Green Gal

This evening I attended a talk by Joel Salatin at the Santa Cruz Rio Theatre. I had heard of Joel Salatin through the Mother Earth News magazine, which I’ve been reading thanks to Green Guy’s step-mom and dad who have been passing their read copies along to us. Salatin works for PolyFace Farm in Virginia , where he not only grows food and raises animals (among many other things), but in his words, approaches his farmland, plants, and animals as one would a lover—caressing, caring for, and loving them so that they will be happy and thrive. He made a point to explain that he’s a romantic, a poet, and that even to use the word sunlight is too scientific for his liking. He prefers sunbeams, and I have to agree. Joel Salatin ( Image source ) Thus, in addition to being a stellar farmer, he’s funny and poetic, and he had the audience laughing and smiling throughout the evening. But within and between his jokes, which featured many imitations, funny faces, and metaphors, Salatin tol...

I've been so busy trying new things and experiencing life that I haven't posted here since early February! Today, I'll share about the garden and some other odds and ends from the past two months. It's been raining a lot here in California thanks to El Niño. Above is the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz, full of water gushing toward the bay. This is a very welcome sight to us all in California, but we have to remember that one wet season does not solve a years-long drought on its own. The nasturtiums in my yard have been enjoying the rainy weather and have grown numerous beautiful yellow and orange flowers. In fact, the nasturtiums have somewhat taken over the garden! I got a bike trailer back in December, and I finally used it recently to go to the garden store. Now I can transport soil and heavy items up to 100 pounds without using a car! It's amazing how light items feel when they're in a bike trailer versus on the bike rack and especially when compar...

This morning I share with you an ode, a poem, a painting in sounds that I wrote on January 27th after biking home from a Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition San Jose Team meeting. "Tonight's City Symphony" On two wheeled journeys through this City's streets I hear a symphony of sounds, sounds muffled by car doors and windows, so that perhaps many do not know what they sound like, really. So I will tell you what I've heard, so you can listen, too. The murmur of freeways crossed under and over, they hum and buzz, white noise that doesn't go away but fades and grows as you move between neighborhoods. The creaking and rumbling of light rail trains, reminding you with a bell that they are on the move; watch out for their tire-eating tracks! The honking and revving of cars passing by--sometimes louder and closer than you want. Yikes! An airplane's thunder and light show in the sky; brake to a stop and experience it through your sky without a roof. The...

Last Saturday, we brewed our second homebrew, a red ale using all organic ingredients from Seven Bridges Organic Brewing Supply in Santa Cruz. This time, we are fermenting it in a 6-gallon glass carboy instead of plastic fermenting bucket, and the results are way more fun because we can see the activity! To go along with our all-organic ingredients, I also began reading Sustainable Homebrewing: An All-Organic Approach to Crafting Great Beer by Amelia Slayton Loftus. You'll notice that the individually wrapped packages on the table aren't the most sustainable, so as we get better at this and begin designing our own recipes, we can begin buying in bulk and reduce waste. Maybe someday we'll even grow our own hops!  The malted barley grains after steeping.  The red ale brewing on the stove!  The view of our backyard orange tree through the backdoor while brewing. Shortly after this photo was taken on Saturday, the gardener came and pruned the tree, so the...

Today we bottled our first batch of homebrewed beer, an American Pale Ale. You can read about our experience brewing it a few weeks ago here . The first thing we did was read the directions that came with our kit from Brewer's Best, which told us to boil two cups of water and then add the 5 oz of priming sugar that came with our kit. We boiled the sugar water for five minutes, and then added it to our bottling bucket, which we had sanitized with StarSan earlier. Everything has to be sanitary for brewing beer to go well, so we had Star San on hand throughout the entire bottling process. Priming sugar is used when bottling beer to create some fermentation to occur inside the capped bottle which causes the beer to become carbonated. Then we popped the lid off of our fermenting bucket. The smell of beer emanated from this dark liquid--our beer! First we siphoned the beer from this fermenting bucket into our bottling bucket.    We left behind the trub, or nasty hops and ...

"We can become creators of a better world, of better and more sustainable food choices, of greater awareness of resources, and of community based upon sharing. For culture to be strong and resilient, it must be a creative realm in which skills, information, and values are engaged and transmitted; culture cannot thrive as a consumer paradise or a spectator sport. Daily life offers constant opportunities for participatory action. Seize them." - Sandor Katz, The Art of Fermentation Last Monday evening, I combined equal parts flour and water into a bowl and mixed them into a thick paste. I knew they were equal parts because I weighed them on a small digital scale I recently purchased specifically for that purpose. I set the bowl's lid on top of its rim, slightly ajar so that air could get through, and placed it on the table near our home's central heater. The next evening, around the same time, I weighed out equal parts water and flour, added them to the mixture, a...

This year's theme for me so far has been experimenting with new things, including making beer, growing my own sourdough starter for baking bread, and exploring new recipes for dinner! This week, I tried three new recipes and want to share them with you so you can try them, too! Roasted Red Pepper Pasta Original recipe is available here from Minimalist Baker . I added a couple mini portabella mushrooms and used three small shallots instead of two regular sized ones. I also didn't add almond milk. After I roasted the red peppers, they looked like this.  So glad to have a Magic Bullet now so I can make sauces like this. Thanks Mom!  Thanks also to my Mom for the spiral veggie peeler so I can make noodles out of veggies! The pasta turned out really yummy! It would be delicious served in a bread bowl and with additional veggies.  Sweet and Spicy Baked Honey Sriracha Chicken Original recipe is available here from Chef Savvy .    ...