's beauty aisle or flip through a magazine. I want my hair to be less frizzy and my skin to look like it did when I was 20. Fat chance. Yet, I know that, when I step away from it all and travel, my skin and hair tend to look pretty good. Of course, there was that one bus ride in Ecuador when I looked positively green, but that's another story.

Truth in Labeling

2010-01-29T15:32:00.000-05:00

Louise and I were having an email exchange about how not all organic milk is created equal, when she sent me a link to an article claiming that there was no nutritional difference between organic and non-organic milk, with the note "I'm hoping it isn't true."

I was intrigued, because I've seen studies from Denmark and Great Britain (among other places) that show that organic pasture-fed milk has more fatty acids and is higher in antioxidants, beta carotene, Vitamin E, and other nutrients than conventional milk. Now, if you're comparing factory-farmed dairy cows that are fed organic grain (and barely pasture-fed) vs. factory-farmed dairy cows that are given conventional grain, then maybe there is little nutritional difference. That's why pasture-feeding is so key to the definition of organic dairy and why organic/family farming organizations like the Cornucopia Institute put up such a fuss when factory-farms claim to be organic yet barely show their cows what a pasture looks like.

Nonetheless, even if the nutritional values of the two were the same, non-organic milk contains antibiotic residues, which scientists believe contribute to antibiotic resistance, a serious health problem in this country. Non-organic cows are also fed synthetic growth hormones, called bovine somatotropin. This bST, as it is sometimes known, and another hormone it produces (an insulin-like growth factor called IGF-1) have been shown to be present in milk. I don't care what the FDA says about "safe levels": Does anyone really want to feed their kids synthetic bovine growth hormones?

I got curious about the website Louise had linked me to, Stop Labeling Lies, so I looked at it in a bit more depth. [Note that I am not going to provide links to any of the sites mentioned below. You can reach them through About Us page on Stop Labeling Lies if you really want to visit them.]

One of its "participating organizations" is the important-sounding Center for Global Food Issues, whose motto is straight out of Monsanto's mission statement: "Growing More Per Acre Leaves More For Nature." They are associated with the conservative think tank, The Hudson Institute, and have stories on their web site like "Greenpeace Opts for Millions of Blind Kids." (Those villains! That's the last time I'll give them money in the street!)

Another is the objective-sounding American Council on Science and Health, which has an article on its web site that says: "The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has now firmly established itself not as an institution for higher learning, devoted to educating students about the science of preventing premature disease and death, but instead as a hotbed of pseudoscience and political agitation..." (Yes, we know all about those Harvard public health Trotskyites.)

Something called the Food Security Network is also a sponsoring org, the link to which leads one to a very bizarre web site whose focus is really hard to suss out. I did appreciate one of their food security stories: "Hormel premium sliced deli meats are now packaged in a clear flexible pouch with an integrated Hefty Slide-Rite closure system, supplied by Pactiv Corp., that helps the meat retain its fresh flavor even after the package has been repeatedly opened and closed." (Well, I feel much safer now.)

Another sponsor: "The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a public interest group dedicated to free enterprise and limited government." It was called by the Wall Street Journal "the best environmental think tank in the country." (And the climate-change-denying WSJ should know!)

Anyway, I'm going out on a limb and guess that Stop Labeling Lies is a front for mega-food-agribusiness companies and their political allies. Labeling lies, indeed.

P.S. If you want to know if the organic milk you drink is truly pasture-fed and meets other high standards for organic dairy, the Cornucopia Institute has a scorecard for all dairy companies that claim to be organic. Interesting reading.

Our brand, Natural By Nature, got 4 out of 5 cows on the Cornucopia Institute's scorecard.

Obsessive Sustainabililty (Plus Beauty Tip)

2010-01-10T21:34:00.000-05:00

I've worried a bit about our blog — that we seem too obsessive, too preachy, too extreme in our attempts to recycle, reuse, etc., etc. I've decided that people who are super-sustainability types are probably not just motivated by altruistic desires to save the planet, but perhaps a little guilt (that would be me) or maybe it just plays into their compulsive tendencies (that would be Peter).

Granted, Peter and I are not as extreme as some (we haven't given up on toilet paper after all). But I have a feeling people may roll their eyes at some of the things we do (like make soup stock out of table scraps).

Nevertheless, I've decided that OCSD (obsessive-compulsive sustainability disorder) is OK. In fact, it's more than OK. Because for every compulsively sustainable thing we choose to do now, it might mean that it's one less compulsory sustainable thing our grandchildren will have no choice but to do in the world they are inheriting.

That leads me to my latest OCSD act. Which is also a beauty tip! (I like to leverage my ideas across platforms.)

I read in some beauty magazine years ago something that may be hooey, but I have accepted as true: moisturizers don't add moisture to one's skin—they only keep in the moisture that's already there. So the article recommended that when you put moisturizer on after a shower, you do so before you've fully dried off, when your skin is still damp. That way, you're keeping more moisture next to your skin.

I've been doing this for years now, and while I can't say that it has kept me looking younger, it has meant that I buy a lot less moisturizer. With this method, you need a spit of lotion to cover your face and neck. So a 4 oz. bottle of Neutrogena lasts me about a year. That means I'm buying less— both saving money and saving the number of bottles I throw out a year.

OK, so here's where I get a bit OCSD. You know when you think the bottle is empty. You push the pump and all that comes out is a sputter of air and lotion vapers? Guess what? You have about two months worth of moisturizer left in there. I kid you not.

I did an experiment with my last bottle of moisturizer. I stored it upside down in my medicine cabinet, and in the morning, I'd take the cap off, and there, coagulated at the neck of the bottle, was a huge glob of moisturizer. So, I'd take the tiny amount I needed, put the cap back on, and store it upside down again. And so it went for about 6 weeks, until there was no longer a critical mass of lotion gathered in the neck.

But wait, there's more!

I found that I could stick my pinky in and get a morning's worth of lotion off the sides of the bottle, as well as wipe down the pump straw where some lotion had also collected. I got about 2 more weeks worth of morning moisturizer doing the scrape method (always storing the bottle upside down).

I saved that bottle from going into the landfill (and having to buy another) for an additional two months. Now, I can't do the carbon imprint calculation on that, but I don't need an algorithm to know that less waste is good.

Try it yourself. It really works (and maybe it's even better for your skin). It will save you money. But most important, it means that landfill we're handing down to our grandchildren will have fewer bottles in it.

Now, if I were truly OCSD, I'd cut the bottle open and scrape off what's inside. Peter would go that far, but I have my limits.

Meat the Frankenbirds (part 2): A Photo Essay

2010-01-10T13:54:00.001-05:00

Text by Graham
Photos by Katharine

Dad seizes a chicken!
The first to meet his handcrafted cone of silence.

Dad puts the chicken in the cone head first.
Then he pulls the head out through the bottom of the cone.

The chicken's legs (and his head at the other end)
are the only parts that stick out of the cone.

Next, we boiled a pot of water to dip the
dead chickens in to loosen their feathers.

After the chickens' feathers were loosened,
we brought them over to a makeshift table to pluck them.

We made sure every feather was off the bird.

Now the chickens were ready to be gutted.

Some of the "delicious" innards. Yum!!!! (he's kidding)

He tried to escape but we put a lid on him.
Chicken foot soup (okay, we just used them to make stock).

After hours of work, Mom prepared the chicken for the grill.
We can't wait for a taste.

A silly image of Katharine enjoying her favorite treat:
Grilled chicken feet.

Beautiful me. Beautiful bird.

Chicken liver pate.
This was so good!

Am I going to be next?

Please note: My mother didn't help with any of this (except for preparing the bird for the grill).
I think she's too chicken to face her chickens.

Love and Imperfection

2010-01-07T19:56:00.000-05:00

Christmas was a blessedly quiet event this year. Peter and I gave one another just a few gifts, one of which from Peter to me was Bill Buford's Heat, which he bought for me thinking it was by Bill Bryson (whom I love), and then felt sheepish about giving it to me, only to learn that I had been wanting to read the book. I spent, in fact, two dark and rainy days on the couch inhaling the book (with a few interruptions, like a visit from our youngest granddaughter, on Christmas morning).

Paloma, Christmas 2009 (with her Ebee gifts)

Not sure why I was so interested in the book. It's the tale of Buford (founding editor of Granta and former fiction editor of the New Yorker) going to work in professional kitchens, including Mario Batali's much beloved downtown eatery Babbo (where I sadly have never been; too expensive for us). Which means it's a tale of slave labor, humiliation, inhuman levels of stress, flesh burning, flesh slicing, kitchen rage, and basic insanity. Why anyone would choose to subject themselves to this environment is beyond me. Having experienced restaurant life from the front of the house, as a waitress in and right after college, was enough exposure for me. I will say that I am very impressed how restaurants manage to shield their patrons from the outsize macho culture that exists behind the swinging doors.

In the book, Buford asks Batali what he will learn interning at Babbo, and Batali says: the difference between being a home cook and a professional cook. When you work in a restaurant you have to make each dish exactly the same each night—patrons come back to experience the exact pork shank they had last time, and if they don't get it, they don't come back.

Luckily, we home cooks don't live under such tyranny. There's no such thing (at least in my kitchen) as making the same thing exactly the same way each time. Sometimes the difference makes a dish better. Sometimes not so better. Take my minestrone for example, made with my compost stock. I have to admit it was outstanding. I used the beans we grew in our garden and put up for the winter. They had amazing texture for home frozen vegetables. And the purple cabbage thrown in at the end made for such a beautiful palette.

I made a lot of the minestrone, so I froze the rest, which we just had this past week for dinner. Not so good. The broad beans got sort of mushy and tough at the same time (don't know how I managed that trick). Edible, but they'd never serve it at Babbo.

Then there's latkes—I only make them once a year, for Hanukkah, so I follow a recipe. It's from a guy named David Firestone, featured in Molly O'Neill's New York Cookbook, which has really terrific New York "neighborhood" recipes (I make, for instance Curtis Sliwa's Aunt Marie Stacey's chicken soup, the recipe for which is on page 47 of the book). This year I added some celery root to my latkes, inspired by a recent article in the Times. But mostly I just stuck to the recipe. And, as it turned out, they were pretty darn gorgeous and delicious.

But they could have just as easily been a mess. Latkes are scary things—not enough egg, too much matzoh, not enough oil, left in the pan too long... The list of things that could go wrong is terrifyingly long. Which is why I only do them once a year. (That and the oil they cook in stinks up the house for days.)

When things do go wrong in the kitchen, I have to admit that I get depressed. I'm not as hard on myself as a chef is on his line cooks, thank goodness, but Peter does get exasperated with me when I'm moping after a flopped meal. "So what?" he says. He's right, of course. On a rational level.

But maybe cooking isn't a rational act. Maybe because it's an act of love, and love is never rational. You always want to get it right. Like my Christmas paella for our other grandchildren. Now that was a downright righteous act of love!

REmarkable REsponses REgarding REsolutions REgister

2009-12-31T15:01:00.000-05:00

Just saw a sign on a church: RE-connect, RE-focus, RE-new---PK (REsponding to my own post)

Just ran across these 10 ideas of how to RE-use plastic bottles --- PK (REsponding to my own post)

Thanks for this excellent piece. You've done a lot of the legwork for someone who wants to do the right thing regarding the environment (and society). Oh, and REgarding the RE's, I'll second the RElax. Since I've been laid off, my back pain has virtually disappeared. Stress really does go straight to your spine. Also one might think about REinvesting in local businesses, farms, banks, services. Arianna Huffington had a post about moving your money from a big financial institution (Citibank) to a community bank or credit union. Keeping the money local helps. Also, REad. Does that count? I got a kindle last year and have never read more.--- Eric

I found your post to be motivating (and inspriational) -- we’ve tried many of the things in your list in the past but tend to drift away from them. Now is the time to make them permanent habits.--- Andy

Yes, yes and yes! Thanks Peter!
On the subject of food; I just received my pea-patch lot, and want to find the best guide on growing vegetables. Do you have any favorites? ---Vicki
( Yes, Vicki: Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is the best by far. You can buy it from the Urbal Tea Store.)

I find myself thinking about your resolutions often. Indeed, I've started my own "compost stock" bag in the freezer, and am actively looking for ways to reuse plastic containers. Now if I could only figure out something to do with those NYT delivery bags...---Tom

In her comment below, Nancy G said...
How about RElax? Have a look at another blog and this posting in particular. Ruth Stout's book is worth looking for.

RE-hearse
RE-touch
Bravo! Peter---Ching

how bout REinvent?
of course, I also have to REedit. 40+ times.
and then there is REthink.
and REmarry.
(35, this coming year)
REfinance also.
REward.
REnew.
REview.
REinvigorate.
REnounce.
REstructure.
REsurrect.
REbel
REact or not.

and a happy New Year that is hopefully not REally REcycled except the good way.
Amen----Stephanie Palewski

I'm a bit stuck on Re-al which would be good if I had a buddy named Al. I'll keep thinking.---PEE

How about REinvigorate the environment. All it takes is REthinking our daily consumerism and REeducating ourselves and our communities about REspect for the environment. Collectively, we can undo some of the environment damage and turn this thing around. Love to all, keep up the urban farming.---Lana and Artis Yopp

A few notable omissions:
How about RE-volt!
                    RE-distribute (the ill-gotten wealth of America's banks, investment institutions, etc.)
                    RE-frain from participating
                    RE-load
                    RE-connointer
                    RE-bel
                    RE-cant
                    RE-create
                    RE-count
                    RE-group
                    RE-pent!
                    RE-neg

----Will Brumbach

REally agree with everything you've said. And I've been REinspired to do more and better!!!--- R. Bahr

Pete, as I was REading this message, David was sorting and carting all our recycling so we could go together to the Enfield transfer station, which unlike Thetford's 3 hours on Saturday morning set-up (with some hefty fees) is open four days and two NIGHTS a week. New Hampshire may not be all bad, I'm thinking. So on the way to recycle before supper I tell him about your REsolutions and he tells me -- God's honest truth, now --that while setting aside my father's blue plastic gin bottles, which cannot be recycled here, he was thinking about whether he could make them into some kind of wall or table, sort of cobalt stained glass effect, and was actually fitting them together to see how they'd go.... I guess REtired Kelman men think alike and a good thing it is for Planet Earth. ---M. Rich

Nice suggestions, Pete. Working on some of them. Those blue bags are my un-favorite.

REusing paper is really important too!
Weight REducing is so so painful tho.. food is so good, bad-for-us food is at least as good as any good-for-us food is, but we will do it!
and REmember: use your coffee grounds to clean your cast iron pans, any other pans that are grotty, and it deodorizes your sink as well. --- E. Cohen

Here are two I personally have started to do that I would like to add to your comprehensive list:

REfrain from eating meat products, especially beef. Cows are a huge contributor to carbon in our atmosphere.
REduce purchases of books/magazines when we can borrow the same titles from the library. We need the trees to provide us with our supply of oxygen. --- D. Radtke

RE-RE-RE-RE: The Decade to Come (Part 3)

2009-12-31T12:40:00.000-05:00

REturn

to this list again and again to add other ways in which I can REawaken my sense of REsponsibility for the world in which I live.

REmind

my friends, relatives, and social media contacts likewise, to REturn again and again to this and/or their own list of REsolutions to REstore and REmake our world; see ya on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Linked-in, and on this blog, as well as on whatever other new social media will emerge over this next REmarkable decade

Please add your own ideas to the above and/or to the RE list below, as well as adding any RE words you’d like to this list.

REaffirm

REalize

REawaken

REcall

REclaim

REcognize

REconsider

REcover

REdeem

REdiscover

REdress

REmake

REfinish

REflect

REframe

REgain

REgard

REheat

REmake

REmain

REmember

REmind

REname

REnew

REpeat

REplenish

REplace

REplant

REply

REport

REscue

REsearch

REsew

REspect

REstore

REstrain

REsuscitate

REtain

REtire

REtrain

REveal

REview

REvile

REvive

REvoke

REwash

RE-RE-RE-RE: The Decade to Come (Part 2)

2009-12-31T12:31:00.000-05:00

RE-cycle

everything that we can no longer or could never RE-use.
all materials the NYC Dept of Sanitation accepts for Recycling (paper, cardboard, metal, waxed cartons, and plastic bottles and jugs).
other plastics, unusable electronics, dead batteries, and other things the NYC Dept of Sanitation doesn’t REcycle by finding someplace else that will recycle some of these.
water we use to rinse off organically grown vegetables or "lightly treated" fruit; when I REmember to do this, I rinse over a pot, pour the water into various watering cans, which in winter I use to water house plants and indoor seedlings and the rest of the year, I either use to water the garden or pour into the compost if it needs more moisture. Although we don’t generally have water shortages in NYC, we frequently overburden our sewage system with “waste” water, causing polluted water to overflow into our rivers and estuaries.

RE-purpose

Plastic containers that are not accepted anywhere in NYC for recycling (e.g., most take-out containers) by using them to sort and store: small REcovered hardware supplies such as nails, screws, tacks, nuts, bolts, mollies, etc. as well as miscellaneous REcovered desk supplies such as rubber bands, paper clips, pencils, etc. as seed-starting containers. I also plan to REuse some of them for indoor seed starting.

REplace

older appliances with energy efficient ones; we’ve been doing this but have a few more to go in our tenant apartments.
older windows and exterior doors with new energy-saving windows and doors; we’ve been doing this, but have a few more to go in our tenant apartments and one in our own; there’s even a tax credit for this now!

RE-fill

attractive glass bottles with drinking water for the table.
slightly-used plastic bottles and/or metal refillable bottles whenever we leave the house so we buy little or no more plastic-bottled water.

Stay tuned for more REsolutions and some REmarkable Responses Received already!

RE-RE-RE-RE: The Decade to Come (Part 1)

2009-12-30T16:49:00.000-05:00

(After Aretha Franklin’s “RESPECT”)

Probably enough has already been said in the media about the decade of EXcess now coming to a close. Instead of EXcoriating that EXecrable and EXcruciating period, my REsolution for the new decade is to REdedicate myself to RE-claiming the political, cultural, and personal high ground in an effort to REconceive our world and REshape our lives for our children and their children.

Please join me in REjecting the decade of EX and REplacing it with the decade of RE by adding your own REsolutions to the growing list below.

I REsolve that in the next decade I’m going to RE-RE-RE-RE-RE-RE

REduce:

our consumption of plastic, especially bottles, bags, pre-packaged goods.
my weight, so after the holidays, it’s back to the South Beach Diet for awhile.

REfrain from:

buying goods that have likely been shipped long distances by air or truck such as fruits and vegetables from Latin America, Florida, and California; shipments by ship are OK (e.g., olive oil from Italy)
accepting plastic bags from merchants; we need to be more vigilant about always having RE-usable sacks .
eating empty calories, especially those containing corn and refined sugar.

RE-use

every plastic container that comes into our house, such as cottage cheese and yogurt containers, which we already use to freeze Therese’s excellent compost stocks and which we use at the homeless shelter (where we are overnight volunteers) to pack up left-overs for the guests lunch the next day.
those damned blue New York Times home-delivery bags; currently, we use them to collect and transport unusable vegetable waste to our backyard compost bins before throwing them away in garbage, but in future we will try to RE-direct them to our friends/relatives who have dogs to use as pooper-scoopers. Although both these uses mean the bags ultimately go to a landfill, supposedly they are bio-degradable (a few months outdoors, 3 years in a landfill.
our plastic freezer storage bags, which we currently RE-use in the freezer until they are no longer airtight at which point we RE-use them whenever we buy produce, including at: our local Greenmarket and the Park Slope Co-op.
all other transparent plastic bags, which we already use to bag recyclable paper and/or metal, plastic, and glass per the NYC Sept of Sanitation rules.
all opaque plastic bags that we’ve gotten from merchants who don’t provide paper bags when we’ve forgotten our reusable sacks; currently we use them as garbage bags (so we don’t have to buy plastic garbage bags) and to put out RE-turnable bottles for trash scavengers to take to REdemption centers. (Yes, I know trash scavenging is illegal, but here in NYC it’s a fact of life, and putting out the REturnables seems to dissuade these scavengers from going through one’s trash.

Stay tuned for more REsolutions.

Moving On

2009-12-17T11:45:00.000-05:00

Unlike Peter, who ponders his panties as a measure of time, I find that each year around this time is when I have my greatest reflections (and they has nothing to do with what's hanging on the line). This is the time when I come to terms with the fact that another year has passed. It isn't the start of the holiday season, but rather the end of my gardening season. This is when I'm forced to move through the rows, raised bed by raised bed, untying wires, collecting tomato cages, composting some plants, while disposing of others in the trash, picking up pots and stakes, lots of stakes, and discovering lost trowels. I dread this time of year. I hate cleaning up and shutting down. (I haven't mastered the art of winter gardening. Yet.) It makes me feel sad.

Another.
Year.
Passed.

I am nearly a year older.

I rip up the tomatoes. I think about all the salsas I didn't make but all the sauce I did. Did I eat enough tomato sandwiches? Farewell peppers. You were too good to us. Broccoli, lettuce, zucchini, peas, and beans, you gave it a good fall attempt but the caterpillars and visiting human guests did you in. See you in spring strawberries and asparagus.

But wait. Hellooo, garlic. I see you. Your bright green shoots have turned my mood around. Sure, it's the end of one season, but the new season is already starting. Time to start planning.

Houston, We Have Lift Off

2009-11-10T18:20:00.001-05:00

A couple years ago my parents gave me a brown paper bag filled with some funky-looking tubers. "Plant these someplace where it doesn't matter if they take over," my mother said. "You'll never get rid of them." She left me holding the bag and walked into the house. I looked inside. Cool—sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem artichokes or Helianthus tuberosus. Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers, so a perennial bunch of sunchokes seemed like happiness in a bag. And if I could eat part of them, bonus! I planted. Years passed. I never harvested a single tuber.

Until this past Sunday.

After spending a little too long in the garden with Graham (planting around 425 million garlic cloves), I walked past the drooping sunchoke stalks and decided it was finally time to harvest (my timing had everything to do with the fact that I had a garden fork in hand). I unearthed over 10 pounds of golf-ball-sized tubers. Of course, now that I had them, I had no idea what to do with them. The last time I had eaten a sunchoke, I was a kid. My grandmother had sliced them into a salad and I remember liking them. I turned to my shelf of gardening books for help, because I also needed to know how to store such a bountiful harvest. Whoops. It turns out it wasn't necessary (or smart) to harvest them all at once. They don't stay firm for very long once they're dug up. Every single book mentioned this. After I stopped cursing, I turned to the Google for help. I started typing, and, by George, the Google held many answers.

I discovered that the bumpy little balls are chock-full of goodness. There was loads of information out there about how they are the perfect substitute for potatoes. Words such as inulin, prebotic, and vitamins kept popping up. After losing myself in several blogs that practically held these guys up as a food of the gods, I decided that sunchokes were going to save my family from the flu, improve our cholesterol counts, lower our blood glucose levels, make me thin, and straighten my hair after just a few carefully prepared meals. I would slice them into salads, roast, mash, and even whisk them into soups. My eyes were spinning and my fingers twitching. I was ready to tackle the tubers. Although I had to go about it quickly—before they spoiled—I also had to be careful: I didn't want to scare off the family. I would start slowly, get everyone hooked, and reel their taste buds in with delicious, nutritious dish after dish.

Sunday night. I scrubbed and thinly sliced two small sunchokes and placed them on a plate for everyone to try. Mmm, was the response from the family. Sort of like jicama but nuttier and crunchier. "Can I take some for lunch?" asked Katharine. This was good.

Feeling charged (no doubt a side-effect of the mighty chokes), I did the Google again looking for recipes. Move slowly, I reminded myself: The goal was to work up to a creamy, health-packed soup. As I searched around, I noticed the occasional mention of how a very small percentage of the population may experience a slight gastric reaction to sunchokes—those inulins, again. One guy even referred to them as fartichokes. I cast these concerns aside; my family was made of tough stuff.

Monday night. I decided we would have burgers (thank you, Ferdinand, our friends' bull), a salad made from the lettuce that had re-seeded itself all over our garden, and roasted sunchokes. Graham, the prince of roast potatoes, instructed me on the proper roasting technique. After scrubbing away all the soil, I tossed the chokes in a little olive oil and popped them in the oven. About 40 minutes later they were done.

They did look like roast potatoes, but they smelled different. Katharine gave them a side-long glance. Uh-oh. Graham poked them with a fork. It wasn't looking good. They were mushy. I took the first bite.

"Mmm, interesting. I think they need more salt."

No, that wasn't it. Maybe a little of Andrew's homemade ketchup. "Oh, that's the ticket," I shared with the family. "Mash them up like potatoes and add ketchup."

The kids looked at me strangely: "Mom is adding ketchup to roasted vegetables," I could hear them think, "they must be awful." OK, so they really weren't very good, but I ate them anyway because they are so good for you. Andrew had two servings. Graham quietly pushed the chokes to the side of his plate, while Katharine said she preferred them raw.

The kids went to bed. I noticed that Katharine was unbuttoning her jeans and rubbing her belly as she climbed the stairs. Not long after their departure, my stomach started rumbling. I, too, found myself unbuttoning my jeans. I changed into my elastic-waisted PJs in an effort to accommodate my now bloated belly. This is what Sigourney Weaver must have felt like in Alien, I thought. I was certain some gnarly headed sunchoke-like creature was going to pop its head out of my belly button. I felt awful. Andrew laughed. I checked the kids. Fast asleep. Maybe it was just me. Figures.

Tuesday morning. Let's just say today is payback for Andrew laughing at me last night. Sure, my stomach is still rumbling a little, but for Andrew, well... Houston, we have lift off!

Thank goodness I didn't feed any to the dog.

The Pleasures of Urban Living

2009-11-08T21:41:00.000-05:00

I'm fairly certain that if my husband had not gotten together with me when he did (his early fifties, after splitting up from a long marriage), he would have moved back to the Vermont or perhaps Connecticut country. Even though he was born in Manhattan, Peter is not, at heart, a city guy.

I, on the other hand, am a city girl. (My friend Maggie once gave me one of the greatest compliment of my life: she said that even though I'm not originally from New York, I was "a New Yorker waiting to happen.") I love the art and culture and diversity and the food! And I love being the only white person on my subway car. (I should say here, because I can hear his protest, that Peter loves these things too; but there's a city temperament that I possess and a country temperament that he has, and they are just not the same thing.)

We moved from the upper west side of Manhattan to Brooklyn in 2002. I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I loved where we lived, but the landlord would just do these crazy rent hikes on us, and I agreed that we should buy a house in Brooklyn, which seemed like a compromise between Manhattan and the country. People would ask me: Do you miss Manhattan? I did -- for about 40 seconds. And then I became a Brooklyn convert.

We have the diversity of an international city and the luxury of having a garden. What could be more perfect?

But, here's where Brooklyn (at least, my little corner of it, called Windsor Terrace) has failed me: no good neighborhood restaurants or bars. Oh, wait. Let me reclaim that statement a bit. We have a fabulous Dominican/Mexican restaurant on our corner, Elora's, that I hope will never ever ever go away. But that -- until lately -- has been it.

The other week, Peter and I were coming back from a long walk in Manhattan and I said, "My life would complete if we had a really good neighborhood bar." We came up from the subway and there on Prospect Park West Avenue (what we refer to as "Main Street") was a brand new bar: The Double Windsor. They sell fabulous and diverse beers on tap. And it's cozy and it's not some place where females or people of color would feel out of place (which describes the other bars in my neighborhood).

Then, just last week, Peter comes home with a menu for the newest restaurant in our neighborhood: a French bistro!!!!!! Have I died and gone to heaven?

Today we had a just about perfect urban Sunday: the Times and coffee and Don't Cry Over Sour Milk Apple Cake for breakfast (even thought they left out the magazine section when they delivered the paper, grrr!); a little bit of work for me on my magazine and Peter in the garden; then a long six-mile walk from our house through several Brooklyn neighborhoods (where we stumbled upon a craft fair and I bought some beautiful earrings), across the Brooklyn Bridge, to Washington Square Park (where we attended a Meditate New York event at Judson Church); then on the subway back to our neighborhood, where we had a beer at the Double Windsor and ate at the new French bistro (Le P'tit Paris). Mussels and a hangar steak and a lovely conversation with our sweet waiter who is newly imported from Sacramento CA (one our favorite cities in California; he was so delighted we knew it).

I love this city. I love my life.

The Zen of Hanging Out the Laundry

2009-11-08T11:28:00.000-05:00

It's been 50 years since I first read T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," as a callow youth in my high school A.P. English class, but much of it resonates with me today, as I lead my retirement life, far more than it did then. One line, in particular, came back to me this morning, as I noticed my thoughts while hanging out the week's laundry in our backyard:

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

Hanging out the laundry has become almost a meditation for me. As I carry out this nearly mindless activity, my mind wanders and I follow that wandering with interest, noticing where it takes me. Today, I noticed that, as I often do after I've hung all the laundry, I was counting how many of my T-shirts and underpants I'd hung out, in this case, it was seven of each. Usually when I do this, I remark (to myself) on how many days it's been since we last did our laundry, but this morning, I found myself instead thinking that a week of my life had passed since I'd last hung out the laundry. From there my mind went to the line from J. Alfred Prufrock and I thought: am I measuring out my life with laundry loads?

Perhaps. For years, I've experienced a similar feeling of time passing every Fall and Spring when switching out storm windows and screens: "Another spring is here and a winter gone; didn't I just do this? Has it really been six months?"

Ironically, I've never really experienced the passage of time on those official occasions when we note them: birthdays and anniversaries. No, it's these periodic details of everyday life that seem to remind me that my life is passing.

On a more practical note: weather permitting, we actually hang out our laundry throughout the year, even on dry, sunny winter days. As the laundry hamper begins to fill, we check out the next few days' forecast and if it looks like we're going to have a mostly sunny day with a low likelihood of precipitation, we plan to do a laundry on that day. TIP: We actually hang our socks on an indoor drying rack, which is less time-consuming than pinning each sock on a clothes line. This has the added benefit of making it easier to match pairs and spot that a sock has "gone missing" and search for it right then and there.

We take great satisfaction in using solar and wind energy to dry our laundry instead of using our gas-dryer. (See The Clothesline Revolution.) And, I appreciate the opportunity to meditate, noticing where my mind takes me at these peaceful and otherwise mindless times.

How We Compost

2009-11-07T15:13:00.000-05:00

I used to be just like Therese and Peter, never wasting a bit of food. That is until we started keeping laying hens. Now, we toss them the potato and carrot peels, sandwich crusts not eaten by our children's friends, eggshells, and even coffee grounds. In the old days, I would have felt guilty for not turning that last slice of bread into breadcrumbs. Now I just think about how that slice will turn into an egg.

Before: Scraps from cooking and meals.
Giving our chickens coffee grounds with the hopes of creating the first Egg McZoomZoom.

After: It took our girls 10 minutes to peck the ground clean.
We use this "composted" soil in our garden.

Nothing is wasted.

Give Her a Foot

2009-11-07T13:55:00.000-05:00

It has been documented that (while traveling) our children are adventurous eaters. Give Katharine a plastic baggie filled with fried pig bits and hominy and she'll be silent for 20 minutes. Fluorescent-colored foam in a cone? Graham is there. Their eating of the unusual extends to animals and insects that the rest of us might cuddle with or step on. Their been there, ate that list includes such creatures as, guinea pigs, ants, and termites, as well as whole lambs, cow innards, and various pig parts. When we returned home from our travels in South and Central America I had to set some boundaries, so to speak, that included no eating of residential ants and termites (who knows what poisons they're filled with) and the refusal to start raising guinea pigs for home consumption. Needless to say, I was a little taken aback during dinner the other night when Katharine put down her fork and said, "That's it. I'm not eating anymore. There is a caterpillar in my broccoli." Drat. I thought I had found them all.

In between bites, Graham says, "You know, I ate a worm once. It really isn't such a big deal"; and then resumed eating his dinner. Huh? OK, now I remember us eating all that other stuff, but for the life of me I couldn't remember ever eating a worm.

"Really? A worm? Where?" I asked.

"Oh, when Jack and I went fishing at the pond. We had one left over, it was little and pretty clean so I ate it. I think Katharine should eat that caterpillar. It's from our garden and it's cooked."

"No, I don't feel like it."

"I think you're chicken."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not! I just don't feel like eating a caterpillar now. Leave me alone!" And so went our quiet dinner.

Since returning home we've noticed that Katharine has turned into a picky eater, refusing to even try some foods based on nothing we can figure out. And I'm not talking about anything weird either. Roasted or mashed butternut squash receives a big 'no way, no thank you' yet she loves sweet potatoes. Green peppers cooked with tomatoes (both her absolute favorites as individual items) gets a fork poke and a squint-eyed once over. We're not sure if this is a phase she's going through or not. Although we don't pressure her, we can't help but ask how she could lick up lemon ants and devour guinea pig ears yet refuse to eat cooked zucchini.

Was it travel and our pronouncement before we left that everyone had to try the different foods we would encounter—no wrinkled noses or "eeww" noises—that caused her to taste and eat everything? Was it her shear competitive nature and desire to beat her brother in everything? Maybe this return to picky eating is her way of taking back control? Maybe I shouldn't be so hung up about this. Maybe this is a control thing and I'm the one with the problem? If that's the case, tough cookies. I will continue being in control and cooking the foods she refuses (we harvested over 100 pounds of squash this year, what choice do I have?) and will continue giving her a few bites of each (minus the caterpillars, of course). I'm sure one day her taste buds will turn.

Which brings me back to dinner last night. Katharine came into the kitchen to help cook. I let her poke around the broccoli looking for caterpillars while I prepared the chicken that Andrew and Graham had butchered earlier. Katharine stopped searching the broccoli for a moment and looked around the kitchen, "Hey, where are all the feet? There should be 12, right? Is Dad grilling them?" she peeked outside to check. "Oh good, I'm so in the mood for some grilled chicken feet." Okay, I surrender.

For more on our family and food, visit our South American travel blog.

Don’t Cry Over Sour Milk Apple Cake

2009-11-07T13:24:00.000-05:00

I’m totally phobic about soured milk. I must have repressed memories of my mother forcing it on me as a child (“It tastes fine!”) because I practically convulse if I even think the milk suggests that it might in the next few days start to turn perhaps just a bit so that it may need to be replaced three days hence. Given the psychic/political/emotional/spiritual trauma I go through trying not throw out anything that remotely qualifies as food (see Saved From the Scrapheap), I have looked for ways to use the sour milk, rather than toss.

This recipe combines one I found googling “sour milk recipes” (here’s a link to the original recipe) with one from An Apple Harvest, a book my friend Barb gave me a few years ago, which has some nice recipes in it. One other reason I like this recipe is that it calls for vegetable oil vs. butter—which means you can make it on the spur of the moment. I can't tell you how many baking impulses have been thwarted by the fact that my butter is frozen solid (which maybe is not such a bad thing). This cake—sans nuts—is a baby-pleaser (if Paloma, my granddaughter, is any gauge).

Don't Cry Over Sour Milk Apple Cake
1 cup + 1/2 tsp sugar
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp all spice or pinch of nutmeg
1/2 cup canola or other vegetable oil
1 cup sour milk*
1/2-1 cup chopped walnuts or other kind of nut (depending on how nutty you like your cake; can be omitted altogether)
1 apple**, any variety, peeled, quartered, cored, and then thinly sliced
*Note 1: If you don’t have a full cup of sour milk, put whatever amount you have in a measuring cup and then drop in spoonfuls of plain yogurt until the liquid reaches the one-cup measure
**Note 2: You can use pears, peaches, plums, blueberries. Honestly, just about any fruit would work.
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9x9 inch baking pan (or just spray it with a vegetable oil spray, which is what I do).
2. Sift together: 1 c. sugar; all the flour, soda and salt; 3/4 tsp of cinnamon; and the all spice or nutmeg into a large bowl.
3. Stir the sour milk into the flour mixture by hand, then mix in the vegetable oil until all the liquids are thoroughly integrated. The batter will be thicker if yogurt is part of the sour milk mixture.
4. Fold in the nuts, if you are using.
5. Scrape into the baking pan and smooth the top. Then layer on top the fruit slices in any pattern you wish. Mix the remaining 1/4 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 tsp. sugar together and then sift over the top (I use a tea strainer for this).
6. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour. It will be done when the middle of the cake has some spring to it when you tap it, or if a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Serve warm, if you can, with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Saved From the Scrapheap (a Mild Obession)

2009-11-07T13:06:00.000-05:00

I’ve said this before, but I grew up in a household where it was a sin—and I use that word with all the force of it behind it—to throw away food. That didn’t stop me (I was especially discreet at tossing the shoe-leather liver we were forced to eat once a month on the premise that it was good for our blood), but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel guilty about it. That guilt followed me into adulthood, where for the first twenty years of it, my way of dealing with food I no longer wanted to eat was to leave it to rot and mold away in my refrigerator so that I would have no choice but to throw it away—no guilt! (Ha ha! says the psychotherapist.)

In my 40s I married Peter, whose childhood lessons about not wasting food (we were both raised by people who had lived through the depression and a world war) dovetailed neatly with his propensity to be obsessive-compulsive about almost everything he does, and I found myself living with not only the ghosts of my Catholic childhood but also the Felix Unger of leftovers. Peter goes after saving food with the urgency of a medic on a battlefield. (Earlier this week he got me, protesting at first, to rinse all the mold off some olives that had been left festering in the back of the fridge. I have to admit that they were fine once washed, but I would never have done this on my own.)

Then I started seriously cooking and paying serious attention to food as a political issue, and the non-productive guilt I felt about wasting food turned into a creative drive and a personal imperative to use food wisely and respectfully—not just in the buying and cooking of it, but in the aftermath of the buying and cooking of it. The fact that we have two compost bins means that we are virtually assured of putting almost all our food matter to use versus waste. But the barrels get amazingly full very fast. And truly, if I put into the compost a potentially edible morsel of food, it bothers me. Couldn’t I have done something with that?

It would be inaccurate to say that guilt isn’t lurking as an underlying emotion here. And I will never be as zealous as Peter, who will try to save the one teaspoon of flesh from a tomato that has nearly completely rotted on the vine. (Sam was down here last week and saw me, in a fit of spouse-infection, actually trying to do this myself; he arched an eyebrow and said, “Therese — compost it.” Whew! Thanks, Sam for rescuing me from that vortex.)

But I’ve come to understand my save-the-food mentality as a kind of moral and political stance that I have chosen for myself: never take food for granted. In a practical sense, what I have done is turn the whole issue of food-use into a kind of cooking game: What do you do with [fill in food scrap name here]? (You can sing this to the tune of What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?)

So, from time to time, I’m going to use this blog to share some of the ways that I reuse food that might otherwise be headed for the compost. (I’m hoping Louise and Andrew will contribute their uses as well; and of course, readers of this blog are most encouraged to share their saved-from-the-scrapheap recipes.) I’ve already posted one recipe for what I call compost stock. Here’s one for the moldering food stuff that I hate the most: sour milk.

November Gardening in Brooklyn

2009-11-02T11:01:00.000-05:00

Visits this past week from my son, Sam, who runs Poor Farm Farm in Vermont and our friends Otto and Olive, who live in Minneapolis, reminded me how relatively temperate our climate is here in New York City. Our visitors all gaped with wonder at ripening Roma, Beefsteak and cherry tomatoes still on the vines in our garden, not to mention the last of some of our other summer/early fall crops: peppers, eggplants and lima beans (which are still filling out).

Meanwhile, I’ve been monitoring the slow progress of my experimental plantings for late fall: several varieties of shell beans (for soups), Swiss chard, kale, carrots, turnips, cilantro, lettuce, mesclun mix, and a second planting of shell and snap peas. I’ve never before planted this late (mid-September and early October), so I don’t know if the combination of shorter and shortening daylight hours and overcast days will permit enough sunlight for these plants to mature before we get killing frosts (probably in early December).

Inspired by Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest, I’ve also begun my experimental plantings for early winter: some winter-hardy kales, collards, arugula, lettuce, and other greens. Some of these are already planted in regular garden rows, which I plan to cover with Reemay “garden blanket” when hard frosts begin. I’ve also planted some of these in the boxes in the wind-protected alley, where I’ll experiment covering with Reemay and/or Plexiglass.

Re-reading Coleman, I am struck again by the realization that so much of vegetable gardening is experimenting to see what works in one’s particular garden with its unique soil conditions and microclimate. I suspect that results also depend a great deal on annual variations in weather, plant diseases and pests, and even seed germination.

Stay tuned for the results of my experiments.

Getting Here From There

2009-11-02T10:03:00.000-05:00

So our friends (the ones with the now dead chickens) were traveling in California for 10 days in October. The first four days they spent in and around the Mohave Desert driving motorbikes and camping. I received a crackBerry message from one of them that sounded like she was close to having a come to Geezus moment but the lack of private showers (she was the only woman) kept her on this side of sanity. From the desert, they flew north to San Francisco, where they rented motorbikes and tootled around northern Cal. I was jealous. Not of the motorbike part, but of the traveling in and around San Francisco part. Their trip got me thinking about how we arrived here—thousands of miles from the city I love the most—on this little farm, on a tiny spit of land between two waters.

It was a joint choice to leave SF, but mostly mine to head east. We were renting a house in the fog belt and were totally ready to buy, only there was one tiny problem: We didn't have enough cash to get us a place in the neighborhoods we liked. We're talking Riviera tastes on a Six Flags budget.

I had given birth to Katharine months earlier and was not in the best frame of mind. While Andrew trotted off to work on the other side of town basking in sunlight, the kids and I spent the summer in dreary fog, bundled up in turtlenecks and fleece. So one September morning, when I woke to see the sun shining brightly, I bounded out of bed and told Andrew I was going for a quick walk to the bakery and would bring back a fresh baguette. It was a glorious morning. Brilliantly clear, crisp and unusually quiet. I returned home by 6:30 am to the sweet sounds of Andrew and Graham chatting in the kitchen and the phone ringing. I was so high from my walk that the early morning call didn't phase me. I picked up and found my sister on the line. "Turn on the TV," she said, "a plane flew into the World Trade Center. The buildings collapsed." What? The sun was shining. It was a perfect morning. This didn't make sense.

As the week progressed and we learned that our cousin, who we were heading east to see in three days, never made it out of the building, I suddenly started feeling very far from home. I wanted to be back east where our families were. It was a decision totally based on emotion. A month later Andrew made another decision: He was quitting his job and would join me working from home. Scary thought, but the extreme politics and greed in his dot com office had finally gotten to him. Plus, he really wanted to spend more time with the kids. After some careful thought, we decided we could make the necessary sacrifices, learn to live with less, and be our own bosses.

But where would we live? I had proven that one could work from home successfully as long as there was an Internet connection. For several years I had worked with a company based in New York while I was surrounded by San Francisco fog. Moving back to New York City didn't interest either of us—we wanted our kids to grow up with some space. Neither did moving to Cape Cod where Andrew's parents were (winters and tourist season would be hell) or upstate New York where my parents were (winter, again). So Andrew starting googling and found a house that seemed to fit all our basic desires on Virginia's Eastern Shore. It didn't seem to matter that neither of us (in spite of living a year in DC) had ever heard of the Eastern Shore. The house called to us. So we checked it out. We spoke to the previous owners. We poked around the area. Next thing we know we were moving to the country. So here we are, seven years later. Our kids have space. They are learning about where their food comes from...like at this very moment. And now I suppose I'll come clean. I'm writing this as a way to remove myself from what's going on outside. That would be the Frankenbirds meeting the machete. I'm clearly not as brave or right-minded as Therese (see Killing Chickens At Home: Would You Do It? (PHOTOS). I couldn't end a bird's life, but I will cook her later. I'm just happy that the kids are out there helping. That should count for something. Right?

At Last: Pumpkin Seeds Worth Eating

2009-11-01T08:19:00.000-05:00

I had given up on saving and toasting pumpkin seeds. The hard, tasteless things never did it for me. Until now. I feel like I've stumbled on a secret long after everyone else. All those seeds from our pumpkins past tossed out while people around the country were munching away. No more. The secret? Boil first before toasting. We tested our toasted seeds by tossing them with different spices: Curry powder, cumin, or powdered habanero.

Recipe discovered on simplyrecipes.com.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients

One medium sized pumpkin
Salt
Olive oil

Method

1 Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut open the pumpkin and use a strong metal spoon to scoop out the insides. Separate the seeds from the stringy core. Rinse the seeds.
2 In a small saucepan, add the seeds to water, about 2 cups of water to every half cup of seeds. Add a half tablespoon of salt for every cup of water (more if you like your seeds saltier). Bring to a boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.
3 Spread about a tablespoon of olive oil over the bottom of a roasting pan. Spread the seeds out over the roasting pan, all in one layer. Bake on the top rack until the seeds begin to brown, 10-20 minutes. When browned to your satisfaction, remove from the oven and let the pan cool on a rack. Let the seeds cool all the way down before eating. Either crack to remove the inner seed (a lot of work and in my opinion, unnecessary) or eat whole.

My Favorite Cookbooks

2009-10-25T21:39:00.000-04:00

I basically have put a moratorium on new cookbooks. I just don't need anymore. I'll make an occasional exception (my stepdaughters have each given me EXCELLENT cookbooks I didn't ask for: Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables) but mostly I just stick to what I have and they all have plenty to teach me.

My two most instructive books are Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (that includes meat) and Julia Child's The Way to Cook (which, rather than Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is my Julia bible). If I'm encountering a new cut of meat or some other new element in my cooking, I always consult both of them ("What would Mark and Julia do?") to understand the principles of the challenge in front of me.

But the cookbook that I turn to over and over again that has never failed me -- especially for dinner parties -- is Patricia Wells' Bistro Cookbook. (By the way, all of these books are available in the Urbal Tea Store.)

I was reminded of how much I love this book last night when I made her tarte tartin aux poires (a tart tartin with pears instead of apples) for my stepdaughter and her 16-month old who came to dinner last night. It was an amazing tart, I must say, and even though Paloma was very busy bouncing balls and running back and forth, she still had the wherewithal to return to her mother for "more" bites of tart.

Wells gives you really great guidance (for instance, on how to get the pears nice and brown and carmelized without burning them) and she makes things easier rather than harder (for instance, she has you pour the pears into a casserole for baking in the oven with the crust, rather than in the cast iron pan, which is so heavy to flip over when the time comes).

I have never done a recipe in that book that didn't work, which I think is highest praise for a cookbook: her leg of lamb roasted over a gratin of vegetables (I've modified the recipe so that it's root vegetables) is the surest dinner party winner I've made; her golden cream and apple tart is the best apple pie I've ever had; the pissaldiere comes out perfect each time; and her recipe for Madame Cartet's potato gratin is as good as you'll get if you go to the bistro of the same name in Paris (which I did and, while being in Paris definitely improved the dish, Wells' recipe is astonishingly true to the original).

My dearest friend from high school, Barb, who is the best entertainer I know, swears by Wells' creme brulée, which I haven't made (yet). Barb, in many ways, was my first inspiration for wanting to cook. I recall being at a party she was giving, and she looked at people devouring the offerings on her buffet table and said to me, "God, I get such pleasure out of watching people eat my food." I caught the cooking bug, I think, at that moment. And when I make something from Bistro Cooking, I know exactly what Barb meant.

P.S. I think the other best cookbook I own came from Barb, years ago: Marian Morash's The Victory Garden Cookbook. It is my bible on vegetables: how to freeze or otherwise preserve them; understanding yields; basic treatments for them (for instance, how many minutes to steam a green bean vs. a lima bean). If you have an urban or suburban vegetable garden, this book is indispensable.

Are You a Shouter?

2009-10-22T15:13:00.000-04:00

I forwarded this article (For Some Parents, Shouting Is the New Spanking) to Andrew, who deleted the email after reading the headline. "Hey! What gives?" I, ah, said sort of loudly.

His reply, "I'm a shouter. I've come to terms with it. I'm probably not going to stop." And then he looked down his nose at me, over his half glasses, and said in an accusing tone, "The sooner you come to terms with it and accept that you're a shouter too, the more relaxed you'll be." Grrr. I hate it when he's right.

I am a shouter. But now I wonder after reading this article, if shouting is so bad, what should I be doing? I have tried a low growl, it works, but sometimes, this bear can't take it and must let loose with a full yowl. Do the kids respond to our shouting? Umm, they used to. Our 10-year-old seems to be going through a trying phase or else he's ready for juvie. Although, unlike some of their friends, both our kids tend to be pretty good around outsiders. In fact, we love having weekend guests just so we can enjoy our children.

Meat the Frankenbirds

2009-10-21T07:57:00.000-04:00

This summer I finally read The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Ethics of What We Eat. I was temporarily put off my feed. Yes, I know I read these books long after everyone else. I kept shelving them because, I guess, I knew how they would end — the girl is put off the corn chips and is totally denied the cow. There could be no happy ending unless a state of pure vegetarianism was achieved. Talk about off-putting.

Seriously, I get it. The way our food is produced is atrocious and I understand that most Americans don't have a clue. It's sad. When our children's friends come over and they look at a fresh egg as if it were poison I begin to wonder about where they are coming from. Anyway, both Andrew and I read these books and then spent a weekend on a farm that is part of an international agritourism business (we were invited—read free—guests of the company owner). This particular farm was located in upstate NY. It's a cool place and we were totally into what the couple were doing—farming and raising kids sustainably. It was a lovely organic picture that I am most certain did not include Tyson chicken fingers in the freezer or Ho-Hos in the cupboard. Don't get me wrong, our kitchen contains neither as well. Hey, do Snickers count?

Anyway, aside from their grass-fed, free-range cattle, sheep, and pigs, they also had an assortment of fowl. After reading the two books mentioned earlier, raising our own meat birds was high on our list. So we (Andrew) asked about the butchering of the chickens and was then taken step-by-step through the process. Fascinating. Yeah. I'm a total hypocrite when it gets right down to it. I will raise the animals, cook them, and talk up a storm about the importance of eating locally and if possible, organically, but really have no desire to ever butcher an animal. This is up to Andrew, who proclaimed seven years ago that if he couldn't kill it, he didn't deserve to eat it. This is why I love the man.

When we got back to our own small farm I started to investigate meat birds and called my favorite chicken place: Murray McMurray Hatchery. Turns out I was looking for the Jumbo Cornish X Rocks. So I placed an order for 10 (combining it with some Rhode Island Reds to help boost the kids' egg business). Before hanging up, I asked the operator if there was anything special I needed to know about the Jumbos. Her instructions were straightforward: separate them from the other chicks after two weeks because they are mean. Start them on a finishing feed, and then, very nonchalantly, she slips in that I should place their water at one end of the pen and their food at the other, so, you know, they would be forced to get up and move. She wrapped it up with: They'll be ready to butcher in about eight or nine weeks. WTF?

Over the last six years we've raised a number of egg layers, none of whom would have been finger lickin' good at eight weeks. Even after a year our egg layers were not something you'd plan a meal around. It suddenly dawned on me: I had ordered Frankenbirds! My summer reading horror list mentioned these birds, and now here I was, buying them. What had I done? I wanted to call Murray back and cancel my order, but a little voice in me clucked, "Oh c'mon, don't be chicken. It's not like you're going to pump them up with hormones and antibiotics. Let 'em ride..."

The day the chicks arrived we compared them with the reds. Aside from their color, they looked just like any other day-old bird. The first sign we had that they were different was about four days into the project when they started feathering—it was as if they hit puberty at age 6. By a week, the Frankenbirds were remarkably bigger. By two weeks they were easily double the size of the reds. Six weeks later, they are plump and round making the reds look undernourished. We tried separating them with straw bales but they hopped over powered by their big legs. When it's cold, the reds nestle under the Frankenbirds' wings. It's kind of creepy but they all seem quite happy. It's nearly time for the reds to move outside and be with their sisters. When we do this I'll start the Frankenbirds on the finishing feed (a high-protein, all vegetarian pellet). Yes, I know I haven't followed Murray's instructions but they're looking good. Stay tuned, butchering day is in two weeks (Andrew bought a knife from the local bait shop): Will the Frankenbirds be tender to the bone or just another rubber chicken?

Urban Composting

2009-10-19T11:28:00.000-04:00

We have a compost (actually two) in our Brooklyn backyard, which has been a wonderful thing not only for our vegetable garden, but also for my conscience, having been raised by a depression/World War II-era Catholic mother, who taught me that to waste anything was a sin. My environmental conscience is also gratified that I’m now contributing way less to the landfill on Staten Island.

In the winter, because of the cold temperatures, the compost doesn’t break down much and, therefore, tends to get full. A couple of winters ago I stumbled upon a wonderful way to cut down on how much I put in the compost and make fabulous stock for soups and stews. In fact, I now do this all year round, not just in the winter. It’s also a great stock-making method for city-dwellers without backyards: yields super-easy homemade stock and allows you to practice a kind of urban composting.

The basic idea is that when I am doing food prep, I save out all “good” veggies scraps (more on “good” scraps in a moment) in a gallon-size freezer bag, which I keep in the freezer until completely full. Then I throw the bag contents along with a handful of peppercorns and a couple of bay leaves in a stock pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. I bring the temperature down, add some salt, and simmer the hell out of it (partially covered or completely uncovered if it’s a huge pot) for a couple of hours. Strain and you should have about eight cups of very rich veggie broth.

“Good” veggie scraps include: peelings from carrots, potatoes (not sweet potatoes), turnips; onion tips and unused inner layers (but not too much of the papery skins), or onions that have gone soft and aren’t great to use but are not spoiled; old garlic that’s no longer fresh but not rotten; tops and bottoms of celery; tops of leeks (very good use for them); tops of fennel; old ginger; scallions that have gone a little slimy but are not decomposed; mushroom stems; asparagus stems; chard stems; end of herbs (thyme or sage stems, rosemary stalks, wilted basil, etc.) Anything else you can think except...

I don’t use anything from the cabbage family—broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, etc.—because they stink up the stock. Or things like lettuce and spinach, which just fall apart after that long a simmer. I do use the occasional tomato (e.g., wrinkled cherry tomatoes) but I’ve never used them in any great quantity, mostly because they get eaten long before they go south.

For you carnivores, you can also save bones in the freezer and then throw them in the stock as well—a chicken carcass or old ham bone really adds depth to the stock.

Needless to say this is NOT a delicate, well-balanced stock. I don’t even THINK about balancing it —that would defeat the whole point. (I can just see some chefs cringing if they were to read this, but I’m not a chef, I’m a home cook.) So I wouldn’t use it as a base for all soups, but for something like a hearty bean soup, it’s great. I even use it for a butternut squash bisque I make—the squash is such a dominant ingredient that the stock is really background.

Here’s the one inconvenience to compost stock: you really have to wash the vegetables whose peels you plan to use to remove residual pesticides if they’re non-organic, or to remove dirt if they’re organic. Not a huge bother, but a step that you may not ordinarily take.

That said, compost stock is incredibly easy and gratifying to make—the house/apartment smells fabulous during the hours it simmers down and there’s nothing like feeling you’ve sent one less load to the Staten Island land fill.

And here's the best part about compost stock—you don't have to buy expensive store-bought stocks anymore. I have enough stock in my freezer at this point to last me the better part of a year.

A freezer full of compost stock (in recycled cottage cheese and chinese take-out containers).

Peter emptying one of our real composts.

My Body Warmer

2009-10-19T10:28:00.000-04:00

Baby, It's Cold Outside

2009-10-19T09:42:00.000-04:00

It's mid-October and the red stuff in the thermometer seems to have stalled at 42. That's not right. We live in what I'd call southern Virginia. Temperatures are usually in the 60s or 70s this time of year. This unusual cold snap, combined with four days of driving rain, has caught us totally off guard. October is usually spent cleaning up the garden, preparing the house and outbuildings for winter, and, with any luck, pulling in a second harvest of honey from our two hives. (I will get into our bees in a later post.) All of this has been put on hold, temporarily, I hope.

We live in a 113-year-old farm house. The place is hardly what you'd call air-tight and heating it is a costly nightmare. To save money we try to hold off as long as possible before turning on the furnace. We're a little chilly right now to say the least. I'm sitting here dressed in several layers, topped off by my fleece bathrobe with our puppy tucked inside (I kid you not, he's wrapped himself around my waist like a belt). I look like a hobo minus those fingerless gloves, which I'm beginning to think would be a good investment. Andrew just brought me some coffee, I took a sip and the steam fogged up my glasses. Last week it was 75.

That's right, 75. Andrew was finally able to start and finish the re-roofing of our chicken coop. He pounded the last nail in moments before the wind changed direction and the rain started. At least the girls are cozy. As for the garden, I have to assume the peas and broccoli are doing a little dance of happiness for the dip in temperature, but the peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and zucchini are all whinging. We had an amazing summer harvest and were able to "put up" plenty of vegetables for winter so I'm okay with hot-weather plants calling it quits, but still. There is plenty of clean up to be done. The garlic needs to be planted.

Meanwhile, on my neighbor's farm there is a little trouble. They are away for 10 days and have left our children in charge of their chickens. In their barn they have some month-old blackstar chicks which will be placed in their outdoor coop once they are fully feathered and have a little meat on their bones to keep them warm. Outside in their coop they have an assortment of older hens plus seven Rhode Island red pullets that we started for them two months ago. Before they left on their trip they added the fully feathered pullets to their coop. I would have done the same thing—this time of year the weather is sunny and plenty warm for young birds. Anyway, this surprise cold snap took its toll. The older hens handled it without a feather out of place. Unfortunately, the pullets all perished, wet and cold to the bone. Not sure when we'll tell our neighbors. Not the kind of news you want from home while on vacation.

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Take a walk

2009-10-15T15:25:00.000-04:00

We don't own a car. OK, we live in New York City, so it's not exactly the sacrifice of the century to not own a car, but you would be surprised at the number of people here who do own one (all that traffic doesn't just come from taxis and people from Westchester County).

I was born in Detroit and grew up in its environs. My father worked for the automobile industry for most of his adult life. So you would think I would have some umbilical connection to automobiles. But I don't. Except for one year of my life, when a co-worker gave me her old, falling-apart Suburu wagon (whose engine still ran like a top, but whose chassis made me think I was driving Fred Flintstone's car), I have never owned a car. When I first moved in with Peter, he had a car and we kept it for about a year and then decided that the hassle and expense of having a car in Manhattan (where we lived at the time) was not worth it.

We've never looked back. We rent a car if we need one (mostly to visit Peter's family who live among various states in New England). And we take the subway and buses. But mostly we WALK. We have a "rule" that if a destination can be reached within the hour (which means it's less than four miles away), we walk there. We walk everywhere and it has had the following ameliorative effects on our lives:
1) Statistically, we're going to live longer. We joke at the end of every walk: "That's another 60 seconds longer on our death beds!" Unless, of course, a car kills us, but we're fairly cautious street-crossers.
2) We've really gotten to know Brooklyn. We moved here about seven years ago and have managed to explore on foot neighborhoods that I know we would otherwise never have ventured into.
3) It's given us time and space to talk without the interruptions of daily life. No phones (we do carry our cells but no one calls us on them because they know we're so bad at answering them); no emails pinging us (or, I should say, me, who salivates on cue); no to-do list distracting us (well, I should say me again, because Peter carries his to-do list in his head and obsesses over it, no matter where he is).

I've never done a carbon footprint analysis of what not having a car means in terms of the effects on the Earth's atmosphere, but I don't really have to do one to know that the benefits are real.

I realize that most people in this country can't live without a car, but really, do we need to drive EVERYWHERE? I'm reminded of a funny story I heard once from a European gentleman who had been visiting a friend in LA. He had gotten so crazy from driving everywhere that he begged his host to go walking with him one day in the neighborhood. No sooner had they set off when a neighbor came running out of her house, demanding to know if everything was all right. Yes, they assured her, they were just out for a walk. A few minutes later, a car coming from the opposite direction screeched to a halt. It was the host's wife. She jumped out, wild-eyed, crying, "Is everything all right?" My European interlocutor, telling the story, just shook his head.

I realize this story is about LA, which has a storied car culture, but I have family and friends living all over the U.S. and their perspectives on walking seem so distorted to me. That grocery store that's a mile away is a 20 minute walk -- if all you're doing is buying milk and eggs, put on your backpack and walk there. It's good for you and it's good for your environment.

I don't mean to sound like I'm on my high horse here (high tops might be a better metaphor) but walking is the easiest, freest, most interesting exercise there is. And if you're walking, you're not driving. And that is a good thing.

P.S. This photo is of me (and Philadelphia firefighter friends) during the 2007 Susan G. Komen Walk for the Cure, a 3-day/60 mile walk to raise money for breast cancer research. Louise got me to do the walk with her in 2006 and 2007. You train for something like this for months and believe me, your sense of distances changes dramatically.

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What the heck is urbal tea?

2009-10-15T11:00:00.000-04:00

A little over a year ago, I started compiling a list called "Why Bother?" which attempted to chronicle all the things--both big and small--my husband, Peter, and I were doing in our Brooklyn home to try to counteract what seemed like the inexorable destruction of the planet.

I called the list "Why Bother?" both to acknowledge the helplessness I felt, and to provide a response to those feelings. As post-middle aged people (Peter retired in 2007; I have a few years left to work, if I could find some!), we made it a priority to redefine how to live in the world, if only for the sake of our grandchildren.

My friend Louise, who at the time was working with me on a magazine start-up (that crashed and burned soon after the October 2008 market collapse), talked about these issues with me all the time. She and her husband, Andrew, come at these questions from a different perspective: they live on a family farm in rural Virginia and raise two school-aged children, Graham and Katharine.

But despite our urban-rural and age differences, we share common interests: serious travel (last year Peter and I took a four-month trip to Australia and New Zealand, while Louise and Andrew took their kids out of school for the year and spent half of it living and traveling in South America); serious gardening (even though we have a postage stamp back yard and they live on a farm); and serious cooking (not fancy but principled). We also share common values: respect for the Earth; a love of culture and cultural differences; a respect for the (well) written word; a belief in the common good.

Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand

Over the years I've pulled Louise into my work projects, which tend to focus on technology in education. And while it's a perfectly respectable topic and she doesn't turn down the work, she keeps asking me: Can't you get on a magazine that covers gardening or travel or cooking? I wish.

Well, why wish? Fact is, the economics of publishing today mean that we're never going to start our own traditional magazine (if Conde Nast had to close Gourmet, there's no hope for any of us). But why let that keep us back from writing on the things that we feel passionately about? Andrew, who is by far the cleverest of the four of us (but don't tell him I said so), came up with the name of the blog. Urb[an] [rur]al Tea [a blend, where city meets country]. (Or, as he says, "If you have to be so literal, you don't deserve the title.")

I promised I'd write the first entry—and I admit that it's a little serious, but it's hard to get something started with the exact right tone. (I predict that Louise and Andrew will be smart-ass funny, Peter will be deadly serious, and I'll try to be funny and only sometimes succeed.)

The intent is to share the ways we're trying to figure out how to live responsibly and take pride of ownership, at least, of the small patch of Earth we're given the privilege to inhabit. It's a conversation we invite you to join.

Peter in our Brookyn garden