Michelle Obama / Gardening / NPR

Great interview this morning with Michelle Obama about the White House garden.

The money quote: We have a wonderful history in this country of community gardening and somehow along the way we lost that tradition. Part of what we hope to see is people reconnecting to that part of our heritage.

Not a Pomelo

It's bigger than Sara's head

Felt a little weird to cut a lemon head in half...

Want a lemon slice with your water?

Yeasted Pancakes

I ran out of oats a couple of weeks ago, and because I'm cheap I decided to try something else for breakfast until they go on sale again. I have a ton of flour around and a bunch of yeast in the freezer from when Ryan/Sharon/Lou left, so yeasted pancakes it is. I got the recipe from Simply Great Breads by Daniel Leader. Basically it's 1c liquid, 1t yeast, 1c flour, a little salt, sugar, oil. I'm not doing an egg, but you are supposed to. I've been using whey from ricotta making. Mix it up in the morning, ferment during the day, cook at night, breakfast is pre-made....

Fresh Garbanzos

Mmmmmm. Last year was the first year for growing fava beans, and I grew a ton this year. This year was the first for garbanzos and I'm going to grow alot more next year. Very lovely flavor, though a bit of work to shell them...

Rice Pudding Sorbet #2

This time I used a short grain black rice so it turned out purple. Didn't use eggwhites so it's vegan. Only 1 Vanilla bean. Good, but I liked the first one more.

the Garden this morning

 strawberry

 purple poppy

 native coastal poppy

 purple poppy

 rhubarb

shady plot

 Lizzy the garden cat

 

shady plot

 garlic drying

Random Food Pics

 rhubarb stewed with a vanilla bean, ultimate yum

 brown rice with pickled chilies and cheese, nuked, my favorite quick meal

 and cilantro on top...

fried rice with kale; tofu yu smoked jalapeno tofu on the side -- the stuff is magic

Astrophotography

Very cool link from Outside Online, on the wings of seeing some cool eclipse photos on friends' facebook pages. Nice.

Dick Miller / Random Roles

awesome.

Wind, Sand, and Stars previsited

I finished up Wind, Sand, and Stars a couple of months ago but never got around to writing up a post. This story on CNN today is pretty similar to one of the stories in that book, except Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was able to walk out to safety. By the way, Wind, Sand, and Stars come out #1 on a list of adventure books by Outside Online. Others in the top 5 included the Snow Leopard and Desert Solitaire, so pretty solid company.

Community Gardening Issues

You bet your garden this week (5 May 2012) has a fascinating interview with Mark Birdsall, who is involved with setting up community gardens for under privileged people who are used to receiving food from food banks. (The interview starts around the 14min mark).

Some interesting points, that reflect on the UCSB garden:
They will have master gardeners on hand to help with people's questions. This is one of our biggest issues. When I give away plots to new garden members I try to point out the plots of gardeners with alot of knowledge that people can seek advice from. I also give some basic advice about what grows well for me. But we are pretty far from being master gardeners. Producing a document of gardening tips for new garden members is something I've thought about and I definitely think we should do it; by pooling our info I think we could help alot of people.

Teaching people to grow food can be difficult, but it is as important to teach people how to cook what they grow. We've put some recipes on the garden blog, I think I'll put more of a focus on that.

Some gardens (i.e. school gardens) suffer because the school year doesn't match up with the growing season... "good intentions do not manage a garden." This is more of an issue back east than in California, but plots that are unattended in the summer do suffer. And that's also when many of the fruit trees produce, so people gone for the summer don't experience that benefit.  

Desert Getaways / Outside Magazine

cool places, but seems like they recommend yuppie hotels...

Midnight Rider

Neko Case on Q

KCLU changed up their lineup and they play Q at night instead of the BBC. I'm not the biggest fan. But I was doing a little youtubing today and came across this cool interview with Neko on Q when middle cyclone came out. A worthy way to spend 18 minutes. & a song

Fava beans

 Yum. I'm duking it out with a garden pest for the harvest, but they are tasty. This dinner was fava, garlic, ho-mi-z mustard, rice, with preserved roasted eggplant, and a little humboldt fog goat cheese on top. Growing food is awesome. Looks like I haven't posted that eggplant recipe yet. Oops. It's amazing.

Rice Pudding Sorbet

Good. Damn good. Though it either needed more sugar or more booze cause it froze too hard. Made rice pudding using these proportions: 1c short grain brown rice, 6c coconut milk, 1/2 c sugar, salt. Made a simple syrup with 1c water, 1c sugar, 2 vanilla beans. Combined that and used a stickblender to break up the vanilla beans. Added 2 whipped eggwhites. Very close to being amazing, though might have to update this when it's dialed in. A worthy addition to the sorbet chronicles.

Pumpkin Sorbet

This isn't really an official recipe cause I didn't record quantities. Double Rainbow, a San Francisco ice cream company makes a pumpkin ice cream that is divine. This is a bit simpler. I took a sugar pie pumpkin, broke it down, steamed it till soft, scooped the flesh off of the skin, added about a cup of sugar and pumpkin pie spice. Then whipped up a bunch of egg whites with a little more sugar and folded it all together with some vanilla extract. This past weekend was pretty hot and it went down well then. A decent enough addition to the sorbet chronicles.