Pesto on the porch

I also schlepped the ingredients out to the porch to take a nicely lit photo for this post, but I think it was worth it. :) In a recent CSA bountiful box o' vegetables we received a bunch of sweet, licorice smelling basil which made Tyler remark how he would love if I had basil perfume. Mmm. Anyways, we decided to make a big batch of basil pesto for dinner accompanied with some red wine and long lasting pesto breath that seemed to carry through into the next day. (A little less garlic next time, I think).

Pesto is at it's best when it is made with fresh, high quality ingredients. Which means I carefully removed the *special* olive oil from the cupboard, thoroughly cleaned the fresh picked basil and finely grated the supreme parmesan cheese. It sort of made me feel like I was prepping for an elegant evening. ;)

Don't they make a pretty family?

Let's get the pasta dressed already!

Basil Pesto Recipe (a la Marci)

3 handfuls of fresh basil

1/2 handful of pine nuts

1/2 handful of grated parmesan cheese (make extra if you like to sprinkle it on pasta)

1 clove of garlic

Pinch of salt

Squeeze of a lemon

Dollup of butter

Several drizzles of olive oil (around 1/2 cup)

Add garlic, pine nuts and salt to food processer, and blend. Next add 1/2 of basil and olive oil, blend and then add the rest until a smooth consistency. Lastly, take a squeeze at half a lemon, spoon in a dollup of butter and toss in the parmesan. Blend. Taste and add more salt, cheese or oil to your liking.
The pesto should be a nice, thick, but slightly runny consistency. Mix with angel hair pasta and top with extra parmesan cheese. Enjoy!

I enjoyed mine on the lovely porch with a glass of pinot

I have made different basil recipes in the past, with various expansions and slightly different ingredients, but I feel it is the freshness and amount of each ingredient you add that makes the pesto your favorite recipe. So, I have skimmed back on the garlic and added more cheese than most recipes and in the end I always end up tossing in a little more of this or that to get it just right. Make it your own and you will always enjoy the meal.

Bon appetit!

Marci

"Where are they?" Oh, we went for little jog...

End of summer hiatus is over! I was busy being "teacher" this past month for a summer school class and just did not have enough energy to write and train for a 1/2 marathon at the same time. Yes, a half marathon. The "Tierra Rural" gals worked their little hineys out for the past several months and finished the short jaunt last Sunday at the America's Finest City Half Marathon in San Diego. Lila got a PR (personal record; yay!) and I finished my first half. And I am still recovering by sleeping a lot and eating junk food all day. Ahh, the joy of brutally running yourself to death one day and next stuffing your face with all and any yummy food in sight. Can't wait to run the next one!

Nervously smiling before the race.

We even had a Tierra Rural follower join the race with us...bf Tyler! So I felt we were well represented. :) I think I am going to do the half in Carlsbad in January too, but I promise I won't take off the next 4 months of life just to train.

We even got GOLD medals. And, yes, it is hanging in my room for all myself and Tyler to see.

While Lila was visiting we had a TR pow wow and redesigned the site to reflect our "trendy, gal pal" friendship we share. Our blog designer (it's Lila) did an awesome job creating a new layout and we even added a few tid bits about ourselves. Tah dah!

More summer events and ideas will be shared in the near future! I am happy to be back. :)

Marci

Locavores + CSAs

Locavore: someone who buys and eats food that was grown or produced locally, usually within a 100 mile radius of one's home.

How am I a locavore, you might ask? Well actually, I am about 30-50% locavore on any given day. I am a share holder in a local organic farm that supplies their locally grown produce to community members on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. This type of farm to household agreement is called Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA. By becoming a CSA member you are fortunate enough to be supplied with a produce box full of fresh, ripe, organic, crisp, seasonal and delicious fruit and vegetables to enjoy for breakfast, lunch and dinner for however long they will last! You sign up ahead of time for a certain growing season, say Jan-April, and a box of yummy produce is delivered weekly or bi-weekly from the farm to you. You and other share holders support the farm's operational costs and employees by purchasing the CSA membership so the growers can be more financially secure, use less time marketing, receive better prices for their crops, all the while selling to a local market and forming relationships with their clients. I also want to add that being a shareholder in a CSA farm means you benefit when they have great crops, but occasionally the farm has a crop failure due to various reasons and the shareholders all share in the loss. So, you may not receive as much produce as expected or less of a certain kind due to crop failure. It's a small risk worth taking!

I belong to Tierra Miguel Foundation's CSA and receive a bi-weekly box containing a variety of fruits and veggies, depending on the growing season. For example, the past few months I was getting more potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips and chard, but these past few weeks I have started to receive strawberries, lemons, oranges and lettuce (and the chard keeps on coming, arghh!). We are sad we haven't received the earthy beets in a month, but our taste buds were ecstatic when we first tasted the super sweet strawberries in the box!

Enjoying blood oranges on patio...yum!
(though your hands look like they committed a heinous crime afterward)

Why I like CSA's and being 1/2 locavore:

1. My main reason is to support local, organic and small scale agriculture. It is good for the environment in many ways. First, if food comes from a local source there is less gasoline and Co2 emissions spent on transportation. Second, farming organically means using no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. Yes, there are more weeds and maybe there are a few holes in your chard leaf, but you, as a consumer, know that you will not be eating traces of harmful chemicals. Third, the environment and soil flourishes at organic farms. There is a living and thriving ecosystem on the farm when farmers choose to use bugs or other plants to stave or kill off other bugs and not rely solely on chemical pesticides to kill ALL. And lastly, I find small scale farmers endearing. After meeting a few, you can tell they love what they do and they have a respect for food and the environment.

2. Taste! There is almost nothing better than biting into a juicy, sweet, aromatic strawberry from the farm. The bf and I savor the strawberries and always make sure they are eaten first! Carrots were another item we loved to munch on early in the week because they had such a strong, spicy taste we had never experienced from store bought carrots before.

3. Variety. "Beets are gross and taste like dirt." That was me a short 4-5 months ago before we started getting them in our box. I like to describe beets as "earthy" now because though I still think they taste a little like dirt, I actually like it that way and prefer to use a more natural term. :) Every week we receive a variety of fruits and veggies, some we have never tasted before. It has been an awesome way to reconnect with nontraditional fruits like the Oro Blanco grapefruit, which is sweet and requires no sugar, and veggies like beets and turnips, which were great in our pork pot roasts. I have also come to find out I detest chard...and it keeps showing up in our box, uninvited! The nerve!

4. Eating healthy for me (us :) and the environment. We always ate fruits and vegetables every day, but now we incorporate so many fruits and vegetables into our meals we only cook meat about 2 times a week. The United Nations did a study on the environmental impacts of eating meat and they found out that livestock is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gases, loss of biodiversity and water pollution. I can't rule out eating meat, at least as of now, but I am going to try in the future to purchase organically raised meat and continue to chow down on veggies, fruit, tofu and soy crumbles. :)

5. Farm visits! At Tierra Miguel, they have a farm visit every first Saturday of the month. Many CSA's have visits once a season or once a month too. During these visits the members can meet the farmers, learn how their food is grown and see their next produce box still in the ground. It is also a great trip with kids and watch them be amazed when they see carrots pulled up from under ground. :)

I hope you all have learned a little more about what CSA's are and what they can do for you, the food system and the environment. Just remember to try and eat the greens, herbs and delicate fruit first. I am ashamed to admit that I have thrown out way too many half heads of lettuce or collard greens leaves; it has been a long running lesson in food preservation. So my goal these two weeks is to eat EVERYTHING from our CSA box. Good thing I have a hungry boyfriend that takes one for the team when it comes to eating all the greens.

Drying Herbs

In my eagerness to grow a verdant garden filled with vegetables and herbs, I have to admit I went a little overboard on the herb part. We have two types of basil (sweet and Thai), I was so pretty and in bloom before she snipped me off!
cilantro, oregano, rosemary and sage and the problem is I don't even use half of the herbs all that often, like the oregano, rosemary and sage. I felt like I was leading the herbs on, giving them water and sunlight and food to help them grow big and delicious, and then I just let them hang out there in the corner and look pretty for the garden. But that isn't enough for me. So I decided to dry them. And it's my first time drying so you can learn with me!

Rosemary and sage were the first to go to the drying rack. Two weeks ago I snipped off several branches of sage, cleaned any dirt off of them with water, tied them together with twine and hung them upside down by a tack in the patio closet. It is important to find a dark, dry and airy place, which took a little thinking since I live in an apartment. At first I tried the closet, but when the bf came home, opened the closet to search for a jacket and remarked that he smelled a faint aroma of moth balls I nixed the closet. I then searched through cupboards and finally ended up with the patio closet even though I was afraid spiders might eat up the herbs. (They didn't touch them by the way.) And then last week in the CSA box we got a bunch of rosemary. Ahh! But I already have a load of rosemary! That's when I decided to dry those too; the same way as the sage. The sage took about 2-3 weeks to dry and the rosemary took about 1-2 weeks to completely dry. It was a very simple process, just took a little time and the leaf color dulled quite a bit.

Another way of drying herbs that is quicker and easier is : the microwave! Today I picked off some more sage and rosemary from the garden. With the microwave method you wash the herbs really well, de-stem them and place the herb leaves (do one type of herb at a time) on a doubled up paper towel. After you have put the paper towel with herb leaves in the microwave, cook them on a regular setting for a 1-2 minute interval and then for 1/2-1 minute intervals from then on. After each interval mix the leaves for even drying. Et voila! You are done!




Fresh -----> Dry





I enjoyed the more traditional method of drying herbs in bunches because I was able to check on them every few days to track their progress and I could see and experience the drying process. And if you were giving them as a gift or using them as decoration, the presentation of the slow, dried herbs is much prettier. However, the herbs were less fragrant and less colorful than the microwaved herbs.

I mixed the rosemary and sage together in an airtight container for safe keeping.
Not too shabby!

This past fall we were getting a lot of root veggies and tubers in our CSA box so many a night we would have pork roast with carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, garlic and lots of rosemary, but I would have to buy it at the store because it was too cold to grow. Now I will have plenty of it stocked up for fall! I also made a lot of soup on the cold (very rare) days of winter and started them off with some bacon. Soups with bacon and sage are some of my favorites. Adding some chicken broth, noodles, and veggies made it so flavorful and homey. I was excited to discover the drying process is super simple and now I feel so good about myself for preserving the herbs to use in the months to come!

If I Were in Charge of the World

I work at an elementary school in a 1st/2nd grade class with witty, hilarious, loving and very smart students. I am always surprised with the amount of knowledge they have already gained in their short 6-7 years of life, and this past week is no exception. Their assignment was to come up with two rules they would enforce if they were in charge of the world. Of course there was a splattering of silly and fun responses, but there were also many caring and responsible responses that surprised me. And I asked myself why? Maybe because these kids have been celebrating Earth Day since they were born. Or because they know why and what to recycle and are aware of where there trash ends up and try not to waste. Or it could be because they cherish the planet and they sincerely want to make it healthier.

Here are some of their responses (in all of their uncorrected glory):

If I were in charge of the world people can't hurt animals and people would also have to reduce, reuse, and recycle to keep our planet clean.
If I were in charge of the world no one would cut off a tree and every kid would be allowed to keep Lego people in their pockets. (my personal favorite :)
If I were in charge of the world everyone has to have one tree on their property or they will get taxed more and only kids under 35 will be allowed to be president.
If I were in charge of the world I would protect all animals so that they won't go extinct and everyone would have to have a recycle bin so we can save more trees.
If I were in charge of the world I will not let anybody chop down trees and I wish that every child in the world will be allowed to put a trampoline in their living rooms!
If I were in charge of the world I would say no one can litter so animals don't die because of environmental stress and I would say you had to be 1 year old to drive.

Later that afternoon I was helping a group of girls with their work and they informed me that they were going to start a new club to help save the Earth. They would have gardening, trash pick-up, cooking and playing with animals workshops. They then asked me if I would like to come and teach a workshop. "I love gardening, can I teach that one?" I asked. "Well, M is doing gardening, I'm doing cooking and N is doing animals. So can you do trash pick-up?" she responded. Figures...

Anyways, I wanted to share these funny and cute tidbits because I find it sort of fascinating that kids this young are already aware of global warming, pollution and recycling. When I was in elementary school the only time I can remember talking about recycling was to raise money to visit the Exploratorium in San Francisco. "Recycle Your Way to the Exploratorium" was our motto (Lila and I even made a little jingle to sing along with it). We recycled to make money, not to reuse and recycle metals. Kids these days are environmentally smart; they are going to begin their lives making wise decisions to keep our planet healthy and clean. Teaching them about being "green" early in life will instill in them the knowledge they will use throughout their lives to make healthy and environmentally friendly choices towards our planet.

So stop cutting off trees!

P.S. I received a note today from a student that said I was the best aide in the history of history. Wow, that one is hard to live up to.

Great Valley Center Conference

Hey yos! So I'm just coming off of our annual great valley center conference: 20/20 Foresight: A View of the Great Valley in a Decade. It was a good couple of days, some of it inspiring, some of it exhausting. But the good news is I put my time in blogging at the conference so I think I should get two gold stars and link to it here: great valley center conference blog.

Particularly applicable to our blog mission (by the way I still have plans to write something for the about us section) was the address by California Secretary of Agriculture AG Kawamura and the founder and president of Natural Capitalism Solutions L. Hunter Lovins.

AG Kawamura spoke about how California really has two options in terms of the future of agriculture: we can just live or we can thrive. The decision to thrive really depends on us planning for predictable challenges. We know the population is going to increase (specifically in the valley, california ag's homebase), we know this population increase will increase the demand for housing, water, and transportation, so if we know this is going to happen why don't we plan for it now. Really the concept seems so simple but the truth is there is no plan for the future of agriculture. I was just super impressed by him and his address to the crowd so I encourage you to check out the summary of Kawamura's speech at the conference as well as our interviews with him that are up on the conference blog.

L. Hunter Lovins talked about how green practices and green concepts are beneficial to business interests (listen up angie). The main point she drove home was that being green is about profit and considering the return on investment (I never use that term but L. Hunter Lovins did) when green practices are implemented it's in everybody's best interest to encourage environmentally thoughtful business practices. Truthfully, I didn't think Lovins said anything that was that groundbreaking, but everybody else at the conference really like her so again check out her interview and presentation, maybe you will find it to be way more interesting then I did.

Also, I just had Robin look at our blog and she thought we needed music, I don't know how to music on our blog but I like this youtube clip so I'll post this clip of Paul Simon on Sesame Street instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1dlWmrRstc. I have no clue how to imbed this video in the blog and I'm too tired to figure it out so I'm just linking it.

Watermelon

Food Desert

Imagine you live surrounded by fast food joints, gas stations, liquor stores and concrete. Many inner-city neighborhoods live in this "food desert." They do not have access to fresh food and produce and are left with no choice, but to purchase food from these unhealthy options.

This past weekend I attended a conference hosted by San Diego Food Not Lawns called, "Cultivating Food Justice." Along with gardening, canning, composting, recycling and a slue of other workshops, there was one in particular that I found fascinating; "Nutritional Racism." We learned through an informative video called "Unnatural Causes" that inner-city, low income, minority neighborhoods harbor the unhealthiest citizens due to poor water and food quality, proximity to highways and dumps, chronic stress from daily violence and lack of efficient transportation, to name a few. "Unnatural Causes" follows the residents of one Northern California neighborhood that fits the mold of a food desert, but there are quite a few in San Diego too.

If one visits the City Heights neighborhood in San Diego on Saturday morning one could find fresh produce lining the streets at the weekly farmers' market. Neighbors wave to each other while comparing vegetable prices. However, it was not always this convenient and easy to find fresh food. City Heights prides itself on being the most diverse neighborhood in the city, but it is also one of the most dangerous. Years ago the residents were hard on finding fresh, local produce, green patches of land to enjoy or public space to garden. Now this has changed due to generous grants and redevelopment plans to beautify the neighborhood and construct new private and public buildings, like the wonderful library and low income housing options.

One of the projects that I have been following in the neighborhood is the New Roots Community Farm in City Heights, for City Heights residents. Through the long and hard work of the International Rescue Committee in San Diego, they have secured this piece of land with 89 garden plots. I believe this plot of land could be a community gathering spot for neighbors to converse and share and for families and individuals to grow fresh, organic produce for much less than buying it at the supermarket. Families could grow trees and plants from their native countries. They can be self-sustainable!

Community gardens not only provide us with healthy food to nourish our bodies, but also with lasting experiences to share with neighbors and family. I love to see positive change. Busy street with cars to bustling produce market with buyers. Seed to fruit. Vacant lot to community garden. Despair to hope.

Peas