House Christmas Pictures

Here is the 2nd annual Garden St House Christmas Picture...and an extra one of austin and Missy...enjoy...

Local Meat

I've been dying to get my hands on some locally raised meat since reading about big meat factory farms where most of our supermarket meat comes from. I've been researching local farms with cows, chickens, pigs, and sheep and the main factor preventing me from buying any thus far was the price and the distance (most farms with meat are a good hour's drive from here since we are in the suburbs...). But, I came across a farm near Manchester, NH that had all of the above meats and a farm store open on weekends and was a small little family farm. On Sunday, Austin, David, and Alison and I went up there and were pleased to see some sheep and horses grazing and the owner told us stories of the pigs running around the woods and the difficulty of catching them to bring them to the butcher. The farm is not certified organic or 100% pasture fed, but I feel confident that the practices there represent a way of farming that the term "organic" just doesn't cover- a family caring for their animals, selecting a butcher based on the treatment of the animals, and letting animals do what animals do- run around the woods and pasture. And, best of all, they have some GREAT prices! We got some whole chickens, ground and cubed beef, a pork shoulder, sausages, and eggs. I think we'll be making monthly trips up there to replentish our chest freezer. If you're interested in getting local meat, check out http://www.localharvest.org/ and if you live near us, you can also check out the farm we went to: http://www.twistoffatefarm.com/ .

Coffee Roasting

My housemates David and Alison wrote a great post about how we've started roasting our own coffee, so instead of writing about the same thing, I'll send you to their post:
http://thegingertimes.blogspot.com/2008/11/coffee-roasting.html

Law-town Rocks the Vote!

The Garden St House had an Election Watch party last night, and it sure was incredible. I sat and looked around and saw a room made up of Latinos, African-Americans, Caucasians, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants, singles, married folks, people in their twenties to people in their fifties, first time voters, and people with decades of voting behind them. We had probably over 30 people, all brought together by our involvement in this city. I just couldn't help but think, "this is exactly why I moved to Lawrence". I love that I have met such great group of diverse and awesome people here, and I was so happy to share with them in the historic night last night. The night involved great conversation, great snacks (including american flag cookies I made), much cheering, and even a spontaneous outburst in song to bongo drums. And, before Barak's speech, we even had 4 of our own give some mini-speaches on how much voting in the election meant to them. What a night...

Thoughts in the dark

Tonight I had to walk home from work in the dark. You see, usually it's only dark when I leave 2 days a week and I just have Austin pick me up those two days, but with the time change I didn't realize that it would be pitch black out at 5pm tonight, but it was. And, yes, I was a bit fearful as I walked- I do this walk 4 times a day, but in the dark it feels much scarier- I carried my umbrella in my hand "just in case" and I thought about my fear as I walked. I was actually quite ashamed to feel fear since I am quite proud of my decision to move into the poorest city in the state and get quite irritated when people say I live in a bad place. Because, truth is, I don't think there is anything to be afraid of here, and even if there is, what right to I have to move far away from it just because I make enough money that I could choose to separate myself from this place? And yet, the fear was a welcomed emotion and brought me a little reality... the people who live in the apartments I walked by don't have the choice to move away because they are too poor and the rent here is cheap; they don't have the choice to be picked up from work to skip walking past this section of houses, because this is where they live. Their apartments are small and crowded and their tiny front yards are dirty and there is a lot of trash on the street, and I'm sure many of them would like to live somewhere nicer. But, they live here because they are poor, unlike me; I live here because I chose to, and that will always separate us. But why should I stay? Why shouldn't I just move to a nicer area that's "safer" and leave this place behind? Why should I care about these people? I suppose it's the thing that keeps tugging on me and keeping me caring when I hear their stories at work: because in the words of Bart Campolo that I read the other day: "God cares about the poor. Because we're human beings; we're made in the image of God. It is our nature to love, to respond."

And as my life in Lawrence goes on: may I love, and may I respond, that is my hope and that is my prayer...

An Eventful Day!

What a crazy day for the House! Today we welcomed our newest member into the world: Caleb Steven, weighing in at 5lbs 13oz, and a month early! So we were quite surprised to say the least, but very excited. We should be welcoming the new Mom and Dad and baby home on Thursday and we can't wait!
And, as if that wasn't exciting enough, David decided to get into the action by getting hit by a SUV while riding his bike to work. He's OK, but he did get his left arm run over! Nothing showed up broken (no bones at least), but he's got a nice HUGE arm that's quite black and blue.

Whew, what craziness!

More Tomatoes

So, we've been using up those tomatoes I froze like mad so I just couldn't resist freezing some more. I bought another 50lbs on Sunday and will be freezing them all this week. Austin's folks gave us a their chest freezer on Sunday which makes all this madness possible (I think it will be 1/2 full of tomatoes after this week!). Now we just need some pasture-fed meat to add to the mix :-)

Currently Reading

I'm currently reading:WOW! I'll never eat the same again... I highly recommend it!

Gazpacho Recipe

With all those tomatoes I knew it was the perfect time to make some Gazpacho: a cold Spanish soup with fresh and raw summer veggies. Here's the recipe I used that our friend Chris gave us several years ago. I think the recipe serves about 6 people.

Ingredients:
-2 ears corn, shucked
-1/2 cup chopped onion
-7 medium round tomatoes or 14 plum tomatoes, cut into chunks
-3 Tbls. of minced onion
-3 Tbls. lime juice (1.5 limes)
-1 Tbls. olive oil
-3 scallions, green part only, minced (optional)
-1 tsp. salt
-1/2 tsp. black pepper
-1/4 cup chopped cilantro
-1 1/2 cups water
-2 (or 1) red bell peppers chopped
-1 peelec cucumber, chopped into little bits
-2 garlic cloves, peeled and pressed
-1/2 tsp ground corriander (maybe 1 tsp)

Directions:
Boil salted water and drop in corn. Boil corn for 2 minutes. Rince in cold water. Cut kernals off the cob. In a food processer, combine chopped onion, tomatoes, bell pepper, salt, pepper, and garlic. Blend! Put in large bowl. Add minced onion, lime juice, olive oil, scallions, corn kernals, cucumber, and water. Stir!

Canning Tomatoes (well freezing)!

I was at Mann's Orchards on Sunday getting the produce for the week for the house when I stumbled across something that struck my eye, a sign that said "Canning Tomatoes". I walked over and saw HUGE boxes of tomatoes, all with some sort of blemish and saw that they were $12 for a 25 lb box! I couldn't believe it. After paying $3.99/pound at the farmers market I couldn't believe that local, Methuen grown tomatoes were available for 50 cents a pound! So, I bought 3 boxes! (yup, 75 lbs of tomatoes!). I didn't have the time or supplies to actually can them, so I decided to dice the tomatoes and freeze them (which I did on Tuesday).

Here's one of the boxes... Not all of the tomatoes were ripe yet, so I picked out the ripe ones and put them out on the counter
I read in my new book "Preserving Summer's Bounty" that I could blanch the tomatoes for 30 seconds then plunge them into ice water to help get the skins off.I then removed all the blemishes and skins which was actually amazingly easyI measured out 2 cups of the dice tomatoes and put them in freezer bagsand ended up with about 25 bags (and I only did 1/3 of the tomatoes so far!!!)
So, the work continues, I'll finish up the rest this weekend and we'll have diced tomatoes to last all winter and spring!!!

Visitors from the Land of Leprechauns

What a great time we all had on Tuesday night when we had our long time friends from afar visit. Too bad these Irish friends had to move back to the homeland or maybe they would have moved in as well: for as we say with our buds from the old connection group phase I: you either move or move in :-). It was awesome to see you guys and maybe we'll even make it to your place one of these days... Pictured from Left: the "W's", "D's", "C's" and "S's", including little W 1 and 2 and little S :-)

Summer Food is here!

Unfortunately I haven't taken any pictures to go with this post, but I wanted to write about some new exciting food we've been eating since summer started.

We changed CSA's this year to the Lawrence one (http://www.groundworklawrence.org/programs/CSA%202008%20Nwsltr1.pdf) and we have been very pleased. We just got a bit overwhelmed last year with all the leafy greens and our hearts ached for zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, corn, and all that kind of stuff. We have not been disappointed by our 3 weeks so far of shares from Farmer Dave. We've gotten green leaf lettuce, red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, green peppers, corn, and collard greens.

I've decided to change my cooking night to Thursdays so I can cook every week from the farm share, supplemented by what I get at the Lawrence Farmers Market on Wednesdays. The week before last I made salad with romaine lettuce and home-made croutons; a plate of fresh cucumbers and tomato slices with fresh basil and olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette; corn on the cob, and sauteed summer squash and zucchini with cheese on top (http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2007/06/cheesy-zucchini-with-garlic-and-parsley.html). And what a lovely dinner it was. I wish I had taken pictures. I'll work on that in the weeks to come :-)

Also, we got collard greens this week so I decided to eat them for lunch Thursday. Having never made them in my life, I looked up some recipes and made a great lunch: I made the stems following this recipe using swiss chard stems: http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/02/baked-swiss-chard-stems-recipe-with.html and I made the leaves using this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/SAUTEED-COLLARD-GREENS-15805. The stems were interesting, but I enjoyed them and the greens were really good. Ah, wouldn't my mother be proud of how I'm learning to cook... I must say, cooking from scratch sure does take a lot of time though! But I think my body will thank me in the future.

Now I just have to learn how to can and freeze this stuff so I can cook like this in the long New England Winter....

Parking Fixed (at least for the warmer months)

Ah, perseverance does pay off. You all may have forgotten, but quite a long time ago I posted about our parking woes here our our street. I mentioned the multiple tickets, limited parking, switching sides, and our quest to change an ordinance. And here we are, 2 years after we initially had a nieghborcircle and determined this to be an issue and we FINALLY got our street removed from the ordinance (which wasn't even actually on the ordinance, but that's another story). Anyway, we can now park on both sides EVERY night! Hooray! And no, the street does not seem any dirtier than it was when we moved everynight for "street sweeping".

Now we still have to do the every night switch thing in the winter (Dec 15th-March 15th), but that is city wide and will be a whole battle of its own; which we do intend to fight (not sure why I should park one side when it's NOT SNOWING!).

But for now, we will celebrate and park on both sides.

Free Money

The time is coming soon where we each get $600 from the government ($1200 for me and austin)...I don't really get it, but anyway...

I read a really interesting blog post on consumerism that prompted me thinking...

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2008/04/29/the-gratitude-economy/

What will I spend my check on? Although I am inspired by the authors pledge to give the money to charity, I'm not sure I'm that noble. Some housemates of mine have said they will spend theirs on the local economy only by spending it at small local businesses. I thought this was a great idea, but not really sure what I could buy from a local small business. Then again, I may just spend it on starting my own local, small business, but that's another story.

Or, since I've been thinking about buying local food lately but have struggled with the expensiveness of it, maybe I could use it for the following which could move us toward the 100 mile diet (we are inheriting a chest freezer which will help make this possible):

1 CSA veggie share, 1 fruit share: $360 + $100 (http://www.groundworklawrence.org/English%20Docs%20no%20work%20trade.pdf)

1 CSA winter share: $225 (http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M12580)

1/2 pig (butchered of course): $2.40/lb based upon hanging weight plus the slaughter house processing fees, Slaughter Fees: $12.50 per half, .30 per pound for cutting and packaging (based upon hanging weight) .07 per pound for disposal (based upon 50% of hanging weight) and any smoking and bacon slicing charges (typically around $20.00 for half a hog). = (2.4 +.3 +.07 )/lb x 80 lbs +12.50 + 20 = $254. 10 (http://winrosefarm.com/pigs.htm)

weekly fresh eggs: $4.50/dozen x 52 weeks = $234 (http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M20068)

several chickens: $12/chicken (4-5 lbs) x ?15 chickens = $180

Several bags of dried beans: ?$100 (http://www.meadowsmirth.com/index.html)

1 bag local flour: from Upingill Farm, in Gill, MA: ?$50

Total: $1278.10

Ok, so I'll have to spend $78 of my own money, but that's not too bad...

I still have to find some local cheeses and a local milk supplier, but it's a start :-)

What will you spend your $1200 on???

***update*** well, we ended up spending our money on starting our own small business, we'll have to buy the food next year :-)

80's Party!

Well, if there's one thing that's awesome about having a huge house full of people, its having a huge party! Friday we had an awesome time partying it up in 80's style. Here are some pics, and there are many more but I didn't want to put up too many pics of people without permission...so here's just a sampling...

Ah, 80's food, hmm, it seems like we all just ate junk in the 80's

Eating Developments

I've been thinking a lot about food lately. Back in Early Febuary I was convinced by a friend to check out and try the "South Beach Diet". Now on first hearing this title I was not convinced since I've done all sorts of things like this before and have always failed and gotten very grumpy (including a very brief trial of eating only fruits and veggies before a trip to Virginia Beach that resulted in an emotional breakdown and lasted a mere 2 days). But, I read the book and was quickly convinced that this was a way of eating that made sense for my health so I gave it a two week trial. The basic premise is just to give up all processed foods, sugar, and saturated fats. So, I've been eating lean meats and dairy, lots of veggies, some fruit (lower sugar ones), nuts, whole grain breads, and I guess that's about it (except all the cheating I tend to do on weekends)

That was over 2 months ago. I lost 8-9 lbs in the first month and have stayed at that since; so that was pretty cool. I've actually learned a lot of new cooking skills, especially ways to make veggies tast good. And, I've actually lowered my trigycerides and cholesterol significantly.

Anyway, that's just the background for this post. Since I've been thinking a lot more about eating foods in their natural state, I've been thinking about what's in food and where it comes from. Also, my recent gardening has prompted me to think about maybe growing some of my own stuff (although I've failed in that area in the past as well). And I'm starting to become a proponent of anything local and non-corporate.

So, today, Austin and I went to the library and got some books out that have already started to fascinate me. Here are the four we've checked out:

Plenty: One man, One woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.

This book is also known as the 100 mile-diet. I've gotten about 50 pages into it and already want to give it a try. The 100 mile-diet means eating only items that are grown or raised within 100 miles of where you live. It sounds awefully difficult, but so fascinating and fun. We've been talking for a while about buying a whole pig or cow from a local farm, getting it butchered (yes, mom and dad I know we could do this ourselves, but it so much easier this way), and keeping the various cuts in a chest freezer until we eat it all up.

2nd book: Solar Gardening: Growing Vegetables Year-Round the American Intensive Way.

This book may just help my green-thumb develop. There detailed instructions on many things, and we are planning on building a little green-house in the back of our house off the door to the basement.

3rd book: City Gardening: Planting, Maintaining, and Designing the Urban Garden (no picture online). This one's pretty self- explanatory.

4th book: Good House, Cheap House

This one Austin picked out, since he's always interested in how to build from scratch a super energy efficiant house someday that's super small. This was partially inspired by a Lawrence company: http://www.powerhouse-enterprises.com/

The weather here has been totally awesome so we spent the day at some local gardens reading outside, and planning out when and how we may be able to put our new ideas into practice.

Not so green-thumb :-(

So, I've discovered that I do not have the gift of gardening. No, it will be a skill I will have to practice over and over. My little seedlings were doing wonderfully, all popping up and having about 2-4 leaves each. I decided to bring them down from the attic and start putting them outside during the day for more sun; so I made a stop at the sink to water them a bit. I had some problems using the sprayer from the sink and ended up soaking them a little too much, apparently, since the next morning they were all DEAD! That was several days ago and they are still dead :-(. So I will be starting over from scratch. Oh dear...I need to invest in a spray bottle to avoid this disaster again. I'll update with more pictures when I get new seedlings.

House Retreat

We had our first annual house retreat two weeks ago at a bed and breakfast up in the mountains in NH and it was tons of fun! Here's the guys doing some climbing up some rocks at the Basin.
It sure was beautiful in the snow

Here's our newest house-mates to be this fall who were able to join us
And here's the group before our trip up Mt. Washington in the cog railway
Here's a snow battle between Austin and Dave as close to the top as the train would take us

And this is us at our awesome dinner at the B&B, it was delicious!

New Garden Pics

Here are our seedlings as of Monday, March 24th :-)

Adventures in Gardening

Our third summer in the "Garden" House is approaching, so this year we decided to get prepared nice and early by planting our seeds indoors. Steph and I headed over to a local family-owned garden supply store and were thrilled to have help from the nice owner who told us when we needed to plant which seeds and which containers and soil to get (good thing cause we are clue-less). I've decided to keep track of our progress on the blog, both so I'll be motivated to record things, and so that I may learn and remember things for next year.
I chose mostly herbs and flowers to plant since the year before last we planted several squashes and veggies which were soon gobbled up by our pesky neighbors (a groundhog and several skunks). Also, in our patio area we have sun only from around 11am to 2pm so I don't think it's the greatest place to grow veggies. Therefore, I chose some nice looking flowers to plant that say they grow in shade or part-shade.

Based on the advice of the man at the garden store, here is what we choose to plant on March 8th:

Herbs: Basil, Cilantro, Oregano, Thyme, Savory, Parsley, and Sage
Flowers: Columbine (P), Lobelia (A), Coleus (A), Impatiens (A), and Viola's (A).
Veggies: Eggplant (Steph only)

Here are pics of our completed seed plantings which we placed next to a window in the attic that gets a lot of sun.