I am an urban homesteader

I used to read the blog put out by the Dervaes family in Pasadena, California.  Over time I found that I couldn't relate to them: their garden is the size of my entire lot; they don't have office jobs (or so it appears); they live in a warmer climate where gardening seasons are longer and central heating is not as necessary as it is in the Pacific Northwest; they're vegetarians; the adult children live with their father.  They do a lot of cool things but many were not accessible to your average working professional.

I started my own blog, in fact, in response to what I saw as a dearth of information for people like me: people want to live as sustainably as possible without wearing scavenged burlap sacks, quitting their jobs to free up time to make biodiesel, and hooking up their decorative whirly-gig collection to generators to power their ration of 20 minutes of electricity each day.

I don't necessarily think of myself as an "urban homesteader" - the image conjures up (at least for me) something far more organic-carob-eating-hippie than I am - but I recognize that the phrase easily describes my lifestyle.  When I talk about my blog and hobbies, I do tend to use that term to describe my values and activities.  People know what "urban" means, and they can readily imagine what "homestead" activities are.

Recently the Dervaes family of Pasadena, CA laid claim to the "urban homestead" term by trademarking it.  To protect "their" property they have sent 18 "normal and professional" letters to public libraries teaching classes about urban homesteading, a farmers market doing sustainability outreach to city-dwellers, a school, bloggers, business, publishers, and even a radio station.  Each of these was shocked to get what is essentially a cease-and-desist letter.

The family claims that the cease-and-desist phrase has been made up to demonize them.  If that's the case, why did they get Facebook to block pages that mention or promote urban homesteading on the grounds of trademark infringement?  If that's not ceasing & desisting, I must be in need of a dictionary. A quick google search shows that the term and lifestyle has been around since at least the 1970s, despite the Dervaes' claim to be the "Original Modern Urban Homestead". 

To the Dervaes family I say this: the community of urban homesteaders is vast and diverse.  We have much to learn from and teach one another.  Keep teaching your classes, raising food sustainably, and doing good works in your community.  You've done a lot of good but in this regard, you're wrong.  "Urban homestead", in all its trademarked variations, is not your sole intellectual property, nor should it be.  It is a general term that describes a specific type of lifestyle and core beliefs.  That you were able to convince the trademark office of your right to the term is shocking.  No wonder there's been so much backlash.

Sustainability is still fledgling in many parts of the country.  On the West Coast we've been lulled into a false sense of security, believing that everyone recycles, everyone drives fuel-efficient vehicles, and everyone shops at farmers markets.  It's not the case.  Your actions against those who share your passion for urban solutions to food supply issues have made the hurdles to sustainability that much higher.  Rather than encourage us - your fellow urban homesteaders - to forge onward in our efforts, your linguistic land grab has alienated entire communities of people who would otherwise share your ideals.

Keep your trademarks on Path to Freedom (R) and the other phrases that are clearly and obviously specific to the Dervaes Institute activities and outreach.  But "urban homestead" is too general a term to call your own: it belongs to all of us, and therefore none of us.

When pink salt is not pink salt

A couple we know loves salt.  They love salt so much that they would get salt licks if it were possible.  They collect different salts: smoked salt, truffle salt, flavored salt, etc.  They even bought a block of Himalayan pink salt a while back.

It kinda looks like this:

You serve food on it.  Supposedly you can cook on it but it causes the slab to degrade faster.  They served sliced fresh mozzarella on it, a tasty treat indeed!

Last summer when I decided that I was ready to test making up a batch o' bacon I looked up recipes online and found that many of them called for "pink salt".  That stuff is what came to mind.  A short trip to a local store and I'd procured a bottle of Himilayan Pink Salt. 

Himilayan pink salt is mined and gets its color from the minerals it contains naturally.  The color varies from a pale rose to nearly coral.  In ground or flaked form it's used just like any other type of table salt.  If you buy a slab of it you can serve food on it, as our friends do, or even cook on it.

For some reason I never used it and opted for regular salt, instead.  As it turns out, I'd gotten the wrong kind of pink salt. 

"Pink salt" (sometimes called Prague Powder #1) is a whole other thing.  It's used for curing meats and is a mixture of 93.75% sodium and 6.25% sodium nitrate.  It's dyed bright pink so that you don't mistake it for regular salt and accidently poison yourself.  Oops!

Pink (curing) salt is more difficult to find, which is why my February Charcutepalooza post is behind schedule.  You can find pink salt online but I'm cheap and didn't want to pay $8 to ship a $5 item.  I called a local butcher and asked for pink salt.  They didn't have it but referred me to a butcher in a nearby town.  After choking when they heard how much I wanted - "Is a pound OK?" - they agreed to sell it to me for $5.  I guess a pound is kinda a lot but Charcutepalooza does go all year long.

This stuff is screaming, cotton candy p-i-n-k.  Here's a side-by-side.

Tomorrow we make pancetta, bacon, and salt pork.  It's not as much work as it sounds.

A drawback of urban farming

Yesterday evening I was sitting in my warm, cozy home.  It was peaceful and the resident quadripeds were all snoozing.  I was working intently on my newest knitting project, Fiddlehead Mittens.  I've never done colorwork before and there's a fairly steep learning curve.  Hubbie wasn't home from work yet.

The weather forecast was dreary: high winds, heavy rain, and chilly temps.  But I was snug as a bug in a rug!  The storm hadn't hit the area yet but wasn't far.

All of a sudden the storm arrived with much fury.  I could hear the wind howling and could see the boughs of the giant fir tree across the street whip around.

I called G-man to warn him of the weather because he was driving home.  He told me later that the car doors felt like they were going to get ripped open as he drove across the Narrows Bridge. 

Tangent... maybe you've heard of this bridge?  It fell down quite famously in 1940, just four months after its completion.  The video is chilling.  Check out 1:31... can you imagine the noise that must have made?

According to family lore, my grandfather drove across it that morning.  At the time he was a brand new father of a 2-week-old son and weeks shy of his 23rd birthday.  After the bridge fell he was stuck on the Key Peninsula and had to drive back to Tacoma via Olympia - a long way. 

I digress.  After calling the hubster, it dawned on me: I hadn't closed up the chicken coop yet for the night.  Our neighbors lost 8 hens to noctural critters this fall and we've been doubly careful about the safety of our girls.

I pulled on a pair of boots, slogged out to the coop, counted heads, filled the feeder, collected the eggs (yay: 3!!) and locked them up tight for the night.  The whole time I was thinking: my friends without chickens are at home, warm and cozy in their houses but silly me, I'm out in this awful storm locking up the stupid birds, all for the sake of fresh eggs.

We love having chickens, we really do.  And I've talked about the downsides before.  But... bluuuurgggg... fresh eggs don't make it suck any less when you're tramping through mud and the rain to shut a chicken coop.

Gnocchi with greens, sausage, and tomatoes

We ate a LOT of gnocchi after that massive batch.  Here's one variation on a theme:

I whipped up a batch of gnocchi and served it with spinach, sundried tomatoes I made last summer, Lucky Pig Farm spicy Italian sausage, and a little bit of home-canned chicken broth to give it a sauce.  Lisa's sausage is so flavorful that I didn't even add salt.  Get the best sausage you can and give this a go.

This was super fast to make:

1. Boil a big pot of water (the bigger the better because the frozen gnocchi will cool the water down).

2. While the water is heating up, cook up the sausage.  Add chopped sundried tomatoes.  Garlic and diced onions would be good, too!  Stir in a little broth to make a sauce.

3. Once the water boils, throw in a handful of frozen gnocchi per person.  When they float, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and drop them right into the sausage mixture.

4. Toss with some greens - any would be good - until the greens are wilted and serve.

You have nommies for me?

Rosemary is like any dog: always underfoot and hoping for scraps to fall.  That's how I discovered that she loves frozen blueberries, by the way.  Silly dog.

The only non-local ingredient was the spinach.  We need our greens!  This is a hearty, delicious meal and a little goes a long way.  I made it quite a few times, including once for my brother.  Serve with a robust wine and ignore the torrential rains outside.

Gnocchi... OH!

On a recent weekend I got it into my head that I needed to make gnocchi from scratch.  I still had some potatoes from my garden and this would be a good way to use some of them.  Besides, the gnocchi you buy in the grocery store can be pretty gummy and I knew I could improve on it.

I did some research on recipes and figured that Mario Batali probably knew what he was doing.  Besides, his parents have a deli in Seattle and he used to live in Italy - his recipes carry street cred.  I decided to use this basic gnocchi recipe, which you can find here.

After skimming the recipe I decided to increase the potatoes from 3 pounds to 4.  My reasoning was that 3 pounds of baked or mashed potatoes doesn't go very far and since I was going through the effort of making gnocchi, dammit, I'd make the hell out of some gnocchi.

Fast forward about a half hour... I've peeled, cut up, boiled, drained...

and riced the potatoes.

And then I realized... that's a LOT of potatoes.  To give you some scale, these tiles are 4"x4".

I ran back to the computer and checked out Mario's serving size.  Double crap: his recipe served 12 but with my additions, it would serve more like 16.  Gnocchi dough?  More like gnocchi... DOH!

I had to split the potatoes in half in order to work with them.

Seriously, I must have had my head up my butt that day.  The recipe clearly calls for oil, which you may notice is absent from the above photo.  I made the gnocchi without oil and they were fine but still: it was obviously amateur day in my kitchen.

By the way, that ceramic thing on the right that looks like a motorcycle helmet is a French main a sel (salt pig/cellar), which I bought in Brittany in 2000.  I love it and the memories it evokes.  When I bought it I also bought 2 kilos (nearly 5 pounds) of French grey salt for some piddly amount like $3.  Do you have or use a salt cellar?  Once you get used to it you'll never go back.

Back to the gnocchi... The mixing & kneading portion of this program is brought to you by... NOBODY!  It's too sticky and goopy and messy, so no photos.

After kneading the dough I separated it into balls and used this plastic thingy to cut it into smaller sections.  I rolled them out into snakes and cut those into the final dumplings.

At this point you can leave them as-is or run them over the tines of a fork to give them the characteristic lines of gnocchi.

Here's the best video I could find of the shaping process:

Start to finish the entire process of making gnocchi took roughly 2 hours.

Did I mention this makes a lot of gnocchi? 

This made so many gnocchi that I placed them on silpats & froze them on cookie sheets.  After they were frozen I threw them into a zip-top bag and returned them to the freezer.  We ate gnocchi for quite a few meals, quite possibly more than 16.  These are very filling and hearty.  I think they'd last a couple of months in the freezer but no longer.

To cook these gnocchi, simply bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the desired amount.  When the gnocchi flloat - about a minute - scoop them out with a slotted spoon.  Top with your favorite pasta sauce and VOILA gnocchi!

Why did I make gnocchi? 

First, I was curious.  Could I do it?  Would they taste good? 

Second, they were cheap to make.  The potatoes were from my garden, as were the eggs.  Flour and salt are both cheap.  And since I forgot the oil they were even cheaper!  Gnocchi are kinda pricey at the store.

Finally, they provided a starch that was local.  Many of the dark days challenge dishes I've wanted to make were better with pasta.  With homemade gnocchi I could confidently say that yes, this starch was local.

I'll definitely make gnocchi again.  Like I said, we ate them for a long time and they were delicious and filling.  Next time I think I'll enlist the hubbie to help with shaping the pasta, which was the longest part of the process.

I'll post next about how we ate the gnocchi!

It ain't over until the preserved lemons sing

I was recently invited to write a guest post on a blog I enjoy very much.  I focus so much on local cuisine and canning that finding interesting topics this time of year can be frustrating.  The only things in season are citrus fruits imported from Florida and Califorina.  My 9 chickens have collectively laid a grand total of just 6 eggs in 2011, all of which came in the past week.  Toby did a series on eggs a while back anyway.

I chatted with Toby and mentioned some of the tagine dishes I've been trying lately.  He encouraged me to blog about Moroccan food,.

The problem is, I know next to nothing about Moroccan food. 

• It uses lots of herbs & spices, specifically those that North Americans tend to associate with sweet: cinnamon, cloves, and mint. 
• It often features lamb or chickpeas as the primary protein, though chicken and rabbit are also found.  Apparently beef appears in many dishes as well.
• Citrus is a common ingredient, especially lemon.  The cuisine also relies heavily on dried fruits, almonds, olives, and honey for flavor.
• Dairy is rare.
• Couscous is a regular side dish.
• Many dishes are traditionally cooked in a tagine like this one:

  

  Lamb tagine, photo from wholefoods.com

It seems to have much in common with Greek and Arab cuisines, which makes sense given its location and history.

And now you know as much as I do about Moroccan cuisine.

When Hubbie and I were first dating we went to a Moroccan restaurant in Seattle with some of his coworkers.  We all sat on pillows and gorged ourselves on the delicious dishes, which came one after another seemingly without end.  I deeply regretted having worn jeans and really wished for a pair of sweats!  Food is eaten without utensils, which left me with fingers that smelled of spices for quite a few days.

Just last night I started a batch of preserved lemons.  If you don't know what these are but want to try some Moroccan meals with me in the coming weeks, go grab a few lemons, some salt, and a jar to make a batch for yourself.  They're shockingly easy to make and the end result is nothing short of incredible.

There are instructions over at Food in Jars for preserving lemons.

Tonight for dinner I tested a chickpea dish for the future guest post on Toby's blog.  It was good but I didn't have some key ingredients: cilantro, mint, and lemon zest.  Strangely I did have the ras el hanout, a random jar of which I found some time ago at World Market on clearance.  Supposedly you can make your own.

The chickpeas, while still tasty, fell a little flat.  I can't wait for my preserved lemons to be ready because those will be what makes this dish sing-a-zing-zing, providing a bright, high note that is unmistakeable in any dish supposedly from Morocco.

If you're ready for a culinary trip into the unchartered waters of Morocco, freshen up your spice supply, make up some preserved lemons and get your taste buds' passport updated: we'll be headed to Africa soon!

Aller-retour

In French the expression "aller-retour" means "to go and return".  When you want a roundtrip ticket you request "un billet aller-retour".  I'm hoping I'm back for good (or at least for a long stint) after such a long hiatus from blogging.  It's been a rough-and-tumble month and I've missed this blog very much.  Whatever ride January was, I was ready to puke and get off on 1/31/11.

Hubbie was gone 3 of January's 5 weekends on business trips, not to mention a couple in December.  I got really lonely being home by myself with the animals last month and did start to attend a Friday Night Knitting Club.  I knitted myself a gorgeous shawl I'll show you soon.

My mother and her 2 siblings finally came to the mutual agreement that it was time to move Grandma in assisted living after Grandma fell on her 93rd birthday (New Year's Day) in a room full of people who were helpless to do anything but watch her essay of gravity's strength and the fireplace's unwillingness to yield, even to little old ladies on their birthdays.  She was terribly bruised and in much pain.

We packed & moved said grandmother the last weekend of the month.  The transition has been difficult, especially on my mom, whom my grandmother calls constantly and for ridiculous things ("Cathy, someone stole my cane!"  "No,Mom.  You left it on your headboard in the bedroom."  "Oh, OK.").  At least she's safe, she's gaining weight - it's never a good thing to weigh less than your age - and she's in good care.

In keeping with the New Year's Resolutions, I re-organized and cleaned the laundry room.  During a weekend when G-man was out of town I pulled everything from the laundry room into the kitchen, bought & assembled some shelves, then organized it all in the new configuration.  That took a full day.  There's no before picture - I want you to like me, not be utterly repulsed by my home's storage areas - but trust me, this is a vast improvement. 

I'm pleased to say that after several weeks the shelves still look pretty much the same.  Unfortunately, there's a new pile of laundry that has replaced these and the other half of the room looks about the same, too.

I really, really hate laundry.

Also in keeping with 2011 resolutions, G-man and I have both been carefully counting calories and increasing our exercise.  I hesitate to say that we're "dieting" because that conjures up images of deprivation, rice cakes, and Crystal Light.  Those foods & attitudes didn't have a place in our home pre-diet, won't have a place here post-diet, so aren't welcome while we're "dieting".  In fact, we even switched to full-fat ice cream in our own form of diet protest. 

And know what?  I've lost 11 pounds and G-man is down 10!  All while eating duck proscuitto, regular sour cream, ice cream, pizza, and even bleu cheese burgers.  So that's not exclusively what we eat but "normal foods" are a daily occurrence around here.  Neither of us feels deprived and we're both eating very well.  I promise to still feature normal recipes on this blog and won't do any funky substitutions, like trying to pawn off highly-processed non-fat "sour cream" for the real stuff.  Pfft.  Screw that.

In other news, our oven died.  I ran a self-cleaning cycle a couple of weeks ago and it hasn't worked right since.  I suspect it was well into its 3rd decade so I'm not heartbroken to see it go but I'm not happy about the cost of replacing it.  We picked out a new one and it will be here on the 23rd.  That's 2 weeks and 2 days without a functional oven: no baking, no granola, no breads, no casseroles, nothing.  GAH!  I'll post about it when the new one gets here but until then we're stuck with the toaster oven, stovetop, and BBQ.

Speaking of which, dinner duty calls.

It's good to be back.  I've missed you.