posted by jim | October 26, 2009

Last year in the Mid-Atlantic region there was a lot of discussion about the lack of acorns. Some oak trees, it seemed from some accounts, produced no acorns at all (this may be the oak trees evolutionary way of keeping the squirrel population at a sustainable level). This year was a different story: there was plenty for everybody. The squirrels had so many this year that they hardly complained when my son and I gathered a mess of ‘em and left the rest to compost naturally. So now what to do with them? Acorns take a lot of labor to prepare but they remind me a bit of wheat. I mean in their ability to serve as a staple food. Listen:

California Indians did not have to be farmers, and for the most part were hunters and gatherers. There was a ready supply of deer, fish, rabbits, fowl, native plants for vegetables, native fruits, and even seaweed. Even so, acorns are said to have been the main food of as many as 3/4 of our native Californians. Acorns were everywhere, are easy to gather and store fairly well … as long as your storage places are squirrel tight. Some groups buried baskets of nuts until they were needed.@ Siouxme.com.

I can believe that when I see so many acorns in a suburban landscape that has many fewer oak trees than it once did.
But as I was saying using acorn is a labor intensive job: it helps to have a village. Barring that, here are some techniques I found helpful to getting acorns.
1. Enlist the aid of kids. They love gathering them.
2. Use something heavy to crack them. I used a sledge hammer. We put some down on the sidewalk and I picked up the sledge hammer and dropped it on them. Imagine the early Indians (sorry, after listening to Sherman Alexie I can’t say Native American or Indigenous people with a straight face anymore) using a large wooden mortar and pestle. Once you’ve cracked them you have to take the shell off. This takes tough nails.
3. Once you have separated the meat from the shells acorns need to be leached in water. You can read how this was traditionally done at Sioux Me. I boiled the water a couple of times but then used several changes of cold water.
4. I put the meats on aluminum foil and dried them on our grill after cooking a meal (hey I’m a utopian economist, right).
5. Final step, I used an electric grinder to make acorn flour. It is slow going in my little grinder but you don’t need much. I can see where two or three people working together with a large stone or wooden pestle could do a better job. Acorns don’t have any gluten which means the flour won’t stick together like wheat does, you can use it like corn meal in your conventional recipes.
For a fantastic taste experience try this Acorn Cake recipe. I highly recommend it but heed the warning on cook time. When acorns are abundant, you get a real sense of why the Earth becomes the subject of worship and adoration in many cultures. Enjoy the abundance!

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Tags: acorn flour, acorns, DIY Foo

posted by jim | September 22, 2009

photo by ClickFlashPhotos; some rights reserved.
If you have my luck, your apple orchard is all suburbia. The first apple tree I came across was on abandoned property. I found two more on the unused lawn of a corporate office next to our apartment building and one more on our apartment building’s grounds. They were remnants from the rural farm country that used to be here. I’ve lost these trees but I’ve found others. It takes a certain amount of audacity to collect these and good judgement, but I’ve never had a problem (in fact, people usually make positive comments).
The best way to collect apples is to shake the branches. This works fine for dwarf apple trees, but most of the trees I find require climbing. Shaking the trees means you can collect 2 to 3 large grocery bags (depending on the yield) of apples in just 5 to 15 minutes.
These organic (by neglect) apples are usually not the best for eating. We save the best for eating and the rest we chop up for apple sauce-removing the wormy or bad parts. We also core and slice some (again removing the bad areas) for drying and/or freezing. We use an apple peeler and corer. Just one apple tree can yield and extraordinary amount of food. I have never tried apple cider or hard cider, but these are also options I hope you have a chance to try. I often see neglected apple trees in rural areas, as well. Happy hunting.

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posted by jim | August 24, 2009

Photo by rottenlittlerobin; some rights reserved.
I’ve been coveting a rain barrel for a while now, but my money has been going to other priorities. When my wheel barrel filled with water from an early summer downpour, I was reluctant to dump it. I knew mosquito larvae would soon show up if I let it stand, but I also wanted to save the water for my soon to be thirsty plants. That’s when I recollected a friend of mine who grew up in Sri Lanka who had told me that Beta fish occur naturally in puddles all over his former country. It occurred to me that Beta fish may like to eat mosquito larvae. So my poor man’s rain barrel was born. My kids love to watch our Beta gobble mosquito larvae (up to 50 in 15 minutes) and I do too.
Keep the water in the shade. Betas will tolerate mucky (and even green) water. If your neighbor with the pool has been foreclosed upon, don’t try to poison the larvae just toss a Beta in the pool. My Beta has survived for 3 months now on mosquito larvae alone. The beauty of using beta fish is that unlike Bacillus sphaericus and Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis mosquitos won’t evolve a tolerance to them. Betas cost about $2 per fish.

Category: Body Health DIY, DIY Food, Food, Health | No Comments »
Tags: beta fish, mosquito, rain barrel, water conservation

posted by jim | May 20, 2009

Coke or Pepsi-or how about home made ginger ale. Apparently it’s the new it drink. I remember being in the hospital with an upset stomach and a sympathetic nurse brought me some ginger ale. I felt so much better. I’m not sure how much ginger was in there, but I love the flavor of real ginger in this drink. Enjoy.
4 teaspoons fresh ginger juice (DIY or buy your own ginger juice from health food stores)

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice plus lime wedge, for garnish

1 1/4 cups cold club soda.

Stir ginger juice, sugar and lime juice in 16-ounce glass until sugar is dissolved. Add ice and the club soda. Garnish with lime wedge. @ Recipe – Ginger Ale – NYTimes.com.

photo by rpongsaj; some rights reserved.

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Tags: DIY Food, ginger, ginger ale, home made soda

posted by jim | April 29, 2009

 

It’s Spring. Hopefully the morels are coming up in a wood near you. Morels are one of the easier mushrooms to identify-but there are look-a-likes that are poisonous. The stem and mushroom itself are hollow, but to really learn to collect edibles go with experienced gatherers. If you live or are visiting the New York City area consider a foraging tour with Wild Man Steve Brill. Some mushrooms will make you ill or are poisonous if uncooked (including morels) so please do your research, but don’t be bashful the rewards are delicious.
We adapted a recipe from the Cafe Flora cookbook for our morels. Ideally this recipe would take about a pound of Morels for four people, but you can spice up the dish with as little as half a pound.
3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 cup French green (Le Puy) lentils
1 cup of Forbidden rice (adds to the chewiness of this recipe). If you must substitute try 1/2 cup short grain brown rice and 1/2 cup wild rice. Use enough water to cook the rice (whatever the rice calls for)
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup of roasted walnuts, toasted
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (best from your garden)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon of dried oregano
1 teaspoon pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika)–really try to get this spice. It is well worth it!
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of cracked peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
1/4-1/2 cup feta cheese (parmesan would also work well)

 

 It was a hot day so I took our toaster oven outside to roast the mushrooms and walnuts (this can reduce or eliminate the need to use your air conditioner by moving the heat outside). Set the oven at 400 degrees and put the mushrooms on a broiler pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil. The mushrooms should roast for 15-20 minutes and the walnuts for 10 minutes so add the walnuts after 5 minutes.
Cook the lentils and rice together in water with the bay leaf. Bring to a boil then simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes. Chop parsley. When lentils and rice are ready, mix in other ingredients and serve. Serves four. I recommend a hearty red wine. In combination with the smokey paprika and earthy mushroom flavors, this recipe is a killer.

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Tags: Add new tag, DIY Food, foraging, Morels, mushrooms, recipe

posted by jim | April 23, 2009

The Washington Post recently interviewed Kate Heyhoe for her new book Cooking Green. She introduces a couple of new words Cookprint and Ecovore-I think you get the idea, but see a portion of her interview for clarification. 

She also talks about ways to save electricity (and of course money) in the kitchen. Two of hers are also favorites of ours-our induction stovetop is our new best friend. Induction stove tops cook with less electricity, less chance of fires in the kitchen, and just as well as electric or gas in my humble opinion. The other kitchen saver is the Toaster Oven-which you could easily score at freecycle or craig’s list, I bet. We’re also considering a convection oven.

photo by clayirving; some rights reserved.

Cookprint is the entire chain of resources used to create the foods you eat, including water and land, and the waste produced in the process. Carbon footprint measures carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Shrinking your cookprint includes saving water and energy, as well as reducing waste and emissions.

Being green is all about making choices. An ecovore looks at the total impact of food with fluidity, not rigidity. Our food choices are, at any given time or in any given place, in constant flux, because of changes in ecosystems, economics, and technology. Ecovores eat foods that are in harmony with the environment, both currently and for the foreseeable future, locally and globally. An ecovore’s diet pivots on a series of judgment calls based on conditions at the time and place. This season’s local salmon may be sustainable, but next year it may not (and would then not be part of an evocore diet, even though the food is local). And conversely, as we make progress, what casts a carbon footprint last week may not be an issue tomorrow. World hunger matters, too. In a global rice or corn shortage, an ecovore picks a different food to eat.

@ Earth Day Food for Thought: Shrinking Your ‘Cookprint’ – A Mighty Appetite @ Washington Post.

Toaster ovens consume a fraction of the fuel of a standard oven, which I call the Humvee of the kitchen. Standard ovens waste about nine percent of the fuel they use; most of the heat goes into the walls of the oven, the air, and your kitchen; not into cooking the food. Toaster ovens take less time to heat up and cool down, and their smaller capacity uses less fuel. Today’s better toaster ovens are well designed to roast chickens, cook pizzas, and broil as well as a standard oven does. New models are coming out every season, so check with consumer sites to see which perform best, and opt for convection models which cook more efficiently. In general, the lower the price, the poorer the performance, but mid-range models are typically fine.

Any kind of cooktop that seems promising on a green front?

Induction cooktops are coming down in price, and you can buy single portable induction burners if you don’t want to shoot for a whole cooktop.

@ Earth Day Food for Thought: Shrinking Your ‘Cookprint’ – A Mighty Appetite @ Washington Post. 

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Tags: cooking, Cooking green, ecovore, Food Off the Shelf, induction stove top, toaster oven

posted by jim | April 21, 2009

Few vegetables are as forgiving and abundant as potatoes. My green shoots are just coming up a couple of days ago. The potato was a generous gift of my brother-in-law–actually he gave us many potatoes but this one started to develop shoots and I held on to it until I could put it in a pot (I found my pot abandoned by the side of the road). Use as big a pot as you can afford (or scavenge)–maybe even a garbage can–if like me you don’t have very much land. Potatoes don’t require very rich dirt. Just keep covering the shoots as they come up. I’m using compost-so I fill as fast as the worms can eat my garbage. You can use any organic potato that you like. Non-organic potatoes are typically sprayed with chemicals that inhibit their desire to sprout. I got mine in the dirt earlier this year. I think next year I will start them indoors in February and see if I can get an earlier crop. The potato is truly the utopian comfort food.

photo by Tony Austin; some rights reserved.

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Tags: DIY Food, grow your own, potato, utopian food

posted by jim | April 19, 2009

Robots, Recycling, and Solar–pretty cool. This link was sent to me by a local robotics group. You may be able to use scavenged parts to build these little ‘bots. I’d like to try this as a relatively benign way to scare the birds away from my berry bushes. Listen closely for the info on how to get your pdf instructions by subscribing to Make magazine at iTunes. Probably a good introduction for beginners and kids to robots.

Category: DIY Fun & Games, Food, Knowledge | No Comments »
Tags: beam bots, recycling, recycling electronics, robots

posted by jim | April 5, 2009

I picked a few dandelion greens today to mix in with the rest of my salad greens. It is the first year I’ve caught them before the yellow heads appeared (and the leaves turn bitter). Learn to identify all the pieces and uses of this plant. Dandelion wine, dandelion greens salad, sauteed dandelion greens, dandelion roots. I’ve seen pictures in Martha Stewart using the yellow heads in pancakes.

Be brave and bold. Learn about and use this abundant plant. But let’s tell the truth; dandelions are so abundant that it is hardly fair to call it DIY. Dandelions are utopian machines.

Enjoy. And blow some seeds into a vacant lot.

 

photo by rpongsaj, some rights reserved.

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Tags: dandelions, DIY Food, greens, salad

posted by jim | March 23, 2009

 

I could live on basil, olive oil, and a few beans or nuts. Basil loves sun and heat. I once grew a mess of it in the South facing window of an office building. I grew it year round long after my plants outdoors had died off. Basil is tough: it’s easy to transplant. Keep moving it to larger pots and rich soil (composted soil works well) or  plant in your garden. When you want some, cut  the top off where you see two nodes growing from its base. Like the hydra the plant will grow two new heads. If you don’t need to eat your cuttings, put them in some water inside and in about 10-14 days they will start too root. You can plant them in small pots and start the process all over. Repeat. Share. Feed your neighborhood. Basil is truly a Utopian plant.

Pests are few. I’ve had Japanese Beetles and Leaf Hoppers munch on my basil occasionally but they are thwarted by covering them with permeable (to sun and rain) row covers.

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Tags: basil, DIY Food, Food, gardening, herbs