perpetual gardening calendar by krank press

Hello! All the best wishes and hopes to you for 2010! I’m easing back into being home after a whirlwind tour of the Pacific Northwest. So many beautiful sights – snow on the firs/pines/cedars, fog winding through mountain passes, chickens running around the front yards of portland and lots of good strong coffee, even some coffee stout. I’ll post some pictures later, but for now wanted to let you know about the good work being put out by Krank Press in LA.  In their etsy shop they are selling ‘Perpetual Gardening Calenders’, which are beautiful spiral bound collections that are not just for 2010 but are, well, perpetually useful. They have some specific calendars like one for the Pacific Northwest and SF that are amazing. Each month has a linoleum cut illustration and includes 2 lists. One list is planting recommendations and the other is a produce list of what’s available in the markets for that month. In addition there is also a space for note keeping on the side. Love it!

They also have  a calendar of the odd birds of LA featuring amongst others, a burrowing owl page. Less then a mile from my house there’s a burrowing owl habitat and every time I see them I feel incredibly lucky.

 

Remedy Quarterly

The Remedy Quarterly is the culminating result of four friend’s interests in recipes, remedies, design and medicine.  It’s a lovely printed out, hold in your hands, magazine that is printed in two tones like vintage cookbooks were, which is a look that I love. They are getting ready to send out their first issue which has the theme of ‘home’. You can get the first issue for $7 or subscribe for a year (4 issues) for $34. The first issue is 48 pages with no advertisements and 100% content. Their website is fun as well with readers writing in remedies that work for them for common household complaints. I’d encourage all of you to send one to them! The writer of one of my favorite blogs Eat Make Read is one of the key people involved so it promises to be great. Enjoy.

 

love for mark bittman

I have been cooking up a storm lately. Everyday I’m in the kitchen happily slicing and dicing away. It’s pretty much a win-win situation – it’s healthier, more economical and creative – what a triad. Right now I have some minestrone bubbling away on the stove steaming up the windows. So I had to share this article with you in the NY Times today. Mark Bittman has compiled a list of 101 recipes all of which are minimal, simple and quick. Go take a look, you’ll be so happy that you did!

 

chicken coop design

I love the blog Design Sponge, and as I’ve written earlier I also love the artwork of Jill Bliss. This week there’s a lovely combination with Jill Bliss guest blogging over at D’s and she’s focusing on gardening, rain barrels and chicken coops. Almost a hand-tailored combination for me to enjoy over my morning cup of tea. I would encourage you to go over there and take a peek, I’m really liking her post on chicken coops. I love the one with the living roof! **All photos are from the Design Sponge site.

 

farewell front yard cherry tomatoes

It’s finally feeling like autumn here. The light is shifting and the shadows are lengthening and the spiders are enormous and EVERYWHERE. This year I planted my front yard with tomatoes and everyday as I leave or enter my house I stop and look at them. They’re unsightly. They’re browned and drooping, but they’re speckled with bright yellow and red orbs. I’m itching to tear them out and am also reluctant to because here in the Bay Area you can eek out tomatoes well into October. I gleaned a huge container of them today and think that I’ll probably do that twice more and then out they go. My go-to recipe this year has been oven roasted.

Today’s version included my ever multiplying sun golds, a few stray early girls, some new tiny red onions, red pepper flakes and sea salt. Preheat oven to 400 and then after about 30 minutes they are perfect. As if cherry tomatoes needed more flavor!

 

yes, they canned 3000 lbs of tomatoes

I’ve written about Yes, We Can Food before in one of my very first entries. I’ll share their logo again with you though, because I love it.

They run a series of canning workshops at La Cocina in SF and so far have made apricot jam, pickles and now canned tomatoes. 3000lbs of them. I thought I smelled sauce cooking all the way over here in Berkeley last week! The tomatoes are now available for sale here, so in case you missed out on canning those tomatoes from your balcony garden they are $60 for twelve 34oz. cans. Organic, of course.

photo from Yes We Can Food’s facebook fan page

The workshops filled up early this year, but next year I want to get over there and experience canning on such a massive level. Not to mention that I want to check out La Cocina in person. La Cocina is a non profit organization that focuses on getting low income women into the food business. They offer small business support and classes, as well as access to their commercial kitchen at way below market prices. Then they even help distribute the product at places like the ferry building farmer’s market and Bi-rite. They have a tamale class coming up soon that looks great. You get to not only learn to make tamales, but you’ll take some home, and get to stay and have dinner and drinks too!

 

‘the pancake patch’

This morning I came across an article on Grist about a farmer/writer named Gene Logsdon.  Wendell Berry is a big fan, and he’s known for his books, Living at Nature’s Pace:Farming and the American Dream and The Contrary Farmer. This article is a short interview with Logsdon about a book that he wrote in the late 1970s called Small Scale Grain Raising. With the renewed interest in gardening some folks are gearing up to take their patches beyond tomatoes and peppers and see what else they can add to their personal food production, and this book is garnering interest. He calls small scale grain gardening “the pancake patch”, which is pretty cute, right? I love a contrary farmer with a sweet side.

The picture above is unfortunately not an example of a small scale patch, but one I took at Pie Ranch of the wheat they had just harvested. You can see that article here. There was an enormous difference in the taste of the pancakes I had there made from freshly harvested wheat. Delicious and really full of flavor, the taste made me realize how many of the grains I eat taste really flat and flavorless. I of course knew that about my homegrown vegetables, but hadn’t extended that kind of thought to grains.

Here’s a picture of the original cover of the book. I can’t get it to enlarge, but I have to show you because being a child of the 70s, I of course think that all 70s design is beautiful – in it’s own 70s kind of way!

I’m curious if any of you have tried going grain, I imagine it’s as easy as growing any kind of grasses. Was processing the grain really difficult?  I’m putting this book on my reading list!

 

victory garden/new look

While looking through propaganda images from the Victory Garden era I stumbled across this great artist, Chandler O’Leary, who is reconceptualizing those messages. In case the image is too small for you to read, here is the quote in it’s entirety:

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

—Eleanor Roosevelt

Her etsy shop is Anagram Press

 

morning sungold harvest

 

can/do

I came back from my brief trip visiting with summer-outside-the-fog-belt to find that my garden had been pretty busy. The tomatoes are finally coming on and I need to get my game plan going. Here are some etsy stores that may inspire your canning this season!

Vintage labels, Dime Store Chic

Tea towels,  girls can tell

Vintage canning tongs, Curious Kitty

A good how to/reference site for canning is the National Center for Home Food Preservation, or there’s also this series of how to videos if you’re more visual!