Our Barrio Ranchito

Luz's Garden to be featured on this year's Bay Friendly Garden Tours

2011-03-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.bayfriendlyblog.org/2011/03/good-gates-make-good-neighbors.html

Luz's garden will be featured on this year's Bay Friendly Garden Tour, Sunday May 15. Come on by, y'all!

Oregano memories

2011-03-08T08:46:00.000-08:00

Luz has been working on hir film and incorporating many fragments from the old blog into the narration. That’s got me thinking about our queer rancho blog, which (like many a blog) was eaten by facebook.

I’m inspired to write today about oregano. My good friend Gabriela posted that chimichurri sauce made her rethink her aversion to oregano.

Aversion to oregano? that’s one I can’t get my head around.

Oregano has at times been my only spice. When we were little, my Grandma Lupe would make menudo, and my favorite part was that your bowl was like your witches cauldron, and you got to put in all the stuff you liked best: oregano, cebolla, cilantro, lime, chile pequín... In fact, I think mi abuela used to set aside for me a pot of white broth instead of red, because my little girl mouth was too tender for chile. menudo was served with warm corn tortillas with salt.

So crushing the oregano in my hands was like magic to me. It still is.

In northern New Mexico, in the 1980s, Esperanza Córdoba Weber showed me how to recognize oregano's purple flowers growing on the hillside. Like other hierbas, she said, it was best to gather it on El Día de la Virgen.

In the 1990s, the first two dishes I really learned to cook for myself were green chile stew and pozole. (by then I was vegetarian and needed fill the niche previously filled by menudo). Oregano was the handful of magic that made it work.

My dad Alfonso, sent us a big spray of dried oregano in the mail. He always provides these raro but amazing tastes of New Mexico for us here in the Bay Area. Like the time he sent us the fresh Hatch chile so hot it “knocks your block off.” That New Mexican oregano was the stuff you use to call back the ancestors! So good.

Here in our barrio rancho, the heart of the garden is Luz’s herb spiral. Everything else has grown out from there. And in hir research on traditional foods, zie found that most of oregano seed is for Italian or Greek oregano. It’s very good, but it doesn’t smell like a memory. Luz was determined and found a source for Mexican oregano, which struggled the first year, but has come back hardy. The smell for me acts like white smoke from sage: cleansing, purifying, beyond the realm of mere food.

Escabeche

2010-09-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

Luz’s carrot crop has been most impressive. Zie only started harvesting a couple of weeks ago. Zie pulled on a clump of greens and all of a sudden this enormous fat carrot appeared!

Our neighbor Jenn had her two year-old nephew over for a visit last weekend. He watches Curious George videos and so knows a lot about gardening, including compost! His favorite game when visiting is to toss the compost with his aunties. So during his visit, Luz pulled some carrots to show him. He happily carried a miniature carrot around, with the long green stem dragging behind him like Linus’s blanket.

I have happily chomped down several of these carrots. I have always loved carrots because they’re sweet and you can crunch them hard.

Starting in 1977, I went through a spell of reading and re-reading all the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House. books. See I was a farmwife in training, but didn’t know it. My sister had read them all before. I read everything in sight, and, I think, especially liked reading books my sister had read.

Aside: The books are quite frankly racist, with lots of anti-Indian sentiments freely expressed, including that native peoples have no rights to land and should be displaced to make more room for white homesteaders, and that there’s no such thing as a “good Indian.” Ma expresses the worst of these, as well as some less-than-charming anti-immigrant snap judgments. but then Pa actually performs in blackface in a minstrel show, the retelling of which includes a lot of repetition of “darkies.” These unpleasantries are whitewashed away in the nostalgia with which these books are enshrined.

The third novel in the series, Farmer Boy, focuses on the boyhood of Almanzo Wilder (Ingall’s future husband) on his family’s extensive farm in New York. In addition to the livestock they sell, they are wholly self-sufficient. White sugar is one of the few things they have to purchase. They shear their sheep and the women spin the wool and the weave it into cloth for clothing. So they also happen to grow a lot of crops in sufficient abundance that they use them as feed crops for the cattle, carrots being one of them. And the young boy, chomping on carrots while training his young oxen, observes that the outer ring of the carrot is sweeter and can be snapped off, while the inner core has a sharper taste. Luz’s carrots were like that to the nth degree.

Luz had made carrot ginger soup, and carrots are included in many of Luz’s recipes. (Zie likes to see how many servings of vegetables can be incorporated into one delicious meal.) Still, the longer they stay in the ground, the bigger the carrots grow. As I said, I enjoy snacking on them raw. Luz and our neighbor Jenn are already starting their winter plantings, now, so they’re pulling out the summer crops that are done. Luz wanted to open the space currently occupied by the carrots.

So, given our brand-new skill of canning vegetables, a fond remembrance of Sandy Der’s fermentation class, and some ingenuity on Luz’s part, and zie came up with the perfect solution: escabeche. Pickled jalapeños with carrots and onions. A tiny serving of which is the norm at tacquerias throughout Califas, at least.

We’d made refrigerator pickles last year, with the radishes. They were yummy. But the difference this time is that not only would we pickle them with vinegar, but we would then can the escabeche in jars.

As usual, I researched all the safety precautions about canning vinegar pickles, and was happy to see that a lot of leeway is allowed with pickles. So I printed out four different recipes: some with sweetener, some with olive oil. It looked to me like as long as we used at least equal parts water and vinegar, it should be pretty safe. So Luz sent me to the Mexican market on the corner (Mi Tierra) for pickling spice and jalapeños. Right after that, though, before we started pickling, Maria and Gabriela gave us some red and green jalapeños from their barrio ranchito. So we used those instead. Their barrio rancho was the inspiration for ours: they have so many beautiful fruit trees and all kinds of veggies.

Luz reminded me that the jars left over from canning the apples would need to be washed and scalded again, since the water they’d been sitting in had gone cold. I did the rest of the prep, Luz cooked up her pot of escabeche, and then filled all our remaining jars with the chilies, carrots, and pickling liquid.

Although we were out of canning jars, we had one jar in the house where we could put the remaining escabeche and keep in the fridge for snacking.

Well, that was the plan. We ate escabeche with our neighbor Jenn on the deck last night as an appetizer. Luz planned tonight’s dinner around the escabeche. fava-bean burgers in flat bread with avocado and escabeche. (like a variation on a Mexican torta). Super yum.

That one jar of escabeche though is all used up, and it’s barely been twenty-four hours. How long can we hold out?

The dried apple rings didn’t make it even that long. They were done this afternoon and gone by dinner. yummy.

Canning, Part Deux: Apples

2010-09-26T12:05:00.000-07:00

We are not apple connossieurs. Luz doesn’t like the crunch or the peel. Catriona only likes sour (granny smith) apples, peeled. When we were juicing big time, though, apples were a staple in our house. We bought them by the box from Berkeley bowl, just so we could keep up with our favorite apple-lime-carrot-ginger juice.

Luz did some juicing a couple of weeks back, as a cleansing before the start of hir school year. Zie juiced something fierce for several days, not only our old standbys but also vampiros using beets from hir garden. Hir carrots from the garden are absolutely the best carrots I have eaten.

When the limpia was over we still had lots of apples left. They weren’t real flavorful for eating out of hand. And it was starting to look like they would quietly go bad while we averted our eyes.

But as you know, we got a canning book and canning supplies last week, and that changed our whole perspective. While lots of people can the fruits of the garden, lots more buy bags and boxes of what’s in season so they can enjoy them later. I know Mrs. Surmani, who used to live next door to us, used to put up all kinds of fruit.

So, what the heck! let’s give apples a shot! First we were thinking apple chunks or apple butter. Catriona got a new canning book this week, Stocking Up, which is especially attractive because its jam & jelly recipes use only honey. We also have big concerns about sugar. Old-time canning recipes call for major sugar, and with diabetes being such an ominous specter on the Latin@ health horizon right now, we are not interested in preparing anything full of sugar.

When we first moved into the neighborhood, Mr. Surmani gave us a lesson on the membrillo (English: quince) which I consider the Troll or Ogre of apples: It’s big, lumpy, misshape, and kind of fuzzy. It’s too tart for out of hand eating, but bakes up a beautiful rose color, very fragrant and delicious. Membrillo (english: marmalade) was the first jelly, because the fruit has a naturally high fruit pectin content. Luz had produced some beautiful membrillo paste in years past, but really the sugar content of the recipes is frightening: 2 cups fruit to 2 cups sugar. Luz tried to decrease the sugar this year, planning to just cook it down, but it never set.

But then, our oven broke. (this hardly sounds like a happy story, so far).

We could still use the gas burners on top, but that was it. After a week of wrestling with the idea, we went shopping for a new stove, and picked a nice one which will support Luz’s MasterChef experimentation. And it has some features we will never use, like “perfect turkey.” And a couple of others that we found very exciting. Namely “bread proof” and “dehydrate.”

My family is not new to food dehydration. We moved from L.A. to northern New Mexico in the late 1970s. There were many aspects of rural life at which we did not succeed. We were complete failures with farm animals, due in large part to our displaced urban German Shepherd, who lacked the breeds herding instincts, in place of which he had a double measure of kill instinct. I need elaborate no further.

However, my dad excelled at gardening and dried foods. He made beef jerky every year with lots of salt and pepper. Some times he put even more pepper so that it would last longer. I’d always liked beef jerky as a kid, although all the jerky I’d ever seen had been encased in plastic. My mom, as a young woman, had a memorable experience working in a jerky factory which seemed to have cured her of any liking for the processed beef product. My dad’s jerky, on the other hand, was something special. legendary. All our relations who came out to visit us in New Mexico will remember eating Alfonso/Uncle Pony’s beef jerky. yum.

I think he strung clotheslines in the attic of the old adobe on our property in Ledoux, and hung the strips of beef like socks on the clothesline. The attic had screened windows on either end to keep out the birds and rodents, and seemed to provide ideal drying conditions. (We were at 7500 feet).

He later expanded his dehydrating repertoire to include apples and green chile. He and my nephews Steven and Cisco used to slice apples, lay them out on paper towels on the car’s dashboard, then lock up the car in the sun to dry out the apples. They would send them to me in California, and I enjoyed them tremendously.

I don’t know how he prepared the green chile. He gave me these when I was living in Colorado, and they were pure magic. When I moved to Colorado was the first time I realized that New Mexico green chile was not widely available (and when all those childhood memories of smuggling sacks of green chile across the California border began to make sense). In northern New Mexico you can buy as much as you want, fresh in season, or frozen, next to the green beans, year round. In Colorado the closest thing I could find were the canned ortega chiles, a big disappointment. But with my dad’s dried green chile, I could sprinkle them into a pot of otherwise potato-tomato stew and make something fabulous. I learned the hard way that these would not keep indefinitely in Colorado or California they way they had back home.

Luz and I still want to learn how to dry the green chile, which has assumed almost mythical status in our imaginations.

But back to the membrillo that didn’t set. And the apples.

So our new stove arrived and Luz cooked several amazing dinners on it and then began to eye the dehydrate function. Zie thought of that membrillo which had never fully set, and the proverbial light bulb lit. After surveying all of our baking pans, zie decided on using the pizza stone as a dehydration tray. Zie spread the membrillo thickly on the stone, popped it in the oven on “dehydrate” and let ‘er rip. the next day, zie had a beautiful membrillo fruit leather. I hope to get a taste of this soon, but it is currently hiding in the fridge, safely hidden from my hungry eyes by a wrapping of waxed paper.

So here we are with these apples about to go bad, and we have this new canning for passion AND a new oven. The result: 7 jars canned apples and some dried apple rings.

Luz cooked the apples with agave syrup, 1/4 cinnamon stick, and filtered water. Zie cooked them for five minutes (as instructed by our canning book). I did the prep, which is filling the canning pot with water, to a depth of 2 inches higher than the jars are tall, heating it to boiling. Washing and scalding the jars, putting the lids and jars in a pot of water and heating that till just before simmering. Luz filled the jars with hot fruit, topped them off with the liquid in which they’d been cooked (being careful to leave headroom so the jars don’t burst). I pressed on the lids, screwed on the rings, lowered the jars into the boiling water, and cooked them for 15 minutes. Then I removed them from the pot, put them in boxes to protect them from drafts (but not too close to one another, so they would cool quickly) and set them on top of our washer/dryer to cool. (we weren’t running the w/d. If we had been, it wouldn’t have been very cool up there.)

The next day (today) I unscrewed the rings so I could check the seals. This consists of lifting the jar by it’s sealed lid. If it didn’t “seal” then the jar will fall down and you will feel like a failure (but you still have a chance to save it). All of our jars are tightly vacuumed sealed. they look good enough to eat.

I took charge of the apple rings. I washed, peeled, and cored the apples, sliced them in into rings about 1/2” thick, dipped the slices in lemon juice, and stacked them while I went on to the next apple. when they were all done, I wiped them with paper towels, put them on our big pizza tray (which has lots of holes in it, thus speeding the drying process) and set them in the oven on dehydrate. They’re done today, and in all likelihood we will eat them all in the next few days. apples are super yummy with lemon juice.

Saints Preserve Us!

2010-09-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

It’s been months and months since we’ve blogged. You know the story: Facebook ate my blog!

Well so much has been going lately on our barrio rancho and and we’re going in some new directions. We’re still working on our book Decolonizing Dinner, but now that we’re both back at work, it’s harder to stay connected to the project. So I thought blogging would be one good way to document our adventures and to continue to develop ideas.

Our latest “discovery” is canning. In the past week we’ve canned 12 half-pints of red and gold tomatoes from Luz’s garden. 7 half-pints of apples. Finally, we made escabeche (pickled jalapeños, carrots & onions) from Luz’s bumper crop of carrots.

The tomatoes are what got us started with all of this. Luz’ tomatso plants were overflowing, and although we’d been eating tomato sandwiches, salads, pasta and the like, we weren’t able to keep up with the bounty. Even though Luz was sharing it. Zie was starting to get a bit stressed and so came up with the idea of canning the tomatoes. Last saturday, we came home from a party, stopped by the Ace hardware in the Laurel ten minutes before they closed, and bought a canning pot with rack, a canning kit (with handy tools like jar funnel, jar lifter, digital timer, magnetic thing for getting the lids out of hot water) and a case of half-pint jars. By seven, Luz had harvested all hir tomatoes and Ktrion had read the requisite sections of the canning book, and gone to the store to get the required lemon juice to assure that the tomatoes would be “high acid” and thus could be canned in a pot of boiling water rather than a giant pressure cooker (which we don’t happen to have).

Now, a canning pot is actually the same thing as a tamale pot. In fact if, like you’re like our fabulous friend Josie, your tamale pot may have a flat tray in the bottom with big holes in it. This is perfect for canning. We have several tamale pots but we don’t have a steamer suitable for canning. (We use those collapsible steamers when we’re steaming tamales and they’re not at all appropriate for holding jars. So we bought another pot (yes!) that came with a canning rack. Alas, we were so crunched for time (since the store was closing) that we didn’t notice until much later that the rack is really appropriate for quart jars. We had gotten half-pint jars which were small enough to fit through the spaces in the rack. What this means is that we have to insert the jars one by one using the jar holders and then when the processing time is up, remove them one by one the same way. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s slow and hot and steamy.

Now Luz and have have very different skill sets. Luz is the alchemist, the creative artist, who tastes, improvises, adjusts, throws in a little something from the herb spiral, guesstimates. Zie sees a recipe as a point of departure. I am the chemistry student, who is careful about measurements, cooking times, temperatures, exactitude, following directions as written and in the order prescribed. Which means I was put in charge of canning, since--at least starting out--you need to do things a certain way to avoid botulism and other unpleasant surprises.

Our first canning book--Putting Things By--seemed pretty conservative. In particular, for canning stewed tomatoes, it said not to add herbs or vegetables, unless using a giant pressure cooker. Which we don’t have. This was a big cramp in the style of the tomato-cooking alchemist, who had envisioned basil, garlic, and other delights flavoring the canned tomatoes.

The only lemon juice at our favorite store came in an container shaped like a plastic lemon.

Okay, we adapt. Now, from what my book says, the practiced farmwife can get the veggies from the vine to jar in 2 hours flat. We started at seven p.m. and finished around 1:30 a.m., so there’s obviously lots of room for improvement, but on the other hand, we have a dozen half-pint jars of light orange tomatoes (There were prob’ly more golden tomatoes than red ones in the harvest) gleaming like little jewels on our dining room table.

The next morning Hadas and Margo (and their pit-bull of a thousand names, among them “Rosie” and “Marble Cake”) dropped by to bestow freshly baked honey cakes on our household. Luz ran to give them a jar of canned tomatoes. Like us, they want to try them right away--which kind of defeats the whole purpose of canning, which is to save them till they’re out of season. On the other hand, the whole purpose of canning is that the fruits & vegetables get eaten instead of being thrown away, in which case you should feel free to dig right in.

(Pictures to follow as soon as Luz gets home from yoga and uploads them)

Piñatas for Chickens

2010-04-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

Malucho has invented the piñata for chickens. All the chickens are cooped up right now, because the young chickens are living in the tractor in the garage/barn and the grown hens are awaiting their chicken run, towards which Kate has done some amazing work. The little coop has been inside the garage/barn since February when we brought the little chicks home.

When we first brought the Anarquist home, we figured she needed a little quite isolation time before springing her on the recently bereaved Sister Xikn. For one thing, she'd never been handled and was a Wild Thing. For another, she's less than half the size of Sister Xikn, so we worried a bit about bullying. So we moved the tractor into the barn and spread some bedding.

Within the week, we had orchestrated several chicken soirees in the barn, which were promising, although by no means love fests. So, in the dark of night, Malucho and grabbed flashlights, gathered up the Anarquist and moved her into the big coop with Sister Xikn.

The next day, the young chicks moved into the tractor, where they'd have a little more room to run around (they had really liked that part of the soirees). They're nearly big enough now to move in with the big girls--they're almost the same size as the Anarchist--but we're going to give them a little more time, sort of like "hardening off" seedlings.

So the plan is to move the little coop out of the barn and into one of the two yards, and move the pullets (pre-pubescent hens) back into it. Then they'll get more sunshine and fresh air. The tractor will be freed up for the big girls, so they can also get more sunshine and fresh air. Sister Xikn is allowed out for foraging (under supervision), but the Anarchist is currently confined to quarters, as she poses a flight risk.

In fact, earlier this week the Anarchist managed an escape. I was replacing the piñata and the wind blew the coop door open and the next thing I knew, her black tail feathers were out of there. For about fifteen minutes I patiently closed in on her, trying to recapture her without freaking her out. Then I went to Plan B and brought Sister Xikn over to the Anarchist. This worked pretty well--not for capturing her, but the Anarchist sees Sister Xikn as top hen, and so she stayed near her, followed her in--and out--of interesting places. I actually felt a lot better that she wouldn't be nabbed by a cat if my eyes weren't on her every second. So then it was time for Plan C, which meant confessing to Malucho that I had allowed an escape. Zie came out to help me recapture the Anarquist. Zie is indeed the chicken-whisperer of the compound and after only a couple of circuits around the yard, zie managed to nab the little lady under the neighbz apricot tree.

So, back to the piñata: To keep the chickens amused while they're cooped up, Malucho unvented** the piñata: Tie a big branch of tree collards from the ceiling of the coop, so that it hangs down at or above hen's heads. They'll amuse themselves by jumping up to peck the greens. In that way, the greens don't become dead and trod upon (at which point the chickens will have nothing to do with them, even though they're the ones doing the treading). Yesterday I took the some beet greens and hung them up. They weren't very long and so didn't come down as low as the collards. While I was eyeballing them, trying to figure out if there was a way to hang them lower, Sister Xikn began leaping into the air to snatch even the littlest bite. She has never before expressed interest in beet greens, so obviously the piñata thing is working.

**unvented is a term from knitting, coined by Elizabeth Zimmermann to describe when you come up with a technique, knowing that someone has prob'ly come up with before, but it's new to you and pretty cool.

Chicken Drama, Part One

2010-04-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

We’ve had two Rhode Island reds that we raised from little chicks, born around August 1, 2008. We named them Pío and Pío and referred to them as The Sisters and occasionally Big Sister and Little Sister. Both JJE and Ktrion sang sister songs to the chickens "Hey Sister" from The Color Purple and "Sisters" from White Christmas. The Sisters have been producing large beautiful brown eggs since around February 2009.

We lost Little Sister three weeks ago to a predator and this loss has had a depressing effect on the whole compound. Big Sister escaped with only a few broken feathers, but she had lost her closest friend and nest mate. She's gone through a rough period of shell-less eggs. She's laid only one solid egg in the time since The Incident.

It'll be another month at least before the neighbzie's two young chicks will be ready to move into the Palace. They're still on baby chick feed.

Knowing that she would be lonely, we set out to find another laying hen, which ended up being a challenge. On the one hand, it's impossible to find what we want, which is the friendly chicken we hand-raised for a year and a half. On the other hand, if we were going to get another hen, we'd prefer to get one a little younger, who would thus have more laying time ahead of her. Also, in the whole cycle of the year, April is really the time that baby chicks are available, as opposed to hens at point-of-lay. Most of the folks who have nursed their baby chicks along to the six month point want to keep them for themselves. The time kept stretching and the weather turned bad, and the surviving Sister Xikn spent all her time alone in the spacious Chicken Palace.

We did finally find a second hen, although we had a lot of buyer's remorse before we even got her home. She's a black bantam araucana, but, according to the breeder, she's too big to show in araucana competitions.

He was something of a backyard breeder (and a talker...why do we always end up held hostage by the talkers?) and had a big coop with a bunch of chickens we didn't get to see including two roosters (Bass and Baritone) whom we could hear.

The hen destined to become ours was living in a dovecot with two other black bantam aracuanas, a rooster (Tenor) and and a rumpless hen. These chickens had never been handled in their entire lives. To fetch her for us, the breeder went into the dovecot with a net and the birds surely thought armageddon was at hand. Poor things ran for their lives, a-screeching the whole time. The breeder put the hapless hen into a cardboard box the size of a shoe box, and we began the long drive back to Oakland.

Update: We have taken to calling the new hen the Anarchist (also known as Flores-Magon) and the surviving sister and Sister Xikn, or still, Big Sister.

Fava Beans and Pasta

2010-04-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

from Luz's DeColonial Cooking Club

I used fava beans from my garden! Fresh favas are in season now in CA. Find them at your farmer's market. (The Mexican markets in Oakland have them too!)

Pasta with Fresh Fava Beans, Ricotta, and Shredded Mint

2 pounds unshelled fava beans (about 1 cup shelled)
1 pound uncooked whole wheat pasta (penne or shells work well)
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup ricotta cheese [vegans, whip up some tofu]
1/2 cup (2 ounces) grated fresh pecorino
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh mint
Zest of one lemon
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Remove fava beans from pods; discard pods. Cook beans in boiling water for 1 minute. Remove beans with a slotted spoon. Plunge beans into cold water; drain. Remove tough outer skins from beans; discard skins. Set beans aside. (This is labor intensive but the bright green color of the inner bean will make it worth the effort!)

Cook pasta according to the package directions, Drain pasta. Place pasta in a large bowl; add oil and salt. Toss well.

Combine ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, chopped mint, lemon zest, and pepper. Add beans and cheese mixture to pasta mixture; toss to combine. Garnish with mint sprigs, if desired.

Ktrion: you can add frozen petit pois to the fava beans. I think Malucho has also used chevre instead of ricotta.

Health Benefits

Fava Beans: Favas are nutrition superheroes. They are high in fiber and iron, and low in sodium and fat. They have no cholesterol but so much protein, they are called the meat of the poor. Some think favas may help in treating Parkinson's disease.

Lemon Zest: Citrus fruits contain limonin and limonene, which appear to help block some of the cellular changes that can lead to cancer. Limonene, which is found mainly in the colorful skin, or zest, of the fruit, has been shown to increase the activity of proteins that help eliminate estradiol, a naturally occurring hormone that has been linked with breast cancer. Limonene has also been shown to increase the level of enzymes in the liver that can remove cancer-causing chemicals.

Mint: Mint is well known for its ability to sooth the digestive tract and reduce the severity and length of stomach aches. In addition, mint teas and other herbal preparations have shown great promise at easing the discomfort associated with irritable bowel syndrome, and even at slowing the growth of many of the most harmful bacteria and fungi. The well-documented antifungal properties of mint are thought to play a role in the treatment of asthma and many allergy conditions as well. It is even thought that mint may have benefits as an anticancer food. Mint is known to contain a phytonutrient called perillyl alcohol, which has been shown in studies on animals to prevent the formation of colon, skin and lung cancer. Further study is needed to see if this important benefit extends to the human world.

Easy Black Bean Tostadas

2010-04-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

from Luz's DeColonial Cooking Club

OK! Let's build on the success of the chili beans and do another bean dish.

Black Bean Tostadas

2 cups dried black beans
1 onion finely diced
3 cloves garlic, diced

Spices
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. dark chocolate powder (I used dagoba brand, it is fancy and organic, you can use another kind if you can't find dagoba...they sell it at upscale markets and some fancy health food stores like whole foods)

Tostada shells (Guerrero or Los Pericos some other legit. Mexican brand, not taco bell!)

Toppings
2 cups finely sliced romaine lettuce (more nutritious than iceberg)
1 cup grated queso cotija (or other cheese)
1 tomato diced
2 avocados, sliced
Salsa (buy a good pre-made salsa from the store)
Organic sour cream (optional)

Saute onions and garlic in 2 TBSP olive oil until the onion is translucent. Add spices and stir for one minute.

Add to crock pot along with beans. Fill crock pot 1/2 full with water. Let cook all day. Check to make sure beans don't dry out. For the tostadas, you don't want the beans to come out too soupy so don't add TOO much water!

About ONE hour before you want to serve dinner. Turn OFF the crock pot and use a potato masher to mash the beans. Taste the beans for salt and add at least 2 tsp of salt, maybe more. The beans should not taste bland. If the beans are still a bit too soupy, let the beans set with the crock OFF for an hour. This will let them set up and get thicker (If they are already thick enough, you can skip this step).

To serve, smear beans on tostada and let everyone put the toppings that they like! YUM!

Luz's Healthy Three-Bean Chili

2010-04-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

from Luz's DeColonial Cooking Club

1 onion
3 cloves garlic

Spice Mix (make it yourself)
1 TBSP Paprika
1 TSP Ground Cumin
1 TSP Dried Oregano
1 TSP Ground Coriander
2 whole chipotle peppers (dried)
1/2 TSP Cinnamon

1 cup dried pinto beans
1 cup dried small red beans
1 cup dried black beans

Organic Vegetable Broth (or just water)
I large can chopped tomatoes

Toppings: Cheddar cheese, cilantro, avocado

Chop onions and garlic and saute in 1 TBSP olive oil until translucent (about 10 minutes). Add herbs and stir gently to get the onions/garlic mixture coated with the herbs and the flavor/smell is released (a few minutes).

Sort and rinse beans. Add beans, onion mixture, tomatoes, and broth to the crock pot. Then add enough water that it is about 3/4 full.

Cook ALL DAY. Check at some point to make sure that there is enough water (The beans soak up the water and it is important that you mixture does not dry out or it won't cook.

LAST THING: Once the beans are tender ADD SALT to taste. You will need at least 1 TBSP but probably more. Remove whole chipotle peppers.

Serve chili beans topped with grated cheese, cilantro, and slices of avocado.

HEALTH BENEFITS:

Small red bean: Purported to have highest antioxidants than any other food!--

Oregano: Of all the dried herbs, oregano has one of the highest antioxidant levels. Just one teaspoon of dried oregano leaves has as many antioxidants as three ounces of almonds and ½ cup of chopped asparagus.
Oregano:

Cooked tomatoes: Cooked tomatoes have a high level of lycopene, which fights heart disease and many types of cancer.

La Comida es Medicina!

Luz's DeColonial Cooking Club

2010-04-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

My students want to learn how to cook easy, healthy meals for themselves and their friends. To help them out, I will post at least one recipe a week.

pumpkin posole recipe

2010-01-01T18:51:00.000-08:00

New Year's Day Pumpkin Posole

Ingredients
8 tomatillos
2 onions
4 cloves garlic
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
5 Roasted Green NM Chiles
Cumin
Oregano
Nutmeg
1 pumpkin
1 package of dried posole

(roast chiles in 400 degree oven until starting to turn black at the edges)

Toast pumpkin seeds until they puff up and then grind them in molcajete.

Using blender, blend roasted vegetables, ground pumpkin seeds, and 5 deseeded roasted green chiles with one cup water.

Fry sauce in 2 tbsp olive oil and simmer for an hour or more. Season with fresh group cumin (1 tsp), oregano 1 tsp, a dash of freshly grated nutmeg, and 1 tablespoon salt.

Rub pumpkin with olive oil, salt, and cumin. Roast pumpkin in strips for 45 minutes. Let pumpkin cool and remove skin. Cut into bite sized cubes.

In crock pot, cook posole overnight in veg. broth. In morning, rinse posole. Blend green chile sauce with cilantro (use blender). The sauce is now bright green. Put sauces, pumpkin, and posole in crock pot. Add additional broth to get it to the right soupiness. Adjust seasonings (it will probably need more salt!) Heat until it is piping hot.

Serves with garnishes: cilantro, green onions, radishes, cabbage, queso cotija, mexican oregano...

Turn of the Year

2009-12-31T10:06:00.000-08:00

I am out in the backyard with the chickens and the neighbzie's cat. It's been a partly cloudy day so far. I came out here first thing even before my coffee. The ostensible reason was that one of the hens (little sister?) ate one of her eggs yesterday, so we want to make sure we take them out of the coop after they lay. (Of course, we also increased her calcium with some oyster shells.) But the other part was just that once I got myself out of the house, it looks like a very good day indeed.

A little too much trust-building for me: Little sister was in the nesting box and big sister was acting kind of lonely (and maybe I was too) so I picked her up and held her in my lap. About five minutes later, Bender the neighbz cat comes strolling up to us. He didn't act at all afraid of the chicken. He used to, you know. He used to squawk to the neighbz when they got too close to the chickens "Watch out! they'll peck out your eyes! Get away from those chickens!" This time he seemed more interested in coming over and being petted. This made me nervous, so I lossed the hen so she could flap and scare Bender off. He didn't run away but he expressed no interest in the chicken either. And right about then, Malucho came outside because I was having too much fun wiht the chickens out here.

I've been a bit blue since x-mas. But I talked with the loquera yesterday and then talked with Malucho and am feeling a lot better. Especially because Malucho pointed out that we can be doing things differently. We can do for other people instead of isolating ourselves, and we've done that too. Sie also reminded me of our x-mases in Ohio which were also depressing, as a way of showing that we need to make our own traditions.

Also, I think New Year's Day is really our holiday. It's not associated with anything else (other than football)--there's no long family tradition that we have to try to uphold or even any grand expectations that won't be met. We don't have to make it happen on another day to accommodate someone else's family. Malucho and I held our first New Year's Day pozole brunch back in...1998? I think. We were in Felton. It was pouring buckets of rain, the San Lorenzo river was eating at the cliffside and while we had Malucho's familia over the sherriff stopped by to see that we were okay.

There's some things I regret about the time we lived in Felton: that I wasn't more sympathetic to our landlady, and her struggles. That I took a fellowship that took me away from my love. That I left hir alone in an even more complicated living situation. But some of the memories I treasure are include listening to salsa while washing down the walls and the floors before moving in. Making mochi in the oven and eating it with nuts and honey. Bringing home mxi the kitten and naming her. (Malucho really wanted to name her Piojo). Socializing the two cats to get along. The wonderful yard in good weather. We would have our coffee outside in the sun, like Malucho had used to do in Bonny Doon. Even our stealth home improvement like replacing the commode and and painting the bathroom pink.

On this cloudy day in our yard in Fruitvale it feels like the best day's there. Except here the little shack is being retrofitted to be a hen house, and all the greenery will actually produce food.

When I got the chickens out this morning there was one cold egg, obviously laid last night. Little sister was acting oddly, se kept trying to settle into flower pots, so I suspected she was the one who had not yet laid. (The other night I dreamt that the chickens had secretly been laying their brown eggs in a terracotta flower pot, and they had acquired quite a stash.) I tidied up the coop and put fresh bedding in the nesting box, and she finally settled in there and quietly did her thing.

I gave the girls a big scoop of "live feed" from the worm bins. More than they wanted really. But I just want to make sure they're getting everything they need.

sick soup

2009-10-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

When we are sick our old go-to is called Sick Soup. It's a basic vegetable broth with celery, carrots, and rice. Usually lots of rice, so that it's almost a porridge, congee, or jook. It's easy on the tummy, doesn't irritate mucus membranes, and can sit on the stove all day. You can add potatoes, too, unless rice and potatoes doesn't seem kosher to you.

Well, Malucho has been on fire in the cooking department lately. Black bean chile, Lentil soup with portabella mushrooms. Black bean and sweet potato burritos.

We've both been "coming down with something" for a week now, and today it is full-fledged, with coughing, sniffling, wheezing, fatigue, and dehydration. No fever, though, which seems weird.

So I was thinking a batch of sick soup was in order. Now mind you, it was a beautiful day in Oakland today. And Malucho is a pretty active little guy who hates to be sick. So sie kept escaping to the back yard, where I would find hir raking the soil under the chicken tractor or weeding something.

When sie started thinking about tonight's dinner, sie did a little prep work so that the broth would be nice and rich. onions, carrots, celery, garlic, as usual. Fresh zapotec tomatoes from the garden. vegetable broth. Oregano from the herb spiral.

So I was thinking, it's going to have more color than our usual sick soup, but sie's just gonna throw in two cups of rice and that'll be it.

Well, that is not what happened. What happened was that Malucho reaped some of the bounty of November garden in northern Calfornia. Squash blossoms. Verdolagas. A blender was employed. Tortilla strips were fried. Another ziplock bag was taken from the stash of New Mexican green chile (2009).

Aside: this green chile has been been appearing in quite a few meals, lately. Usually never enough to make the dish picoso, but it adds a lot of character to different dishes.

The final soup was beautifully golden, as if it were mostly butternut or carrot, and richly flavored. I can only imagine the wonderful nutrients it brings to our tired bodies. It was flavorful, delightful, heady stuff. I am truly blessed. I think the tortilla strips, place it in the Sopa Azteca category. I'm calling it Bronze Warrior Soup. It was garnished with sliced avocado.

I can't show you a picture because we ate it all, every last drop. Used a rubber spatula to scrape the pot clean.

Bartered: One Cow

2009-07-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

This is not really a post about a cow. We haven't gone all Novella Carpenter on you and leapt into large livestock. No, this is really a post about beans. In our garden, and in our pot.

Now, we love our beans. Malucho cooks the most delicious beans. And we have recently discovered those yummy heritage beans like Scarlet Runner beans, Appaloosa Beans, Anasazi Beans, Yellow Indian Woman Beans, Snow-Capped Beans, and so forth. Some of these are sold by Rancho Gordo, and others are available at a local market in Rockridge.

The really interesting thing is that a lot of them cook up a lot like pintos, but also a teeny bit different.

These bean experiences have us ruminating upon the hegemony of the pinto. Aurora Levins Morales writes of the potato,

Tuber of three thousand forms, you remind us that there are always more choices, more unexplored paths, is always more potential than we can imagine from the present moment.

Her argument is that while the modern "potato" is a brown-skinned white fleshed tuber, the people of the Andes brought forth a profusion of "varieties perfected for [each] combination of sun and soil and water…come in white and yellow, purple and red, orange and brown." Levins Morales suggest that the Irish Potato Famine was a result the European farming methods which prefer uniformity over diversity. While our very expensive farmer's market sell blue potatoes whose color goes all the way through, the white-fleshed potato rules the marketplace.

And so the humble bean. We grew up thinking that the pinto was "the" Mexican bean, little realizing that there were once hundreds of beans available, each suited to its combination of sun and soil, altitude and water. That while they may look similar, each one is a little different, has its own knack and flair.

Malucho's dad used to tell us about his tía-cousins, Connie, Cuca, and Concha, who had many different ways of cooking beans and different names for them al, not just de olla and refritos. Chinitos was one. (Does your family have these? Tell us here so we can recover them!) Distinctions that we have lost or forgotten.

Ruben Cobos, in his dictionary of New Mexican Spanish lists candelilla, as the word for the way the sun sparkles on the snow.

We need to re-learn some of the different words for bean.

I'm reminded of Essex Hemphill's poem on black beans, which concludes:

Let the beans burn all night long.
Our chipped water glasses are filled
with wine from our loving.
And the burnt black beans--
caviar.

These are Scarlet Runner Beans from Malucho's garden. They have passed the green-bean crunching stage and are ready to be dried for the bean pot. They are truly magic beans, worth trading any number of cows.

Companion planting

2009-06-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

Companion Planting is the idea that certain plants benefit from being next to some other plant. I usually google to find information about what plants make good companions.

Perhaps the most famous companion planting combination is "Three Sisters"—corn, beans, and squash. This year, my modified three sisters planting has fava beans, corn, chayote, zucchini, and a gaggle of volunteer tomatoes. At this point, they are all getting along quite well!

I have other pairings based on the principles of companion planting:

Strawberries and Chives

Chiles and Petunias

Raspberries and Borage

I'm not sure if it is really "working," but I rest easier knowing that all my plants have one or two (or more!) suitable companions. Polyamory in the garden.

Bath time!

2009-06-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

It's the end of the day, the sun is going down and the chickens are happily taking a dirt bath in the back of the garden....

They look like morels...

2009-06-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

They smell delicious and earthy like morels...

but I'm not 100% sure and I don't know anything about identifying mushrooms.

What to do?

They grew out of the playground chips we bought from the nice folks at Stop Waste....

Pops of Yellow

2009-06-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

I found the rails of a crib discarded on the side of the road and carried them home.

I painted them canary yellow. They now provide a back drop to my Jerusalem artichokes and marigolds.

Nastertiums, lemons, and sunflowers:

The Kindness of Strangers

2009-06-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

Our garden contains the blessings of random acts of kindness.

Example #1: Here's how we came by our beautiful chicken tractor. I was driving somewhere in Alameda. I can't even recall what street or area since I am not that familiar with neighborhoods there. We'd only had our chickens a short while but it was clear their small coop didn't give them enough room to roam. And, while we like to free range them, this can only happen when they are being supervised (for their safety and the safety of our flowers and veggies. Ahem.) Anyway, I'm driving along and I see a chicken tractor on the side of the road. At least I thought it was a chicken tractor. I pull over, OF COURSE. Out comes a lady. Sheepishly, I ask "Are you giving this away? Is it a chicken tractor?" Not only was the answer affirmative on both counts (score!), she even offered to deliver it to our house in her truck. And, when I arrived home from my errands, there on our driveway was our new chicken tractor. So, there you go. So sweet. Thank you, kind chicken lady. (For those of you not in the know, a chicken tractor can be moved from location to location so that the chickens can work the land, pull weeds, leave manure.) Here is a photo of the tractor which is parked at our neighbors' house this week, because they have better weeds than we do:

Example #2: I bought home a pot of Brugmansia from the Lake Merritt Free Plant Exchange a few months back. It is doing great and I can't wait until it grows larger and blooms. I think is such a magical plant, which BTW, dates back to the Aztecs. Anyway, tucked in the pot—as a surprise—is the most beautiful orange calla lily. How sweet is that?

The Radishes That Got Away

2009-06-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

So, I've been using the square foot gardening method in three of my raised beds. I have two square feet devoted to radishes.

I planted each square foot of radishes several weeks apart: 16 radishes per square feet.

We've found it a challenge to incorporate that many radishes into our diet. So, while we were eating away at the first 16 radishes...(finally harvested the last two for our salad last night)....it seems that the other square foot has gone insane, producing freakishly large radishes.

I guess it will take some practice to get in the hang of harvesting veggies when they are small and delectable. Meanwhile, Ktrion is considering pickling the large radishes....

and up from the ground come a bubbling brew...

2009-06-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

No, I didn't strike oil in my backyard, but I did build a bubbling brewer for compost tea, or in this case, worm tea.

Let me start with the worm tea story. I became a ranch wrangler last September.

Although ordering the worm bin from Waste Management of Alameda County was pretty straightforward, getting the red wrigglers themselves was a rather sketchy affair with secret meetings in the parking lot of a bakery in San Leandro.

Following the worm dealer's advice, I put all this shredded newspaper (soaked for 24 hours) in for bedding, and I'm still finding hard pulpy bits of it. I much prefer the coconut (coir) bedding that came with bin. The worms didn't seem very excited about the whole relocation scheme and I didn't see much of them.

We went through a period of overfeeding them, then we went through a period of drenching them. This happened because we had long heard of the virtues of "worm tea," and since the bottom-most tray of the worm bin has a little tap to release liquid, we thought this liquid was the magic worm tea of which had heard tell. Thus followed the idea that by watering the worms more often this would increase our harvest of worm tea.

After which, there was an unfortunate incident involving worms who were unable to swim, and the whole worm tea quest was called off.

Until now.

Now, we know that compost tea, or worm tea, requires aeration, food, and some time. However, it can be easily brewed in a 5 gallon bucket with an aquarium pump and an air stone. The elaborate plans were provided by Deuley and confirmed in the Toolbox for Sustainable City Living book.

So now about two cups worth worm casings is bouncing along in a bubbling vat of dechlorinated water, with some molasses. The batch will be ready in the morning, and Malucho will begin spraying it on her soil.

Watch for more updates from the bubbling brewmeister.

See also this eerily similar post from Gamine's Garden. We didn't read this first, although I did copy the hyperlink to Deuley's. It must just be synchronicity.

Tacos de Nopales y Verdolagas

2009-06-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

This is a good time to harvest paddles off the nopal, while they are still fresh and tender.

I started this nopal several years ago from a paddle I bought in the food section at Berkeley Bowl. I just stuck the paddle in the ground and about a year later it started producing new paddles. I love the way people in Oakland grow nopales. More than a healthy, delicious food, the nopal is also, often, a work of art, sculpted at the hands of the gardener/artist over decades. My own nopal is still small by Oakland standards but I expect it to be at least 6 feet tall within a few years. When I choose which cactus paddles to harvest, I am mindful of the aesthetic choices I am making. With any luck, I will have a balanced, quirky nopal sculpture in the years ahead.

For the past few weeks, verdolagas (wild purslane) has been popping up all over Oakland and we have several patches growing in our own front yard. We've been eating the verdolagas raw in salads but tonight I wilted them on the grill, and it came out great.

These are the verdolagas growing as "weeds" in our front yard:

The way I like to prepare nopales is to cut them into thin strips and then remove the spines. I toss the strips with salt, pepper, and olive oil.

I love the taste of nopalitos cooked on the grill. I get my grill very hot and proceed to cook the nopales until they are charred on the outside and tender on the inside.

I served the nopalitos and verdolagas with hot corn tortillas, guacamole, lime, grated queso fresco, radishes, snap peas, and lettuce. I let everyone make their own tacos. Lil J—our 15 year old family friend—ate 4 tacos (so did I!).

Nopales and verdolagas are traditional foods of Mexican and indigenous peoples of the Americas. Both Ktrion and I grew up hearing about these foods; however, having been raised in the "hamburger helper" generation, we did not eat such foods on a regular basis. Now, of course, we realize the importance of reclaiming the old ways and we are trying to educate ourselves about traditional Mexican foodways.

An informative article in Mother Earth News describes the nutritional content of verdolagas as "...uncommonly good for you. It tops the list of plants high in vitamin E and an essential omega-3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Purslane provides six times more vitamin E than spinach and seven times more beta carotene than carrots. It’s also rich in vitamin C, magnesium, riboflavin, potassium and phosphorus.Omega-3s are a class of polyunsaturated essential fatty acids. Your body cannot manufacture essential fatty acids, so you must get them from food. Unfortunately, the typical American diet contains too few omega-3s, a shortage that is linked to a barrage of illnesses including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. "

And, because wild purslane grows as a weed, all we have to be able to do is recognize it when it appears in our garden in early summer months. We don't have to buy it, water it, or even save its seeds.

Looking back

2009-06-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

Malucho and I are mostly not the kind of people who document our lives through photographs. All of our photographs seem to have been taken by our friends and family, who then give us copies.

Malucho's mom was here this weekend, and she brought us pictures from Easter and Mother's Day and we were amazed at how much the garden has grown just since April. The herb spiral is now crowned with a halo of lavender. The quinoa is as tall as malucho, the once empty beds are now full of trellised scarlet runner beans. and now we know why they're called "scarlet runner beans." One sunflower has unfurled its pale petals and many others are just on the verge.

We were both saying how much we enjoy the curly little tendrils (or "tentacles," as I like to call them) sent out by the chayote, the beans, and the passion flower. Malucho has been twining them around trellises, wires, and hemp cord to expand their grasp.

I spied an oriole yesterday while I was reading on the deck. It was in the neighbor's dwarf peach. It flew above our roof, and then my attention was back to the tree where another oriole appeared. So this morning, Malucho was out there setting out orange halves to lure them to the fence.

In the garden pest department, Malucho is being challenged by the ants, hormigas, and so she is trying several treatments: diatomaceous earth, borax baits. We haven't many slugs, and when we find them, we run delightedly to feed them to the grateful chickens. (We joke that the chickens refer to malucho as "SHE who brings snails and worms from above.")

Speaking of food from above...there was something really odd on the soil in one of the beds about a week ago. It looked like dough. First it looked like foam, and then it looked like dough, and it smelled kind of yeasty. Malucho scooped it up, and it was parked in limbo in a dish between the worm bin and the compost heap while we tried to decide what to do with it. It finally went into the compost.

I have never heard of such a thing before, have you? Unless it was manna from heaven.

Herb Spiral

2009-05-28T22:23:00.001-07:00

Now that the Lavender is in bloom the herb spiral is looking more majestic.

Starting at the top: Lavender, Lemon Verbena, Sage, Trailing Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano, Zatar, Chamomile, Flat leave parsley, Parsley Aphrodite, Trailing Germander, Violas, Cilantro, Bee Balm, Borage, Mojito Mint, Persian Mint and a volunteer CA poppy! Not everything has grown, some are just barely sprouting....I'm hoping that once the rest of the herbs grow, the spiral will be completely full of green, life-sustaining, tasty herbs.

The theory of the herb spiral is this: Put the herbs that need well-drained soil at the top and the ones that need lots of moisture on the bottom. Put herbs that need more sun on the sunny side. Water at the top and the water will spiral down to the bottoms. Some people put a little pond at the bottom of the spiral.

The spiral makes use of vertical space, so there is room for LOTS of different plants.

Our spiral is constructed out of broken clay roof tiles that I bought from Urban Ore.

Herbs have many anti-cancer properties, so I try to grab a fistful and put them in my tea infusions, scrambled eggs, salads, crock pot beans, etc.

Here is a view of the entire herb spiral:

Here is a photo of the Hyssop:

Edible violas provide a pop of color:

Chamomile in bloom:

Coyolxauqui dancing next to the Hyssop:

Garden Spring 2009

2009-05-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

Chicken Coop: The First Incarnation

2009-05-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

While Malucho recharges the camera, I thought I should post this early photo, from last fall. I think maybe August. I was on CraigsList and saw someone offering a rabbit hutch for sale.

I brought it home, and Malucho gave it a pretty thorough makeover, though you can't necessarily see all the details.

She dismantled the entire coop (back down to lumber), power-washed it, stained it, added panels all around to contain the bedding and offer some protection. She painted all of these, cut two more plywood panels to cover the wire on the floor of the coop, so as to prevent drafts and to give the chicks something comfy to walk on, stained those and added handles for easy removal, installed hooks and eyes to latch the lid shut.

One thing that works really well about this set-up is that it's easy to clean. I flip open the lid, get out my little green bucket (the one provided by the city for my kitchen waste) scoop the pine shavings and chicken poop out, using one of those spatulas designed for kitty litter. The stained plywood bottom gives me a smooth clean surface so I can scrape off any crustiness. It takes about five minutes to clean it all out, and then put in fresh pine bedding. I empty the bucket into the compost, go back to the coop and pull out the metal tray underneath, that catches the stuff that slips through between the two bottoms, that's not quite another bucket full. Add that to the compost, and we have a clean coop.

Sometimes I leave the lid open while the chickens are out playing, to air it all out. Sometimes I tie sprigs of pigweed or dandelion greens from the wires inside, for their later dining pleasure.

I've noticed that if the chickens are in the coop while the lid is open, they then get VERY spooked if I close the lid. I think it means they think there's a hawk swooping down on them.

The coop didn't stay looking this way for too long: Malucho re-tooled the whole thing again, but we're waiting on those photos.

Why Queermaculture? Ktrion's take.

2009-05-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

Because reading The Omnivore's Dilemma makes me roll my eyes at the re-glorification of American manhood. (ditto Escape and World War Z). Because Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a lesson in compulsory heterosexuality.

Because we want to attract birds, bees, butterflies, and fairies. Because queer community makes the world go 'round. Because Brown is the new Green. Because anti-cancer plants are an organizing principal in our garden and herb spiral. Because you can get female trees with male branches grafted on. Queer, baby!

Compost

2009-05-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

Ktrion scored us a brand new Smith and Hawkin's compost bin on Craig's List. Now we have two, one for new compost ("feed me") and one for compost that is further along. We'll harvest out of the second bin, while we feed the first. I've never understood how people get to use their compost if they are continually feeding their pile. Anyway, I'm hopeful that our new system will provide us with a bounty of rich, dark, crumbly earth.

While Ktrion went to Castro Valley to pick up the Craig's list find, I built us a a make-shift shed out of a few pallets we had in the garage. The shed will provide shade for the two compost bins.

Bonus: the blue paint provides a nice back drop to my potted plants.

Before

2009-05-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of what our back area looked like in December 2008. The retaining wall was failing and the concrete was in the process of being removed.

Ktrion's dad provided directions on how to use a hammer to find the "sweet spot" so the concrete would break in two.

Our back area—once ugly concrete— is now home to the following plants: A Meyer Lemon tree, Santa Rosa Weeping Plum tree, Kumquat tree, Fruiting Rose, Passion flower vine, Ceonothus, Nopal, Yarrow, Tree Collard, Lilac, Rue, Spanish Lavender, Borage, and clover. And, now, it feels alive. All this in about 6 months! It's going to be cool to see what it looks like in another year, when the trees begin to grow. If all goes as planned, the passion flower vine will cover the back fence and give us a bit of privacy from the neighbors in the back.

Red Clover

2009-05-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

The red clover we planted under the new plum tree is doing a great job of attracting bees. It is also suppressing weeds, keeping the soil moist, and when we turn it under, it will provide nitrogen to the soil. The chickens graze on it occasionally, too. So, yes, we think it is working out pretty well so far. We're a bit unclear, though, about when to turn it under and start a new crop.

Attracting Orioles

2009-05-21T11:32:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, in an effort to attract orioles to our oriole feeder, I sliced an orange in half and screwed it to the top board of an old fence. Inspired by Pluck and Feather's mom's teacup bird feeder, I took a old wood salad bowl, glued it to the fence, and filled it with water. Voila! A bird bath.

NetEvangelizing the QueermaCult

2009-05-20T22:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight I cooked dinner, which I rarely do: Malucho is the Top Chef. I'm usually sous chef or clean up crew. I made a frittata with chard and feta and a small onion. When Malucho makes it, we call it "Chardakopia" because it's like spanokpita but with chard instead of phyllo dough. (recipe came from our old neighbor). I did it from a cookbook, but with a few (ill-advised) shortcuts: I didn't clean the kitchen first, I didn't chop the chard small enough, and I had the heat on the stove turned up way too high. (nearly burned the onions) One funny thing is that Malucho always beats the eggs in this cute little "chile bowls" we have and so i did that too, even though there were really too many eggs for that size bowl. It was yummy though: those delicioso eggs can be very forgiving.

Malucho took a couple of slices over to new neighbors J&K. When I was on the deck this afternoon, I got to hear their hammers bringing down the roof, along with Cuban guy's drumming. It really is the music of our neighborhood and made me very happy.

One thing I have to watch out for is trying to drag all my friends into the permaCult. And getting carried away. Fortunately I have mountains of grading to do right now, so other then getting a second composter tomorrow, I can't start any new projects.

But I eye the empty yard next door and fantasize about goats. Cute silly goats.

Later this summer I'll be taking a "beneficial beasts in the garden" class at Merritt College. I really want bees. Ever I read Sue Hubbell's A Country Year and Broadsides from the Other Orders.

What I planted this season

2009-05-20T22:24:00.000-07:00

Chayote, Zucchini, Tomatoes, Fava Beans, Scarlet Runner Beans, Spaghetti Squash, Quinoa, Sunflowers, Sunchokes, Basil, Parsley, Beets, Carrots, Radishes, Quelites, New Mexico Green Chile, Jalapeños, Habaneros, Eggplant, Bell Peppers, Peas, Arugula, Chard, Strawberries, Chives, Mesclun lettuces....

The chayote is doing awesome. Everyone tells me to watch out...that one plant can grow huge and take over an entire yard. I'm not worried about that, though. I can eat a lot of chayote and my garden looks mostly bare and too controlled. I'd love to have something that looks a bit excessive.

I'm also really excited about my beans. The favas are already flowering with beautiful white flowers and purple centers. The scarlet runner beans are running out of space to grow. Next year, I will provide a much taller trellis.

My eggplants and peppers aren't flourishing and look a bit straggly. I'll coddle them along and hope they take off.