2014 resolution update - July

This is the first year that I've made a concerted effort to work on actually completing my resolutions for the year. Perhaps it's because I didn't aim too high and made them realistic. Here's an update on how I'm doing at the halfway point in the year.

Mind
Read 75 books.
Today I will finish book #46, so I'm well on my way to that goal. I do have to get the sub-goals in of finishing Margaret Atwood's canon (6 more books) and one Russian door-stop novel. I've been reading a lot of books that are part of a series, so I end up going through the series and it delays my next choices. Even if I don't hit the sub-goals, I will still read more this year than in any year since graduate school. I'm also reading in genres outside of my comfort zone, which is pretty cool. (I am a total graphic novel and comic convert.)

Write letters on three issues to my elected representatives.
I haven't done another one since this post on the DARK Act. I need to get on that. I might write next about funding to reduce hunger.

Body
Run a marathon.
I'm in my 8th week of a 23 week training schedule. (Most plans are 18 weeks, but I am drawing mine out due to previous injuries and lingering issues with my IT bands.) Last week's long run was 13 miles, and it was the first time I ran that far when it wasn't a race, and only my fourth time at that distance at all. It was quite honestly one of the most difficult runs I've ever had - humid and disgusting outside, dehydrated big time. Everything was screaming at me to stop, and even though I had to walk more than I had hoped, I finished. (Which was really only because of the two awesome ladies I run with.) 

It's been good to be on a training schedule and to be following it. I've put in 246 miles so far this year and that number is about to go way up because it's going to get hard soon - after the holiday weekend we bump up to 15 miles for a long run and I go into distance territory that my body has never traveled. It's an adventure, this marathon training. Don't forget, I'm posting photos on Instagram under the hashtag #yearofthemarathon in case you want to follow along on the adventure.

Drink 64 ounces of water a day.
I really need to kick this into high gear during this marathon training, because even though I do drink water constantly, I am always fighting being dehydrated in this weather. And I was doing some research this week that dehydration while running can also increase your heart rate, which is something I'm hyper sensitive to as an asthmatic.

Home
Start my home brew kombucha.
Done and done. Completely knocked this one out of the park, and it might be the coolest thing I accomplished this year (unless I do complete the marathon, that is). Read about it here. 

Sew a t-shirt quilt.
Making slow progress on this one. I finished cutting all of the squares for my quilt this weekend. (I'm technically getting materials together for two, planning to start with my own quilt to get the hang of it before I do Mark's.) Now it's time to fire up my grandma's sewing machine, which will hopefully happen in July.

Can one new thing.
Technically I've met this goal with our strawberry vanilla jam, a variant I hadn't made before. But since I think the spirit of this was for me to do something entirely new, I won't count this done yet. But it will be full on canning season in the next couple months.

Plant a bee-friendly flower garden.
Didn't really get around to planting specifically bee-friendly plants, but we definitely have more flowers this year compared to last, which is at least a step in the right direction.

Make the chickens some treats.
I actually completely forgot about this one, so this is a good reminder. Perhaps because of the heat and humidity, I'll make something that's refreshing for them.

Organize the basement.
The basement has stayed relatively organized since we transitioned one side of it to a work area for Mark. I still have a few things I'd like to do down there, especially to get a root cellar ready for later this year. But it's better than it used to be (at least when Stormy and Vader don't knock food bowls all over the place).

How are you doing on your goals for 2014? Share them in the comments!

movie review: the garden

While I was perusing the documentaries on Netflix recently, I found a short one about the attempt to save an urban garden. It wasn't spectacular as far as documentaries go, but the events it concerned made me want to find out more. In doing a little research, I realized a longer documentary was done on the events - a film that was nominated in 2009 for an Academy Award for best documentary. So I ordered it from our library and checked it out.

The Garden is the story of an urban garden/farm that occupied 14 acres smack in the middle of South Central Los Angeles, an area that had been ravaged after the Rodney King riots in 1992. The farm had 350 plots, which provided food for families, most of which were low income. It was like an oasis of earth and growth surrounded by concrete and urban decay.

The documentary goes into the history and timeline in more depth, but basically the city of Los Angeles decided to sell the land that the farm occupied in a back room deal for drastically less than fair market value to the owner who had lost the land to eminent domain laws 15 years before. The farmers had been on the land because the city let them - they had no formal agreement. The owner decided he didn't want the farm on the land and tried to have them evicted.

A legal fight ensued. I won't tell you exactly what happened because the documentary tells it powerfully, but it wasn't good. It was another tale of the rich and powerful using the government like puppets to advance their own desires, regardless of the needs of the community. 

It seems to me that governments should be doing anything they can to support groups who want to reclaim urban spaces that have been left to decay, particularly those that can be turned into gardens that feed people. I see a lot of rhetoric about low income families needing to "help themselves" - and this is a classic case of people who try to do just that and get thwarted by the roadblocks of power and money. 

The Garden left me wondering how willing I'd be to chain myself to a fence and be arrested if someone was trying to bulldoze the way I provided for my family. How much would I fight? Do we listen to those who do, or do we assume they are just disturbing the peace? This is a great documentary, especially for people who are interested in issues of economic justice and community activism, as well as urban agriculture. Definitely worth a watch, even if it leaves you unsettled (which is kind of the point anyway, right?).

Real Life CSA: week 11

More new stuff this week, including probably my favorite produce item on the planet...strawberries.

It's a widely known fact that I'm obsessed with local strawberries. I grew up eating my grandma's strawberry shortcake as a meal (hello, it's too good to be just a dessert) with berries from their garden. Nothing beats the tiny berries that grow in western PA in the month of June. (Full disclosure, these guys were super ripe bordering on spoiled when we got them today, so we ate them right away. Which I did not mind in the least. But I have no plans for them this week because they're already gone!)

Still not sick of the delicious lettuces we get each week. We never have problems eating it up, and it tastes so much better than grocery store lettuce. Definitely one of those produce items that has a taste difference when it's fresh and local.

Happy to get some spinach, it being my favorite green (or at least tied with chard for my favorite). Not sure how we'll use it this week, but perhaps on a homemade pizza with some feta. (Right now I'm having dreams of the amazing spinach and feta pizza Mark made for us about a month ago and I'm salivating.)

Mark and I are also big broccoli fans, so we were happy to see this guy. I was putting the broccoli in my bag while I was picking up and a little boy standing nearby looked at me with wide eyes. Yeah, kid, it's pretty cool. You should eat some!

Green onions will supplement our stash. So far this week we've eaten them on salads and in a sesame tofu stir fry I made (yum). Garlic scapes are one of the cool vegetables that I discovered from being a CSA subscriber a few years ago. Scapes are the stalks of young garlic plants, and as I understand it, we get to enjoy them because they are cut off to allow the plant to not divert energy to growing more stalk. They taste like garlic (duh), but they're mild. I might make a pasta with these because somehow in my head garlic and pasta go together. Am I the only one who thinks that?

Last but not least, though certainly exciting, is the first pepper of the season. I adore peppers - all kinds - and this one looks firm and crisp. Can't wait to eat this guy on a bed of fresh lettuce!

Get anything good in your CSA this week? (You know the answer is yes, so share!)

garden update: late june

After the sad tale of our dead seedlings, you'd think the garden would be having a rough time. But amazingly, it's going gangbusters - particularly the items we started from direct seed. 

My herbs are all doing well in pots. Basil is doing so well that I'll have to move it into larger pots soon. (I was making do with what I had at the time and knew this would happen eventually.)

These are sunflowers that I planted after being given some free seeds at Farm to Table this year. I had no idea how they'd do or how many would survive, but they seem to be thriving and I would venture to guess will outgrow their pots too!

This little guy is one of the seedlings we thought was dead. Mark held on to two tomato seedlings that he thought had a chance and planted them in the chard bed. They seem to be alive!

A few pepper plants are doing well too, sharing a bed with some rows of chard that were direct seed. 

This bed of beans was ransacked by the chickens soon after the seeds were planted, so we didn't know if we'd get anything at all. Mark put up some netting on the top of the bed so it's sort of "caged" in. And it seems a decent amount of seeds were spared from the chickens' talons!

There are four mini "beds" with cucumber plants. They are spots of earth that Mark dug up and put some light fencing around to keep the chickens out. These seem to all be coming up healthy as well.

Last year we grew one single corn plant, and enjoyed delicious corn off of it. This year we have a whole bed! It's unlikely to be knee-high by the fourth of July, but it's also doing well.

In the big tomato bed, the plants are also getting big. We had a whopper of a storm a few weeks ago and Mark bravely went out to stake up the plants in the rain as they were getting completely bombarded before they were really strong enough to withstand it. 

We even have a tiny tomato starting! The first one to actually start growing here. (We got one seedling from our farmers' market that already had a baby tomato on it when we purchased it, so it didn't feel like it counted. This one does.)

How are your gardens coming along? What did you plant and how are they faring?

canning and preserving: two strawberry jams

This weekend we managed to squeeze in some time to put up 16 half pints of strawberry jam in two variants - balsamic and vanilla. This is our fourth year canning jam, and I think we're really getting a good system down - meaning we're more efficient and know the process well enough that we don't spend as much time agonizing over the Ball book.

Mark picked up 8 quarts of berries from Mason Farms in Erie when he was traveling for work last week. Nothing beats PA berries in June, I'm telling you. I have no idea why people buy California strawberries this time of year from grocery stores in western PA because these strawberries are almost a different fruit they're so tasty.

We use our dutch oven to make jam - it handles high temps nicely and can stand up to our stove's power burner. This is the first batch of balsamic, which we made for the first time last year and just love. The vinegar adds the right acidity and deepens the flavor of the strawberries.

I was the strawberry prepper this year, so for at least 90 minutes, this was the scene in front of me. The chickens were quite happy with their treats. (They honestly run across the yard at full speed when they see me with strawberries. OK, well anytime I come outside and yell TREAT!)

Mark was the jar filler. He often does this step, probably because he's tall enough to more easily reach into the pots.

We're going to need to replace our canning rack soon because it's starting to rust out. Four years of use is probably more than we can ask of the thing, being pretty cheap in the first place.

Boiling water baths and canning are nice, but the way it makes the kitchen an inferno is something I can pass on. We need to get ourselves a canning fan! Do they make those?

Our second batch was a new recipe variant, strawberry vanilla jam. We decided to do this one on a whim, having an abundance of vanilla beans. This next photo is Mark scraping the vanilla bean on a small portion of our kitchen island, which always looks a bit bloody after a strawberry processing day.  

The bean is scraped into the jam, and the outer husk or shell also goes in the jam during the cooking process to give it some more flavor.

We didn't think the vanilla flavor was incredibly pronounced in the finished product, but it was subtle and quite tasty. Maybe if we make this again next year we'll amp up the vanilla factor.

I love seeing our dining room table fill up with canning jars on towels. Means it's really summer and we're going to start stocking our canning cabinet again!

The rest of the 4 quarts of strawberries that didn't go into jam were made into strawberry shortcake topping and cut into pieces for snacking (and enjoying straight up). We'll be getting another quart in our CSA this week, but honestly I can't get enough strawberries in the summer. The joy of having them for a short season makes me want to eat as many as possible while they're around - and do things like can jam to save some for later!

Have you started canning anything this season? Are you eating your fair share of berries too?

Real Life CSA: week 10

Another green explosion this week, but I'm not complaining. 

Braeburn apples are a nice return after a break from the winter CSA. I'd love to know the secret of how they store these babies though, because they are still crisp! And it's June!

Lettuce will be our salad base, like it is every week. I suppose there are other things you can do with lettuce, such as wraps, but being a salad lover, I have no desire to stop eating them. If it ain't broke...

I'm actually not sure if I've ever eaten red kale before. I might actually cook this down instead of making chips or a dirt smoothie, so I can get a feel for the taste and how it might differ from the other types.

This chard is definitely getting cooked down. I am a chard fiend - I love it probably more than spinach, to tell you the truth. I think it's because spinach has become such a staple for me and chard hasn't lost its summer luster.

Goat cheese is really versatile - hopefully some of this will make it into a pasta dish or a homemade pizza. I also like salads with berries and goat cheese and nuts, so that's a possibility as well. This particular jar of hot pepper jelly is going in the holding pantry since we already have one going from an earlier share. The next time we have a party or picnic at our house, I will likely make an appetizer with it!

Last but not least is the kohlrabi, the entirely new item this week. I lurve kohlrabi. So much I even allowed myself to spell it like that. My favorite preparation is roasted so that's what will likely happen to these little guys. I've seen them get huge before, but these small ones are awesome.

What are you doing with your veggies? 

homebrew kombucha: tasting

After three days of second fermentation (after the addition of juice to the kombucha), we broke out a bottle of the mango kombucha. I was pretty nervous - not about safety, but about whether the juice to tea ratio was right and whether or not it was carbonated enough. 

We both like our kombucha cold, but since it ferments at room temp, we added ice. 

The mango was quite good. Mark thought the juice ratio was perfect, though I thought it was slightly too much. We both thought it could use another day or two of carbonation (we had these at day 3). But it was truly delicious.

We tried the tart cherry the next day (day 4 of carbonation). I thought the cherry had a better ratio of juice to tea than the mango, and Mark, even though he's not as much a fan of tart flavorings as I am, thought it was good as well. Ironically, we both felt it needed more carbonation than the mango one, even though it sat for another 15 hours. I think that might have something to do with the particular juice and how much sugar is in it, etc. 

We also gave a bottle of cherry to our friends, who both reported it tasted great. And one of them wasn't really interested in GT's kombucha when he had it, but liked mine! Better than GT's? For a tiny fraction of the price? I'll take it!

From this point forward I'll keep a supply of kombucha going and will be trying to work it into my diet daily, for the GI benefits it supplies as well as the fact that it tastes fantastic. I'm quite proud of myself for finally following through on this project and checking off one of my 2014 goals!

To read more about this process, check out these other posts in the homebrew kombucha series:

Making a SCOBY
Making the first batch
Flavoring and bottling

Cheers!