Talk Science to Me

Things are happening in sustainable farming that give me hope. A small number of soil scientist farmers are making the round through the country to talk to commercial farmers all across the nation to help them make sustainable changes that will also help them have economic growth but most importantly, will SAVE. THE. PLANET.

• Rotational grazing will reduce methane (greenhouse gasses). Some scientists posit rotational grazing could actually reverse climate change in as little as five years if every dairy farmer in the United States grazed their cows rotationally. The soil is improved, the need for nitrate chemical fertilizers is eliminated, the milk and the meat is more nutritive, there's no run-off of nitrates or pollution into the rivers. 
• Biochar is a carbon negative--that's right, not neutral but NEGATIVE--soil amendment that removes carbon from the air, kicks compost into gear, and traps carbon in the soil for a half life of about 100,000 years. And you can make it yourself. And if you don't want to make it you can buy it.
• Soil conditiong to treat soil like a living organism has been used successfully in China and all over the Middle East to reduce erosion, stop dust storms, aid in water retention, stop run off from floods, and REVERSE. DROUGHT. CONDITIONS. Farmers are using it right now in California, South Carolina, North Dakota and all over the United States to do exactly that while their neighbors lose top soil into the air and rivers along with the chemical fertilizers they pour into their crops for fast growth and no nutrition. Azonite, mycorrhizal fungi, and cover crops are creating top soil by the metric ton and transforming dead farmland back into viable soil. 

Exciting, right? 

That's why I was startled to find out that all of these things have been around for decades. I happened to stumble across an urban farm podcast about biochar and followed it down a rabbit hole of soil building into a world of scientific information I had never heard of. I thought maybe I'd just missed the bulletin but when I went into my local organic nursery looking for azonite, charcoal, mycorrhizal fungi, and cover crop seeds I realized I wasn't the only one who didn't know about these soil conditioning climate change planet saving strategies. While hidden on a shelf with obscure organic soil amendments was a single, granola bar sized packet of mycorrhizal fungi inoculant, there was an entire wall of fungicide products. While there was one kind of cover crop seeds--red clover--there was a second entire wall of herbicides that advertised their ability to kill clover down to the taproot. And while I had my little packet of pollinator flower seeds, there was a third wall of insecticides promising to kill wasps and yellow jackets. Were those somehow supposed to not kill bees? 

The answer seems obvious--big soil science is missing getting its message out to an enormous population of potential soil builders, pollinator growers, carbon scrubbers and rain water collectors: the urban farming community. 

It's easy to ignore urban farmers as just backyard vegetable growers, but historically when American and the globe has gone to war, the women of the world have stepped up with backyard vegetable growing to feed the globe. Victory Gardens have always been a mainstay of food deserts not just during the previous century but throughout history across all continents; but in World War I the women of Europe, Australia and America pulled food from over five million gardens to the tune of something like $1.8 billion worth of potatoes, eggs, and vegetables. In World War II the White House joined the effort with Eleanor Roosevelt's inaugural Victory Garden in the White House lawn in 1943, and American women alone bumped up food production to 18 million gardens on public and private lands. Studies show that backyard growers have been intrical in preserving bee populations during the frightening colony collapse disorder; while commercial bee keepers send their Italian honey bees off to almond grove monoculture in California where they live for a season and then die, backyard growers in urban neighborhoods with their increase in pollinator flowers and the diversity of species have managed to keep wild bee population numbers up. Many urban farmers made the switch from pollen free to pollen rich species like sunflowers and started eliminating pesticides from their flowers in order to keep the pesticides off of their fruits and vegetables, and wild bee and butterfly numbers have swelled. In Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union left the island marooned with no source of fossil fuels, a forced agro-economy had to be instituted with backyard growers sourcing most of the food for the population from their backyards and public lands; those urban farmers essentially saved the island from starvation. 

So why if urban farmers have the potential to make the same changes in the cities that commercial farmers are making in the country has the message of soil building not made its way into the gardening community? Why are we backyard growers not getting the memo?

Part of the reason, I believe, is the way the message is being delivered. Of course the message is going out primarily TO those commercial growers, but it's also the WAY the message is being delivered. There are youtube videos available of technical specs and cover crop mix proportions that anyone can view, so why are these things still not common knowledge? To answer that I think it's important to know that the vast majority of urban farmers are women, something like 75-80%. Well, the soil scientists will tell you, they're not ignoring this audience because they're women, they still have the same access to information as the commercial growers. Except there's a key piece of the puzzle missing in the delivery method. 

Studies have shown that because girls mature emotionally faster they spend elementary school being bored with school and easily succeeding in subjects like math and science, because the boys lack of emotional and physical maturity leads to a restlessness that by necessity slows the learning pace in the classroom and requires more repetition. Most girls excel in science and math in elementary school because by the time the tests come or the scaffolded projects are due, they've been given more than sufficient time and repetition so that they most likely didn't need to study, and many times have been able to figure out the concepts ahead of where the teacher is without trying. When middle school hits, however, and somewhere between fifth and seventh grade the majority of boys have a vast jump in physical control and emotional maturity, teachers ramp up the pace, since they no longer have to contend with little squirmy five year old boys. For the first time in their lives girls find themselves being challenged in science and math especially because the pace now is such that they have to pay attention with an entirely different amount of focus than they've been taught is acceptable in the previous six years of schooling. They quickly find themselves drowning  and because for the first time in their lives they haven't been able to figure out the concepts ahead of where the teacher is teacher (because now things are moving so quickly that they actually have to learn the lesson as the teacher teaches it) science and math becomes for many girls a source of dread. This psychological association for science and math with something uncomfortable is a key reason why those fields remain male dominated--not because women CAN'T excel or DON'T excel in science and math, but because many women purposely avoid it because of the negative associations for them and prefer a narrative based learning style. 

This then could be why narrative driven books are so popular with the largely female audience of urban farmers. Books like Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle" manage to squeeze in a wealth of data, strategies, technique and history in with the story of a year of her life on her farm as she and her husband tried to eat only what they could grow or source locally. Novella Carpenter's "Farm City" doesn't sugar coat the emotional cost of killing a rabbit, chicken, goose, duck or pig, and describes in gory detail the disposal of each, but the narrative makes the story more appealing than the typical grim-faced white bearded fellow staring out of animal husbandry textbooks from the seat of his tractor. And this in turn can explain why urban farming communities have largely been left out of the ultra scientific, data-driven conversations of soil building: different learning styles. 

Gabe Brown, as part of Living Web's soil building series, manages to do all things at once--talk about the science of soil building but link it to the narrative of his family farm and the trauma of how weather wiped out his crop not one year but three in a row until he had no other choice but to try sustainable farming practices. I'm hopeful that more farmer scientists will learn from his example and learn to teach across learning styles with humor, wit, and storytelling so that the planet as a whole can enlist the veritable army of urban farmers ready to change the world...with the daughters and granddaughters of those World War II Victory Gardeners that fed the world living up to their mothers' legacies.

Further notes:

What is mycorrhizal fungi? Essentially mycorrhizal fungi functions to form a symbiote between a fungi and the plant roots that allows the plant to draw even more nutrients and water from the soil. It also helps your plants to acclimate to the pH and unique characteristics of your soil which means your saved seeds become even more perfect to grow in your garden. Inoculant comes in a powdered form that you tap onto the roots of your new plantings at about a teaspoon at a time. You can also find these white networks of roots on plants in your local forest or canyon if you dig, and the proximity to the roots of your new plantings can allow the fungi to jump from plant to plant. 

What is cover crop? Cover crop seeds can be many things from crimson clover to a peas and oats mix to alfalfa to sunflowers. Basically scientists have realized that the sun's damaging UV rays kill the soil network of bacteria and micro organisms which keep the soil aerated and nutrient dense and allow water absorption (a key cause fo the dust storms and floods in China and parts of the US is soil run off which causes mud flats and the lack of binding agents in the soil acting as glue without which dry soil just blows away in the wind). Plant cover crops to literally cover your soil and keep it from baking in the sun, keep the temperature moderate for your plantings, and to fix nitrogen in the soil. Crimson clover can also be used as a pollinator but for maximum nitrogen fixing you will want to cut it before it flowers. The taproots of cover crops aerate the soil and when the plant is cut (leaving the root in the soil) and dropped, the plant will decompose into nitrogen dense natural fertilizer that some commercial dairy farmers are starting to use for grazing systems instead of grass.

What is biochar? Basically, any scrap wood or wood products that would be allowed to decompose can be baked into charcoal and buried and the carbon that would have been released into the air upon decomposition will be trapped in the nooks and crannies. When that biochar is buried it traps that carbon back into the soil. You can buy biochar by the pound, make it yourself in a special oven, or make a simple biochar burner with a paint can inside a metal drum. One source of green house gasses is the decomposition of carbon based products in landfills; the gasses amplify when in promity to each other. When we compost in general and when we use biochar, we can drastically reduce those gasses, and the use of biochar can eliminate them completely. 

Saving the Summer Citrus Season

In California nothing is as iconic amongst urban farmers you didn't even KNOW were urban farmers until you see them abashedly bringing in enormous shopping bags of lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits and leaving them in the employee lounges at the office with the exhortation FREE PLEASE TAKE THEM. Our weather is so perfect for citrus a typical homeowner uninterested in gardening can still end up with hundreds of pounds of citrus excess, and our farmer's markets are brimming with citrus. Since one person can only eat so many orange slices, it can feel overwhelming to have so much excess. What to do with it all?

On a recent trip to Sorrento, Italy, arguably the citrus capital of the world with their sunny climate and volcanic soil, I saw lmeons the size of grapefruits and oranges the size of canteloupes and everywhere creative uses for these wonderful sweet acidic treats. The roadside coming down the Amalfi coast was dotted with vendors selling fresh squeezed orange juice (nothing like it) and lime and lemon granita--simple lemonade or limeade frozen into slush and swimming with wafer thin sliced fruit. And dried fruit and nut seller in one of the open markets sold all kinds of candied fruit--a little different than our tasteless, leathery version of dried fruit. The candied strawberries in particular were so good I probably ate a pound just on their own in that first day; and my other favorite, surprising me utterly were the candied lime slices. Even in America you'll sometimes find candied orange peel or jellied orange, usually coated or dipped in chocolate. But limes I hadn't seen before in the dried fruit sections, and certainly not these lovely green round slices coated in citrus sugar. The dried fruit vendor confidently offered a myriad of samples to everyone who so much as paused to look at his wares, and I soon found out why: everything was delicious and surprising. As soon as I got home I went looking for a recipe to candy fruit and found it was incredibly easy to recapture that taste of Italy.

Slice limes thinly and blanch in boiling water for two minutes. Drain, and then in the same pot bring equal parts sugar and water to boil, and simmer lime slices for 10-15 minutes. I wanted a lot so I sliced up a dozen limes and made three cups (3 c. water, 3 c. sugar) simple syrup which was plenty to cover the limes and keep them off the bottom. Drain again but save the lime infused syrup for margaritas, tea, or ice cream. Spread on a cooling rack for one hour, then dust with sugar.

When trying to figure out what else to do with your citrus, remember that lemon isn't the only kind of citrus you can use for curds. All citrus can be made into curds--a basic recipe is:

4 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
2 lemons, zested and juiced (or 4 meyer lemons, 4 limes, 3 oranges)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cu. butter

Whisk and cook over medium high heat, stirring gently but continuously with a heat proof rubber spatula or wooden spoon until the butter melts and the mixture thickens, about 5-10 minutes. Don't let the mixture boil or it will curdle. Transfer the curd to a bowl and stir off the heat to stop the cooking and let it cool.

No Waste Cooking

Massimo Bottura has always been my favorite of the Chef's Table documentary features, with his passion for the agricultural region he hails from, Emilia Romagna, and his dedication to retaining the artisan techniques of that region in crafting Parmegiano Reggiano, prosciutto di parma and Balsamic Vinegar. When an earthquake left Emilia Romagna's Parmegiano Reggiano industry in danger of total collapse with 300,000 aging wheels of Parmigiano damaged, Massimo Bottura used his restaurant to feature a myriad of preparations of Parmegiano to encourage use of the delicate ingredient and to become a champion of local food and farm-to-table in Northern Italy. Not only is Bottura passionate about tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, parmesan and all foods Italian, but he's become a charming advocate for sustainable eating with no-waste cooking. 

No-waste cooking is second nature to any urban farmer who's worked to nurture a single jar of sauce from a stubborn tomato plant or a single meal from a bed full of green bean plants. We know how precious every vegetable from the backyard garden is, and want to use every scrap. Here's a handful of recipes: one Massimo Bottura's recipe for meat broth which can be used in vegetable soups, risotto, or drunk straight for health as a bone broth; and then some uses for the pounds of stewed beef and chicken left-over after cooking the slow-cooked broth. 

Meat Broth (source: Massimo Bottura "Master Class")

1 medium yellow onion, halved
1 whole chicken (3 to 4 pounds, or 11⁄4 to 13⁄4 kilograms), preferably
free-range and organic
1 beef short rib (la costola in Italian) 2 medium carrots, peeled
2 medium celery stalks, trimmed
2 fresh bay leaves
1 leftover rind Parmigiano-Reggiano 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns Flaky sea salt

Place the stockpot over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, and cook until reduced by a third, up to
six hours (or until the vegetables lose their flavor). Every 10 to 15 minutes, use a spoon to skim off and discard any impurities from the surface of the bubbling broth. When the broth is ready, remove it from the heat. Remove and discard the meat and large vegetables with tongs (you can use the chicken meat to make chicken salad, sandwiches, or for chicken noodle soup, etc.). Using a ladle, spoon the broth slowly through a chinois, or sieve, into another saucepan. Taste the broth, and season lightly with some salt. Serve immediately or pour the broth into storage containers, letting it cool to room temperature before putting it into the freezer. It will keep for up to three months. Any frozen stock that you don’t use for this recipe can be used to make soups, as flavorful liquid in a meatloaf, or even to enrich the gravy for your Thanksgiving turkey.

I was inspired by Massimo's suggestion to use the leftover chicken to make chicken salad to make a version of the chicken salad I make, inspired by a pesto chicken salad wrap I've had in at Sammy's Woodfired Grill. You know how much I love to get better versions of good stuff without paying full price! so when I had this at Sammy's (chopped chicken with pesto mayonnaise, olives, red peppers and chopped lettuce) I came home and made my own version with much more flavor and fresher vegetables. You can use a rotisserie chicken for the mixed dark and white chicken in this recipe, or all white breast meat if you wish. In the interests of less waste (less glass jars, less packaging, less transportation) I tried to use more of what came from my garden and less prepackaged food (basil and olive oil with fresh parmesan rather than using a canned pesto sauce). 

Basil Chicken Salad

Mixed chicken meat from one full chicken (can use the stewed meat from making bone broth, or a rotisserie chicken

Chopped fresh basil 

Chopped fresh Italian parsley

1/3 cup grated parmegiano reggiano

1 roasted pepper, skin blackened and removed, seeds removed

1  6 oz. jar olives, kalamata or green

2 lbs mixed heirloom tomatoes, chopped

1 tbl capers, rinsed and chopped.

Maldon sea salt flakes

Cracked black pepper

Balsamic vinegar

Butter lettuce

Chop the herbs and mix with the parmegiano, then mix into the chicken. Saute the chopped tomatoes with olive oil and salt just enough to soften and put everything, juices, oil, and tomatoes, into the salad. Chop the peppers, capers and olives and mix in. Adjust for salt and add a sprinkling of pepper. If desired add mayonnaise to bind the ingredients together but the oil from the tomatoes should bind everything nicely especially if you are using the stewed chicken from the bone broth. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and eat on butter lettuce cups. 

South Carolina Barbecued Beef

2 lbs stewed beef from making meat broth, shredded

1/2 cup yellow mustard 

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white vinegar

2 tbl worcestershire sauce

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

Mix all ingredients but the beef to make a yellow mustard based Carolina barbecue sauce. Mix with the stewed beef and eat on buns or with a fork. 

The One Candy to Rule Us All

Like all rational humans, I view Williams-Sonoma with a blend of longing and hatred. I have a college degree and I work hard and dammit I WANT ME SOME OF THAT STUFF RICH PEOPLE EAT! I can't afford the Mauviel copper pots, hand hammered by French artisans with their pewter lid handles in the shape of tiny sculpted squashes and acorns--my not-as-good copper pots came from countless hours combing through twelve different Marshalls stores and digging through broken candlesticks and snowflake shaped spatulas until I found each of my 60% off pots one at a time. It took me a year. But Rich People Food--I mean, I know how to work a search engine. There's stuff on the Inter-web-thingy, like, lists of instructions, or recipes, if you will, for how to make things. I COULD HAVE THAT FOOD (If I make it my damn self).

In fact, Williams-Sonoma dares me to make that food. 

Two different colors and puuuuuuure flake sea salt! Woooooo, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, this is Faaaaaancy people fooooood....

Their Christmas catalog is one of the coolest and most envy and rage inspiring 29 pages of quasi-literature known to man. And among the ridiculously expensive gadgets (Mauviel copper fondue pot, $770--really? People still fondue? Is this a wife swapping party? What are you even talking about with your 1962 cocktail party madness?!?) is the cornerstone of the Williams-Sonoma Christmas economy--peppermint bark. A Williams-Sonoma store may sell only one $1500 reclaimed barn wood chicken coop with artisan hammered copper roofing to a crazy aristocratic chicken lady in heels but there are enough middle-class poseurs who'll buy that damn peppermint bark to keep the little artisan elves who live in the back of Martha Stewart's elf shed in reclaimed barn wood and artisan copper to hammer for the rest of the fiscal year. And not only does Williams-Sonoma know that the Suburban sheep will buy it, they know we'll try to make it ourselves and they scoff--yes, SCOFF!--at our attempts. "Our nostalgic peppermint bark is often copied but never matched in flavor." Really, WS? 

Oh, WE CAN GO. 

Alright. First of all, peppermint bark has three ingredients--dark chocolate, white chocolate, and candy canes. So you can just get a cheap pounds of dark chocolate, a pound of white chocolate, and a box of candy canes for a few bucks and make your own peppermint bark for way cheaper than Williams-Sonoma (mini-win). I mean...you *could*.  Sure, Hershey's and Nestle chocolate chips are a thing, totally.  Hershey's and Nestle are okay if you want to put them into the middle of some cookie dough but people we are not hiding our chocolate in brown sugar dough as something crunchy to kind of notice and go oh, hey, chocolate, what's up? If you use the cheap chocolate THEY WIN. "Often copied but never matched in flavor"? We have to make peppermint bark that at least matches in flavor. AT LEAST. Really, what we're going for here is the utter destruction and humiliation of the Williams-Sonoma franchise. We want that candy to slink away in shame like the cheap tarted-up tin-bait it is.

Go home, Tin-Bait. You're drunk. 

Okay fine. YES. You could use Guittard. You can buy it in most supermarkets like Von's, Sprouts, and Wild Oats; and import stores like Cost Plus carry it, especially in December. It's not that expensive and for the price per pound, you can make more than twice as much as you get in the Williams-Sonoma tin. And it is exactly what Williams-Sonoma uses; charging you $30/lb to give us what they bill as a heavenly confection and it's the same chocolate you can buy in the grocery store. It's not even the BEST chocolate you can buy in the grocery store. They just don't think we're smart enough to notice. DO YOU SEE THE EVIL?! 

We must destroy them. 

The Fellowship of the Ring doesn't just grab like, some random skinny guy and give him a bow and say hey, follow this quasi-annoying short barefooted guy from Wilfred around until you see a volcano, don't die. They got ORLANDO BLOOM to shoot a bow while he's running up a chain to the top of a monstro-elephant head and shoot that giant monster in the face and still have effortlessly
straight glowing blond hair. If we want to make the One Candy to Rule Us All we need the Orlando
Bloom of chocolate and that, my friends, is Callebaut and Valrhona. 

Callebaut and Valrhona are the chocolate of choice for professional chocolatiers. It's not what the Rich Folk feed us poor slobs, it's what they feed themselves. Sparingly. Callebaut white chocolate is so soft, so perfectly buttery delicious, it melts into your hands. It has flavor and that flavor, my friends, is not flavorless wax lard and lies, as we've been told all our lives when we were unfortunate enough to be the kid who for the white chocolate Easter bunny just to have variety between you and your siblings. Callebaut white chocolate is a tiny bit nutty and buttery and smooth as the cabana boy you wish was rubbing cocoa butter on your back at your vacation home in St. Barths. (That's a thing. I think.) The Callebaut dark chocolate is the perfect PERFECT balance of bitter and delicately sweet chocolate with a smell that when you melt it will almost certainly bring someone to your door asking for sex. A dab of this stuff between your boobs will let you rule the free world. I feel certain it's how Jennifer Lopez gets people to let her make movies. 

Have I convinced you? Buy some real chocolate. They sell it at Whole Foods and yes that is an intimidating store but just walk in, get your chocolate and get out before you get bogged down in organic truffle oil and sustainably farmed hemp candles.

Okay so, let's cook. You need:

1 lb dark chocolate (60% cacao, bittersweet)

1 lb white chocolate (it's the white one. You'll see.)

4 candy canes (yay! Cheap at Target!)

Peppermint extract (also Target!)

Vanilla extract (you have some! It's free!)

Parchment paper (Target)

A gallon plastic Ziploc bag

A hammer (calm down.)

A spatula

A pan (jelly roll or a cookie sheet)

A knife

A pot

A double boiler (basically a Nother Pot)

1. Start the double boiler doing its thing. You can use a bowl set over a pot of boiling water as well. The basic idea is not to let the chocolate touch the bottom of a hot pot. Cut up the dark chocolate into chunks or shavings and throw it in the top part of the double boiler to melt. Stir in 1/2 tsp peppermint extract. Yeah. You heard me. We're not just making a chocolate layer cake like a bunch of noobs here. I said put the peppermint right IN. THE. CHOCOLATE.

2. Lay out a piece of parchment paper into the pan. The chocolate is thick (yay! You bought Callebaut so it's not separating and leaving oily crap all over the place!) so it won't run. Pour out dark chocolate and spread over the surface of the pan until it's as thick as desired. I like about 1/4" so it has a nice bite to it.

3. Clean the cutting board, knife, spatula and double boiler and dry completely before repeating the process with white chocolate. Any water getting in the chocolate will absolutely ruin it so be careful. Cut it up, melt it down, boom. Add 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1/4 tsp peppermint extract. Yeah. Vanilla. Often copied but never matched in flavor my ass. Pour it out on top of the dark chocolate and carefully spread it so that the two flavors don't mix.

4. Unwrap four candy canes and put in Ziploc gallon bag (use the gallon bags because they're thick and better able to withstand the beating you're about to throw down). Take the hammer and beat those candy canes like they're the thin red and white walls separating us from the World of Rich People Food. Because that, my friend is what you're doing. Beat down those walls.

5. Sprinkle crushed candy canes over the white chocolate layer and let cool. When it's hardened, which will take a few hours, pick up by the parchment paper and pan will be as clean as if you had a sous chef coming along behind you to clean up. You don't do dishes. Break up the candy into whatever sized pieces you want and either eat it or give it away to your friends like a baller.

6. Practice your smug face. Smiling gives you wrinkles. 

Autumn in Heels--Eating Locally, Eating Seasonally

In Southern California we don't get much of an autumn so we really, I mean REALLY celebrate seasonal flavors like, ON THE FREAKING DOT of September 1st. And by celebrate seasonal flavors I mean go to Starbucks as early as they open so it'll be sort of cool enough to enjoy a hot drink and get a pumpkin spice latte. If you happen to be in luck and it's a slightly overcast day you will definitely wear your brisk Arctic polar fleece Northface zip-up jacket, because really, when are you going to have another chance to wear it and pretend we have seasons. By October the infinity scarves and Ugg boots make their appearance, probably with leggings and the thinnest long sleeved shirt you own, because, again, it's usually in the 80s all the way through the start of November.

The relentless wild Californian Infinity Scarf develops a symbiotic
relationship with its prey before ultimately devouring her.

We hear about this "Autumn" you other states talk about and it sounds awesome. A whole new wardrobe that you only use for those three months! Dressing to match the foliage of trees that somehow change their colors?! That sounds magical. In So-Cal we have cypress trees, palm trees, and lawns. When we go to pumpkin patches they typically are big parking lots that have been covered with stacked bales of hay and a bunch of straw on the ground (which crunches satisfyingly under your Ugg boots and makes you feel all Autumnal-ly) and carnival rides to disguise the fact that you're getting the very same pumpkins you could pick up at the big box grocery stores. They even come in the self-same packing boxes. It's hard for us to find authentic Autumn experiences in the land of eternal summer--so we turn to comfort foods and things flavored with cinnamon and squash. Our myriad local farm-to-table gastropubs will reinvent the butternut squash ravioli and fried squash blossoms and pumpkin cheesecake all over their seasonal menus this month. 

So yes, yes, a thousand times yes on the pumpkin spice latte (I like a nice pumpkin shot in a chai latte, myself). But truly eating seasonally, in a way that's a bit more meaningful than gingerbread cookies and butternut squash soup, is a little more time and thought consuming. 

I first read about the concept of only eating seasonal foods when I read the Barefoot Contessa's book Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients. In the preface, Ina Garten describes her impossibly glamorous foray to Paris and how difficult it was as an American, being completely used to having any ingredient under the sun eternally available, to come to terms with having to cook only with what was available. In particular, she relates her attempt to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, when she, Ina Garten of Martha's Vineyard, was used to having access to heirloom veg fed turkeys, seventeen different pumpkins of varying colors, and wild cranberries from what I imagine is her own William's-Sonoma-crafted cranberry bog--only to find out that those things are only sold frozen and in cans in France, if at all. (Because, apparently, not all Parisians enjoy eating the cuisine of English people who were making do with things they found in the woods.) Still, I appreciated her story of gradually giving in to the season and allowing her inspiration for dinner to come from what was fresh and available where she was,of learning to cook in a way that celebrated a vegetable or fruit that was at the height of its flavor. It made me think about the December bing cherries that appear in stores like a breath of summer, shiny and rosy-cheeked and whispering, "Now you can have it all, now you can really have it all..." I remember buying a big two and something pound bag for a whopping $24, trembling with anticipation and not even waiting to get to my car before popping one into my mouth, expecting to be met with a burst of sweet juice. Instead I was met by hard, joyless lies, which eventually gave way to the sour truth--there is nothing, NOTHING, worse than a December cherry. 

Why eat seasonally, when we have access to almost everything almost all the time? It's the pumpkin-spice-latte effect. Starbucks actually sells pumpkin syrup all year round. You can get pumpkin lattes literally. Any. Time. You could have a nice hot pumpkin latte and you could even get them to put a dash of cinnamon or toffee sprinkles on top in the middle of July. The fact that it's on the chalk-menu in burnt orange chalk-pen with curlicues of green like pumpkin vines around it reminds you that you haven't had one since last fall and now you NEED that pumpkin hit like an infinity scarf needs a white girl to go with it. 

If pumpkin syrup, containing zero real pumpkin and mostly made up of corn syrup, can be so good,  how amazing could fall fruits and vegetables, cooked well and at the height of their flavor, be? This table of local fall foods got me thinking about more than just pumpkin and butternut squashes. Broccoli and cauliflower are at their sweetest and least bitter in the fall; roasted carrots (cut into matchsticks, toss with melted butter, salt and pepper, cook at 375 for 30 minutes. Seriously. Stop boiling...); brussells sprouts (Salt & Cleaver in Hillcrest, San Diego has possibly THE most amazing caramelized Brussels Sprouts with bacon, balsamic vinegar, and granny smith apples); grapes (vineyards are one of the only spots for seasonal color for us in California), pears and of course apples. All these things have become mostly season-less in American grocery stores but their flavor is absolutely amazing right now. 

Eating locally goes hand in hand with eating seasonally, and here's the thing. It's very haute to eat locally and visit the farmer's markets (in San Diego, there's a farmer's market or three on every day of the week) during the summer. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can compete with the flavor of a farm stand summer strawberry. The grocery store strawberry has just had to sacrifice too much flavor in favor of the sturdiness that lets them be shipped all over the country; its a cheap truck stop cousin to the ultra sweet, delicate strawberry you can grow in your own backyard. The farm-stand strawberry is the next best thing, and at almost the same price per pound as the monstrous, tasteless version you get at the grocery store, it's ridiculous not to get the farmer's market version. Buying farm-stand strawberries keeps that strain of strawberry alive, because in case you haven't noticed, you literally cannot buy a strawberry that sweet in a plastic clamshell at a big box grocery store. They are selling (and their suppliers are growing) an entirely different product, something you almost can't, really, call a strawberry anymore because its resemblance to a real, hot from the summer sun, strawberry is so remote. Limp, tasteless, and sometimes moldy? (I'm looking at you Vons. I AM LOOKING AT YOU.) or sweet, acidic, and complex? Hurrah for biodiversity!

Except even in California the strawberry goes out of season. The guys at the farmer's market that were selling me corn and summer squash now have kohlrabi and artichokes and brussells sprouts. The orchard people don't have cherries anymore, they have figs and pluots and pears. And while figs may not be as sexy as cherries, they're still sweet and sultry and delicious--and buying that fig from a local farmer keeps them in business till cherry and strawberry season rolls around again. 

This morning I decided to drive out to Julian, the little orchard town in the mountains northeast of San Diego proper. My visit just happened to coincide with the start of the fall u-pick season (labor day weekend) and Apple-Starr Orchards had trees dripping with Bosc, Comice, and Anjou pears before you could even get out to the gala and granny smith apple orchards. I've been to several different "pumpkin patches" all over San Diego and the neighboring areas but most are not true working farms, just patches of land where someone parked a tractor for photo ops and pumpkins laid out in a row not far from the cardboard shipping crates. These orchards were true orchards, with, yes, imperfect fruit, weirdly shaped fruit, some worm and bird damage, some bruises--but these trees also held the sweetest, most bursting-with-flavor pears and crunchy apples I'd ever tasted. We munched as we picked, developing an eye for what colors each kind of apple and pear meant the ripest, sweetest fruit, using a long-handled claw-basket pole to reach the delectable fruits at the top of the tallest branches. Without a bit of cinnamon or sugar these fruits were perfectly, fantastically Autumn. 

Laden down with "peck" bags (12 pounds) we headed into town to Julian Hard Cider, a local brewery that makes cold-press cider with only local apples, champagne yeast from local grapes and seasonal ingredients. Since it was so early in the fall we were lucky enough to find their Black-and-Blue, a blueberry and blackberry hard apple cider, and my favorite, Cherry Bomb, an absolutely explosive cherry and apple hard cider; but they also had Apple Pie and Harvest Apple, rich with cinnamon and nutmeg and all the things we love about fall. The tasting room is small, with a bar made of wood and corrugated steel from local reclaimed barns and chandeliers made from cut-glass cider bottles, and for $1 a taste we sampled everything they had in stock, finishing our hot apple picking September afternoon in a haze of Apple Pie and Razzmatazz Hard Ciders while downing carnitas from the farm stand next door.

Celebrating seasonal flavors, check. I might even have room for some kohlrabi, depending on what that turns out to actually be--after a quick pumpkin chai latte. 

Blooming in the Drought--Sustaining Pollinators on a Water Budget

The mall is blooming. You can always tell when 'tis the season for new shoes because the mall has changed out the flower borders. In Southern California we've gone from Christmas red begonias to spring pastel pansies to the first riotous red, orange and pink zinnias of early summer in the beds at the mall. They're so beautiful and trust me, color therapy is a thing I believe in deeply--but when I walk past those gorgeous color-filled beds and hear the sprinklers hissing under their leaves, I can't help but feel a twinge of guilt.

"You thought you could enjoy flowers without paying the price? No. No. You'll pay. Oh, you'll pay."

Even though Southern California has had unseasonable amounts of rain this calendar year and Northern California had a very successful rain year in 2016, helping to raise the water table and address some of the dwindling snowpack in the northern mountains that feeds many of our dwindling aquifiers, California is still deep in a drought that will probably be permanent. Our chaparral and desert climate in California was never meant to sustain the amount of farmland and elaborate landscaping peppering the state. Even a traditional suburban lawn sucks down an average of 2000 gallons of water a week just to keep the grass green, even under water restrictions.

Thaaaaat's a lot. For grass? for essentially a spiky dirt carpet? That's a lot. 

Grass is persona non grata on my urban farm these days since we let the lawn die in favor of vegetable beds and fruit trees. But the question of flowers has always been a tough one for me. Are they worth the water? In an urban garden every non-edible plant has to have a function--I have rue to keep away the Japanese beetles, garlic to keep off the aphids. Even my edible herbs live where they live for a reason--cilantro with peppers, basil with tomatoes, companions to encourage the growth of one another and improve the flavor of the edibles. Are my roses out there pulling their weight?

Further complicating that question is the looming disaster of the rapidly dwindling honeybee populations as Colony Collapse Disorder ravages colonies all over the country, leaving scientists baffled as to the source. The Hawaiian yellow faced honeybee was declared an endangered species this week for the first time, leaving species of vegetables like tomatoes, which can only be pollinated by honeybees, threatened as well. While scientists don't know what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder, a bizarre phenomenon which causes the drones to abandon the hive for no reason and die, the decline in available water sources and the longer and longer journeys that bees must undertake in search of pollen have also contributed to the decline in the bee population. Simply stated, fewer pollen-producing flowers per acre means longer flights for bees, who often die of dehydration or heat exhaustion from having to range so far afield with no fresh water sources to sustain them. 

So flowers, pollen-rich flowers, could do a lot for wild honeybee populations. and luckily there are some drought tolerant flowers that take very little water while providing brightly colored bee-attracting blooms. 

Purple-blue borage: edible leaves, medicinal uses for flowers, and a bee-paradise. 

Borage is one of my favorites. You don't often find it in nurseries already started; I planted my first plants from seed. They're super easy to grow, requiring nothing in terms of maintenance, and are self perpetuating. This patch of borage came up from seeds that fell between beds from last year's crop, and came up like gang-busters just from the winter rains. They are BIG, one plant stretching somewhere around 2-3' and reaching about that height. They are a perfect plant to have next to your vegetable beds as bees love them and they can thrive off the runoff from your vegetable watering. The leaves are big and slightly fuzzy and are edible, though the fuzzy texture makes them a little off-putting for me personally; but I rip off a handful of leaves every morning for my chickens and they love them. The stems are succulent and store a lot of water so this plant can take a lot of abuse.

Nasturtiums, "Alaska" mix; heirloom

These nasturtiums are also a hit with my chickens who go crazy for the leaves and the flowers. Harvesting the seeds from these heirlooms couldn't be easier; they drop from the flower heads as soon as the petals start to fade. Bees go crazy for them, especially with the yellow and orange blooms. They fade in the fall and go dormant, but this batch also came up with no help just from seeds that fell from last year's crop and the winter rains. Birds LOVE them so if you plant from seed, keep the bed covered with netting until they get big enough; and they spread a lot, mounding up quite high. Also good for borders, since they will really take over any bed they share; but they keep the ground shaded while taking up very little root space, so they are a good choice under taller plants like fruit trees. Nasturtiums are also a "trap crop", which means they attract bugs and pests and keep them off of your vegetables. When you start to see them getting infested with aphids or cabbage loopers, pull the infected plant and toss it in the compost heap. While nasturtiums do require a little water, they are by no means water hogs; I just hit them with the hose when they start to look droopy and otherwise they live off of the runoff from the vegetable beds.

Scented geranium, "Tea Rose"

These scented geraniums are probably my favorite water-wise flowering plant in the world. Scented geraniums are similar to regular geraniums but their leaves contain a strongly fragranced oil that makes the leaves scented with anything from chocolate mint to tea roses to citronella. I originally bought and planted these scented geraniums because I had read they were one of the most strongly fragrant plants out there, and I was trying to combat a stinky backyard that smelled horribly of dog from the previous owners. Whenever I had a few extra bucks I would drop by the nursery, pick up another 6" pot of these (sold in the herb section, all leaves and no flowers) and stick it in the ground. They required a bit of water to take hold but otherwise were one of my first successful garden projects. I stated collecting all the different kinds I could find and they were really, beautifully fragrant. It only took a slight breeze for the wind to pick up the scent and fill the backyard with a fresh sweet aroma.

I had never had geraniums before so I was completely unprepared for what happened once they got established. My leafy green pots shot out runners and started growing EVERYWHERE. The "citronella" variation grew straight up in stalks but all the others started sending out their vines and twining all over everything--the retaining wall, the fence, and each other. And then, without warning, they BLOOMED! Pale pink and peach and bright pink and deep fucshia, they exploded into blossom and the bees went straight for them. Once they were established, I never watered them. I went through a period where I was just too overwhelmed to take care of the garden and stopped watering them and they just grew higher. I have several plants that have now grown up over the fence and taken over everything on my back hill, and the bees just go to town. 

The great thing about geraniums is that they are easy to prune, the stalks, no matter how thick, being fairly brittle and easy to clip. They propagate themselves readily, growing to fill any space, and take up very little root space. If you can train them to grow up they look gorgeous against a fence or climbing up a tree. They drop their leaves and make their own thick, crumbly mulch, and the few times we have wanted to clear an area of geraniums they are extremely easy to pull up as their roots are very shallow.

Bottom line, when I'm thinking about what's going to live in my urban garden, I'm looking for flowers that are pollen rich (sunflowers for example, are great, but many strains have been developed to prevent allergies and have are pollen-free) or will repel or trap pests. If they can attract beneficial insects, like Bachelor Buttons attract ladybugs, great. If they're edible, as all three of the plants I've highlighted here are, even better. They need to be low-maintenance, since vegetables require most of my attention in the spring and summer months. The question remains then--with all of these great, water-wise plants, filled with pollen, requiring no care...are my roses worth it? Roses require pruning, dead-heading and weekly water; they attract diseases and take work to keep them free of leaf rot and rust spot and pests like aphids. They're petulant, spoiled princesses: if you leave them alone, they'll grow sickly and wither on their canes. 

Still...today as I was taking a good long look at the ultra fertile soil those roses live in, that beautiful crumbly dark soil filled with banana peels and garlic heads and cocoa mulch that I have cultivated over the years in order to keep those roses healthy, as I was thinking how I could stick an orange tree into that space if I just yanked them all up and it would probably take up less water, as I was asking myself what these roses were doing to earn their keep...

I noticed three honeybees climbing drunkenly into a single white rose, seductively shimmying up and down the inner petals, luxuriating in their soft, silken spa, sliding their legs through the pollen in a bacchanal of hedonism. The wind picked up the scent and carried the honey-sweet fragrance of the roses to caress my face. 

Dammit. 

Fine. But you're sharing the bed with the garlic bulbs.

Sustainably Lux--Better from the (Urban) Farm

Ok, yes, I'm an environmentalist but I admit it--the main reason I want an urban farm is I have expensive tastes. I'd floop around all day in Jimmy Choos from patisserie at Alice Walker's Chez Panisse in Berkeley to a tasting menu at Thomas Keller's French Laundry, picking up artisan candles and soaps along the way, if I could--but sadly, house payments.

Hi. I'm a freeloading slacker that does nothing but provide shelter and keep you from your dreams.

Luckily, urban farming, as in so many other ways, provides. Here are a few of my favorite things that are sustainably lux and so, SO much better from the farm:

Crack Level-Addictive Everyday Sandwich Bread

First of all, can someone PLEASE deconstruct the heavenly orgasm that is the smell of fresh baking bread and bottle it into a candle because I cannot maintain my sanity in a kitchen that is slightly warm and filled with that ambrosial scent of yeasty wheat rising loaves. It's seriously one of the things you're supposed to do to sell your home--have something baking in the oven--and nothing is better and more universally yummy and comforting than the smell of baking bread. I wish I could dab it on behind my ears and go. Gucci "Essenza del Pane". I'm saying.

My recipe for everyday sandwich bread is delicious to smell but even better fresh out of the oven, because I have a little trick of greasing the loaf pans with bacon grease. That's...not the most elegant and luxurious phrase in the world so ...I'm going to rename it Flavor Infused Crisping Oil, because that's exactly what it does. I bake my bacon in the oven on racks over a roasting pan to catch the drippings and then use that as my cooking fat for just about everything, including greasing baking tins. It leaves a faintly salty flavor on the crispy crust of the fresh baked bread, so when you take it out of the pan, it slides right out and tastes like crunchy soft heaven. You cannot get fresh baked bread that is that hot and crispy unless you stand in the bakery and wait for them to hand it to you straight out of the oven. This bread also has no preservatives and you won't need preservatives because in my experience you can't keep a loaf in the house without it being devoured within a day.

Meyer Lemon Curd

Lemon curd is super easy to make; it's essentially zest, juice, egg yolks, butter and sugar whisked together over a double boiler until it thickens. It takes about 15 minutes to juice and zest the fruit and 15 minutes to cook.

Wait, then why does this cost $12.95?

Meyer lemons, full disclaimer, are not one of those super hyped, no delivery fruits that people tack onto the name to make something look "artisanal". Meyer lemons are actually almost a completely different fruit, with an increased sweetness, a finer peel, lower acidity and are somewhere between a Eureka (standard) lemon and a clementine. While you could definitely make a regular lemon curd, it would be much more sour and lemonade-flavored than the delicacy of a meyer lemon curd, which is so delicious and rich you really won't need more than a bite. Perfect for tarts or for a dollop on top of yogurt, it's just one of my favorite things.

There are a ton of lower priced substitutes, but I think Williams-Sonoma is the best curd, lightly sweet and rich, bringing out the flavor of the Meyer lemons. At $12.95 for a jar of what is essentially flavored butter, though? Mmm, that's asking a lot. Luckily, Williams-Sonoma publishes their recipes and you can make your own exactly like theirs. You can find Meyers in the grocery store and at farmer's markets in the spring and summer, and you only need three for this recipe (two if they're particularly big). I get mine from my dwarf Meyer lemon tree that lives in a pot on my patio and produces lemons all year round. My curd is vibrant, sunshiney-lemon yellow with no additives because of the intense color of my backyard chicken eggs--their highly varied diet makes their egg yolks an extra bright yellow. 

On the left, Mrs. Dickinson's (pale and sad) on the right, my brilliant, happy curd. 

Dwarf Meyer lemons are about the easiest thing to keep in your backyard, and they cost about the same as a single jar of WS Meyer Lemon Curd; they're happy in a big pot, just add citrus fertilizer from time to time and you've essentially taken out the most expensive ingredient in the recipe to lemon-y joy.

Meyer Lemon Curd (Source: Williams Sonoma Kitchen)

• 8 egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup Meyer lemon juice
• Grated zest of 2 lemons
• 12 Tbs. (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut
    into 1/2-inch pieces
• In the top pan of a double boiler, combine the egg yolks and sugar and whisk vigorously for 1 minute. Add the Meyer lemon juice and lemon zest and whisk for 1 minute more. Set the top pan over but not touching barely simmering water in the bottom pan and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the butter, 1 piece at a time, whisking until melted before adding more.
  
  Remove the pan from the heat. Pour the curd through a fine-mesh sieve set over a bowl, pressing the curd through with a rubber spatula. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it directly on the surface to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 3 days. Makes 2 cups. 

The only problem with this recipe is that you're left with a ton of egg whites. What to do, what to do, what to do with those beautiful egg whites from your backyard chickens?

Lemon Meringue Tarts

I typically freeze extra egg whites in the hopes of not having to waste them, but once I had collected a huge bag full in the course of making a few batches of lemon curd, I had to do something with them. I went looking in my copy of Thomas Kellers "Bouchon Bakery" cookbook, seriously the gold standard of baking from basic French technique all the way up through a completely hedonistic decadence, for things that require egg whites. Meringues were the first thing that popped up, and in conjunction with having just made lemon curd? How could I not make lemon meringue tarts?

With as sweet and rich as the lemon curd was, I chose a tart dough with no sugar, made for savory tarts, called pate brisee. Once the tart shells were cooled I filled them with lemon curd and chilled again, then topped with delicious swiss meringue and bruleed them with a culinary torch. You can also use the swiss meringue recipe to make a pavlova--a baked meringue that tastes like a crispy marshmallow--just spread or pipe it into a circular shape and bake at 350 for a few minutes until it solidifies. You can then use the pavlova as a shell on its own and spread it with lemon curd or any kind of jam for a delicious sweet dessert with no fat.

Swiss Meringue (source: Thomas Keller's "Bouchon Bakery")
Egg whites--100 g/about 3
Sugar--200 g/1 cup

Mix egg whites and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer set over a double boiler. Whisk and heat to 160 degrees, then put back on the stand mixer and whisk for 5 minutes on medium high or until meringue holds stiff peaks.

Pate Brisee (source: Thomas Keller's "Bouchon Bakery")
All purpose flour, divided--140 g/1 cup
                                            165 g/1cup+3 tablespoons
Kosher salt--3 g/1 tsp
Cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4" cubes--227 g/8 oz
Ice water--58 g/1/4 cup

Mix the 140 g flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. With the mixer running on low, add the butter small handful at a time. When all butter has been added, increase speed to medium low and mix for 1 minute until blended. Scrape down, turn to medium low, and add remaining 165 g flour. Mix just to combine. Add water and mix until incorporated. Dough should feel smooth, not sticky.

Pat into 7-8" disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for 1 hour to overnight.

Roll out between two sheets of plastic wrap to 1/8" thickness and drape to fit individual tart pans (makes 1 dozen). No greasing of pans is required, butter in the dough will not stick when baked.
Blind bake at 350 for 12-16 minutes with tart pans on a cookie sheet, then allow to cool completely on wire racks.

Seriously, what better use for backyard chicken eggs?
Speaking of backyard chickens...

Backyard Chicken Eggs

One of these things is better. You see it. Left, store bought and chalky. Right, backyard deliciousness.

They're just better. Think about a commercial chicken on the worst end of a spectrum, and the battery cage where she lives, stacked under another battery cage with another hen, and so on up to the top of the cement warehouse where they will live out their lives, breathing and eating each other's feces along with the cheap, filler and hormone laden food they're fed to keep them at their most productive. 

A "cage free" hen gets a slightly better life in that she's not under layers and layers of other hens but the FDA doesn't regulate "cage free" eggs as anything beyond literally hens not living in cages. The warehouse with the concrete floor is still there, along with the feces in the air and in the food, being ingested by the chicken who is processing your eggs. Even a "free range" chicken can sometimes live in the same warehouse, with access to the outside via a small channel that most of the hens in the house will never get close enough to experience. 

'Kay. It's gross. 

But a backyard chicken lives with a dirt floor in the open air. Litter in their coop absorbs the worst of their waste; the rest dries and decomposes into the dirt below. Hens have access to clean feed but also an omnivorous diet as is their nature--bugs, worms, snails, grass, leaves, clover, weeds. Pizza sometimes, if I'm honest, but also asparagus, peppers, pumpkin seeds, sage, kale, carrots, almond meal, stale cake--anything unspoiled and edible. My hens eat as well as we do, and they process eggs that are richly, beautifully, perfectly yellow. Side by side with even farmer's market eggs, there's no comparison. They taste gooier, eggier, more intensely flavorful. In comparison store bought eggs start to taste chalky. Backyard eggs are better in EVERYTHING, from scrambled eggs to sugar cookies.

And speaking of sugar cookies...

Homemade Vanilla Extract

Okay, this isn't grown on my urban farm. But it's created on my urban farm, it's flavorful, it's super easy to make and it's a little cheaper than grocery store vanilla--a lot cheaper than Nielson Massey (the gold standard of vanilla extract). I make mine in a pretty glass cruet, extra artisanal-ly delicious. You will need:

1 cup vodka, rum or bourbon (inexpensive is fine)
5 vanilla beans
Glass jar with lid or cork

Fill the jar with your alcohol. Vodka will leave the cleanest flavor; bourbon or rum will leave a little extra flavor behind. Cut the vanilla beans into 1" pieces and slice them open; scrape the vanilla flecks into the jar and then add the beans themselves. Shake to mix, and shake occasionally for the next eight weeks. Once fully diffused, you can add more alcohol as the liquid levels drop with use; if the flavor starts to feel become too diluted, add another bean. Shelf stable, no need to refrigerate.

Sugar cookies with this bourbon vanilla extract taste extra delicious; even the most simple recipes are infused with added flavor. We also use it in our homemade chocolate syrup to bring out the flavor of the cocoa for our almond milk mochas.

Almond Milk Mocha

Yes, this is also not grown on my urban farm but created, and it's so tasty and flavorful that when our espresso machine was out for repair and I had to go back to Starbucks, I ended up taking one sip and just decided to go without until we could make our own again. What makes it so fantastic for me is the fresh almond milk we make ourselves (a hassle, but 100% worth it, one taste of authentic fresh almond milk and you will never be able to go back to the flat, chemical flavor of store bought); homemade chocolate syrup, and fresh ground espresso.

Any coffee drink you'd normally have with cream or milk is fantastic with fresh almond milk. Where milk fades into the background of a coffee drink, almond milk enhances and adds a flavor of its own. Fresh almond milk is foamy, creamy and without any of the cloying sweetness of store bought.
You will need:

6 oz. raw almonds
5 cups water
A cheesecloth or a nut bag

Put the almonds in a small bowl or pyrex measuring cup with enough water to cover, and let soak overnight. Drain and place almonds with 5 cups water into a blender. Blend on high until almonds are liquified. Strain through cheesecloth or nut bag into second container (we repurposed a glass juice jar with a tight fitting lid). Makes 4 cups. Keep refrigerated for no more than two days. Shake before use.

Urban farming satisfies my gourmet tastes on a budget...backyard blueberries with as varied flavor as different varieties of grapes, sun-warmed strawberries, PINEAPPLE strawberries, fresh onions so strong and green and fragrant you can smell them on the breeze, crisp sugar snap peas straight from the vine...ahhh. If only I could grow Louboutins in my raised beds.

Berry-red...close enough.