Plate filled with local food
We had our first Locavore Wednesday! With our first basket of produce from Cold Water Creek Farms CSA we decided to organize a dinner the next day with the things we got from the basket. It was so much fun and the food was so good we decided to make it a weekly thing! This week we had zucchini bars, pasta with kale or swiss chard, grilled veggies with cheese, two types of pesto made from garlic scape, kale chips and probably some other things I have not remembered. We had four families each brining a dish or two and that made a feast. Not sure which was better the food or the excitement everyone had.
Locavores!
We received our first basket of produce from the membership to Cold Water Creek Farms CSA. We are so excited we have fresh swiss chard, eggplant, garlic scape, cucumbers, yellow squash zucchini, kale and patty pan squash! So now we just have to make a bunch of stuff out of it! I am going to try some pan fried squash all olive oiled and spiced up with the garlic scape. Melissa is going for swish chard recipe. Any suggestions are welcome.
Also today our neighbor took our potatoes and made potato chips out of them. Best darn potato chips we have ever had!!
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Aaron Newton talks about A Nation of Farmers
Aaron Newton (of blog Powering Down and Hen and Harvest) talked about his book A Nation of Farmers. Last December I help him with his website. I just got back from a talk he gave which is an overview of the book he co wrote. He has really inspired me to keep working on our local food efforts. He is on his way to changing the world.
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When I got some poison ivy on my hand last weekend I had to sit out Saturday yard activities while the medication healed my hand. I could however dream up what the patio is going to look like when I get done. So I spent some time with google sketchup. Luckily I spent some time in autocad class when I was in high school and now this is really paying off.
Patio design from roof perspective
The fireplace / bbq and pizza / bread oven I took from an existing model. Mainly as place holders because I will be using different materials mainly scraps to build mine. However I needed to get the spacing right. I am also planning on surrounding most of the patio with pergola and grape vine growing up it. That is really a fall project and the patio is this summer.
Patio from the kitchen window
The other important view is from the kitchen window. Melissa wants a view of the far back yard. This is probably going to mean that the pergola can run on the right and left side of this view. And the back will need to stay open. I have some ideas on how to make this cool. Also wanted the pergola to provide some amount of shade so it is more critical for the pergola to be on the left side than the right.
Any feedback?
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Melissa's New bike Trek 7.3
We just got a new bikes. Lateef’s was damaged in shipping but Melissa’s is here and she has been test riding it! We decide to get matching Trek FX 7.3 (Red). We where going to get 7.2 but they couldn’t get Lateef size so we decided to upgrade a bit. We are excited to get out and rideQ
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Was picking up some bamboo for tomato stakes with Aaron Newton when I saw a bicycle on the side of the road. We noticed they had a bunch of other stuff piled up for trash pickup. So we though it in the back of the truck and I pumped up the tires, adjusted the seat and took it for a spin. Now I have one extra cruiser..
The Blue Bullet
Wow what a wonderful meal. For the price I don’t think there is another place withing a couple hundred miles that could compete with the Ibis. We made them a website which need a lot of work but will hopefully be better soon. With the lot of local food, organic and plenty of vegitarian food for mj we wish we could go there more often.
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We went on a run on the greenway that start in downtown Concord early this morning. It isn’t officially open there is still some heavy equipment out there but it is pretty much fully usable. What a great place to run!
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After having some issues with the blog software Lateef thought hey maybe I will update the software and WOOT! Everything is working much better now. Can write blog post again!
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Here we are, at 10 pm on a Sunday, trying to keep up with the Olson’s. Not the Jones’s, but the Olson’s. See, the past few months, we have gotten big-headed about our breadmaking skills. The bread isn’t mind-blowing amazing, its just good enough for you to appreciate it, because we gave it to you for free. If you had to pay for it, you might not be so gracious in your description of it. Anyway, because we have gotten big-headed about our bread, I think we have also become a little lazy. We’re not taking some of the extra steps we used to. Then, our friend Erik Olson decided to pull out his fancy bread machine, and with the flick of a wrist, he began churning out bread with very little effort & fanfare, unlike our usual procedure. Last night he graduated to baking his bread in the oven rather than in the bread machine, and we went over to see his finished product. He has achieved in a few weeks, a certain level in breadmaking which took us a few years to get to.
Not yet defeated, we decided to raise the ante a little today. It’s Christmas, so we thought we would send out a few batches to our Concord neighbors. First we made a single batch of Brother’s Bread, then decided to make another double batch of it. We then graduated to Italian baguettes, and finally topped it all of with a festive Cranberry Walnut bread. Look at this spread!
bread spread
Plus we re-invigorated some techniques that may have been lost over the past few months: egg whites on the crust before the loaves go in the oven, extra effort in cutting them, and even had the idea to toast the walnuts. Fancy Fancy!
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