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Category: economics

Food from nothing

For some reason, when I was getting ready to go to a conference last weekend I decided that I absolutely could not leave any perishables in my house. I did this crazy ramping up of cooking everything that I usually only do before a big trip.

I made a couple dodgy canning adventures, which I need to get someone with more sensitive taste buds than I to evaluate – lime coconut marmalade, roasted garlic white wine mustard, caramelized cherry jam, pickled onions (seriously – couldn’t leave any perishables for some weird compulsive reason), pickled carrots, and a few other things.

And then when I came back, it was hot. And I just never got the motivation to buy more perishables.

But that’s okay – I have a well stocked pantry. But it ends up being the kind of thing where you look at your shelves and think, “Gah – I have all these ingredients, but I’ve got nothing to eat.”

Food from Nothing

Part 1: Rice

Pulled out some white rice, measured out a quarter cup for a single serving.

Found some lime cilantro dressing left over from a take out salad from a local Mexican restaurant – actually more like pesto than your average dressing. Added all of that – let’s say 2 tablespoons – and counted that at the fat and salt.

And then I added slightly less than 1/2 a cup of water because of the volume of the dressing.

Part 2: Beans

Rice and beans make a complete protein, so that’s clearly the next place to look. Aha – a can of black beans. Given a choice between Hanover and Goya, I prefer Goya’s canned beans (this is a relatively new discovery for me).

So I dumped the whole can into a pot and turned on the heat.

Since that wasn’t enough like food, I looked around for some further seasoning. I found the last tablespoon from a can of red curry paste. Perfect – dumped that in, and I let it simmer down to be a thick sauce holding together mushy beans.

Part 3: Assembly

20 minutes later – everything is cooked.

I pulled out a tortilla, heated it in a skillet, and then wrapped up some of the rice and some of the beans. I didn’t have a cheese that would go with the thai curry flavor, but maybe one of the harder Mexican fresh cheeses crumbled on top would have been good. But I just made burritos out of just rice and beans.

All in all – quite successful.

I used all of the rice over 2-3 burritos, and I had black beans as leftovers for a couple more meals.

I’m not tagging this gluten free friendly because even though it would be easy to leave off the tortilla or use a corn one, I found my flour tortilla in integral part of tying everything together. Your mileage might vary.

Charities

I’m putting together a list of charities I like so I can narrow down the ones I’d donate to for the end of the year and/or my birthday.

And I’ve noticed that I don’t have any environmental organizations.

These days, most of the work I’ve been supporting that worries about sustainability and the environment is food-oriented.

So who is helping the trees?

I’m not looking for the Sierra Club. I’m looking for organizations that are smaller and more agile, where more than 50% of their income goes toward the work they are doing, rather than organizational expenses. I want a watchdog for industry. Someone working locally. Doing something specific that makes a difference.

Oh! Just typing this up has reminded me of one! Philadelphia’a Pedal Co-op. I should totally support them.

Any other suggestions?

ETA:ational but good –

Environmental Working Group – lobbyists and nonprofit activists working to change policy – ewg.org

Trust for Public Land – lobbying and holders of large and small scale sizes of land for conservation tpl.org

10,000 friends – http://10000friends.org/ have national and local (PA specific) plans to promote smart growth in urban development (meaning conservation is part of the larger picture instead of piecemeal)

Center for Health Environment and Justice- started by Lois Gibbs (love canal lady) around keeping communities healthy and safe and advocating for their wellbeing

Home

(those are the biggies, here are the grassrootsy ones with a greater need for your money)
http://www.ciw-online.org/ Coalition for Imokolee Workers – migrant farmers organizing for rights

Native peoples organizing around environment and climate change (maybe sara has an opinion on them) http://www.ienearth.org/

Rhizome Collective – http://www.rhizomecollective.org/ doing great work anarchist style

Growing power – www.growingpower.org. will allen (macarthur fellow) saves the day by making compost, giving people green jobs, and growing produce in rust belt cities.

Local (PA)-

Any conservation easement organization (means they put farmland or other productive land into sustainably managed forestry, foraging, etc)-
Natural Lands Trust www.naturallandstrust.org
Pennypack Ecological Trust http://www.pennypacktrust.org/

PASA – PA sustainable agriculture www.pasafarming.org

Even more local (Philly)-

Clean Air Council – doing good work around air emissions and pollution http://www.cleanair.org/

Bicycle Coalition – http://www.bicyclecoalition.org/

Community Environmental Defense Fund – http://www.celdf.org/ Really awesome legal services around environmental movements for communities that can’t afford it

UNI – urban nutrition initiative http://www.urbannutrition.org/

Chester County Environmental Justice group – http://energyjustice.ning.com/ or http://www.ejnet.org/chester/ but I don’t know how organized they are

Fair Food Philly – http://fairfoodphilly.org/

Pennsylvania Horticultural Society – http://www.pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org/home/index.html

If you’re looking for super specific things, a fun website is www.kickstarter.com (like Kiva.org but for whatever and whomever wants to sign up)

I’d love a site redesign

Okay, so I love my food blog, and it’s coming up on its one year anniversary.

But I’ve been reluctant to post in it lately (partly from not wanting to write up the terrible University City Dining Days restaurant and partly because I just don’t like the template anymore – it’s all dark and oppressive, but it was the best of the templates I saw). (ETA: have since ported the missing months from my private journal over to this one – still looking for a site redesign as of 11/25/09)

I crave to have my own identity – my own, individually designed, style which is mine all mine.

And just as I was thinking that, one of the bloggers I read announced that she had just gotten her site professionally redesigned by nifty people. And I pined… so I shot them an email talking about what I wanted, and they sent me back their price list. And OMG – I am not paying $1200 to make my site look better. Because I am so much less professional than she.

Especially not when I have friends. Friends who are good at design and (in some cases) under employed.

So I propose to pay $300 for a quick, pretty WordPress template. I promise I’m easy to please.

So here’s the deal. You say you want to do the job. I give you specifics and 2 weeks to produce a rough draft. If there is a rough draft (whether I like it or not – done is good), I will pay you $50. If there is no rough draft, then I’ll give two weeks to the next person who responded. And then you have a month for a final draft – at which point I will give you $250.

Fair?

If you are interested, let me know.

ETA: Is that a fair offer? Let me know, if I am way out of line.

comments screened

Can’t swing a cat without hitting a coffee shop

So I don’t go to coffee shops all that often because I’m cheap, but I am very much a product of gentrification in that I gain great glee from just knowing that my neighborhood has an abundance of coffee shops. There are significantly more than when I first moved in, and I love it.

And apparently, our local coffee shops are awesome enough that people are making a movie about ’em.

Personally, I looked at the pictures of filming and thought, “West Philly Grounds? That’s a great logo. There should totally be another coffee shop with that logo.”

Foodbloggers pot luck

So I have some leftovers from the Catladies event that really need to leave my house. I have an incredibly tasty loaf of vegan challah I have been devastating (and have sliced and frozen more than half of it, like a responsible person.

And I have two ramekins of flavored butter: honey butter (a little too weak) and chipotle butter (a little too strong).

And I have a pint of heavy cream. From the farmers’ market. From happy cows. *clings*

I really must not eat all of these on my own.

However, for the foodbloggers potluck, I think I shall be making more cabbage/beet shred that was so tasty and healthy.

Can you think of anything else I could make that would use up a lot of dairy products? Without also making bread to go with it because baking is not my forte, and while I’ll go it in front of friends, I am not going to do it for food bloggers.

And I just don’t think a spicy, buttery bread pudding would work too well. …huh.

Okay, so if you got a tough multi-grain bread… like the spelt from Metropolitan Bakery, perhaps… and then cream, eggs, honey, dried cherries, and vanilla from a bean. Brown the butter? Ooo… kind of like with the toasting?

That’s an insanely complex recipe for bread pudding. And it’s something that I’d have to be able to take to work and still have tasty at the end of the day.

Right, so no experimental bread pudding for the pot luck. Does anyone else want to experiment and try a spicy heart attack of joy sometime? The butter can keep, but the heavy cream won’t last more than a month I don’t think.