January 2010

More on Growing A Greener World PBS show

January 28, 2010 · 7 comments

Okay guys!

We have been filming all week for Growing A Greener World!

Chef Nathan Lyon has been cooking up a storm in Joe Lamp’l's kitchen and we have filmed 20 cooking segments so far this week. Six more to go!

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Yes, Nathan rocks!

He has made everything from Ribolita (Tuscan vegetable and bread soup) to chocolate lava cake.

Yes! I am serious!

All the recipes will be on the Growing A Greener World website when it is up and running.

How do we do this so fast? Focus, baby focus (and the fact that Nathan is a seasoned professional). We just put our nose to the grindstone and stay focused!!

I have been watching the action via Skype and all I can say is DANG! It is frustrating to not be able to taste this stuff all the way across the country here in Los Angeles!! (Especially the chocolate lava cake!)

You guys are going to LOVE this show!

Thank you to Mandee Tilley for the photo from the set.

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Finding a Local Harvest Near You

January 27, 2010 · 0 comments

If you can't grow it yourself, it is always nice (and more flavorful) to keep it local. But what if you don't know where to go to find local, fresh food?

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Local Harvest: is a website that helps connect the best organic food to the consumers near by. 

If that doesn't work for you, try the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service.

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It compiles local food sources so that consumers can connect with the farmers in their area. 

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Designing Gardens on a Teeny-Tiny Scale

January 25, 2010 · 6 comments

Here is a miniature garden I created in a small enamel pan.

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I have made several of these and they always turn out charming. This one has a tiny patio I created out of cement powder and little stones.

Mini Garden2wtmk

It looks difficult, but it is amazingly easy. I found a kit from Two Green Thumbs Miniature Garden Center. They have everything you need to make patios, walkways…any kind of hard surface.

Here are some photos from the website:

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Aren’t they fun?

I love miniature gardens because you really feel as if you can just step right into the garden. That is one of the reasons I created a G-Scale train garden in the middle of my herb garden. Kids and adults get such a kick out of tiny landscapes!

You can find more information about creating miniature gardens at Two Green Thumbs. They even have a newsletter.

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Can Jam: Citrus

January 21, 2010 · 22 comments

I mentioned before that I am participating in Can Jam 2010, where each month, a group of bloggers can/preserve a specific food and write about it. The purpose of this project is to get more people excited about canning and to share recipes, tips and ideas.

 This month's assignment was CITRUS. 

CanJamCitrus1wtmk

I decided to make a marmalade. But rather than make orange marmalade (which is wonderful in its own right), I decided to make lemon and blood orange marmalade.

Now, for the record, I don't usually make marmalades because they tend to be more work than regular jelly, jam, quick pickle making. But boy, do they ever taste good! So I am willing to put in the time for this project. Just know, that most canning is much less time consuming than this.

Also, I should note that I like to use the small 4 oz jars for marmalade. It is so much work to make, I want to share it with as many people as possible.

When I make marmalade, I don't typically use it on toast or scones (although you certainly can). I like to use it in cooking. For example, I use it as:

a glaze over roasted chicken

a flavoring on steamed vegetables

or a secret ingredient in my salad dressing.

There are numerous ways to utilize this tangy – sweet condiment. And by adding just a little blood orange to my lemon recipe, I thought it would make a pretty color as well as add more sweetness to the mix.

Most citrus marmalade recipes do not use added pectin because there is pectin in the white portion of the peel. But you must cook the marmalade to the "jelling point" in order to get a good thick consistency.

[click to continue…]

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An Attack on School Gardens

January 19, 2010 · 25 comments

The Attack:

KidsgardeningX Sunday, I got all fired up about a post on GardenRant on school gardens. Apparently, a journalist had written a scathing article in Atlantic magazine spouting that educational gardens are a waste of money, are taking time away from core lessons in the classrooms and are forcing children to grow up to be poor farm laborers.

The woman who wrote this article believes that when teaching at-risk kids, you "should strip away every program and resource that is not essential to the mission of schooling."

She also believes that if these kids want veggies, we only need to keep their grocery stores well stocked. She states:

"This seems to me a more sensible approach to getting produce to children than asking the unfortunate tykes to spend precious school hours growing it themselves."

Obviously she doesn't "get it" when it comes to educational gardens and has no intention of investigating enough to understand. She does not understand the way the brain makes connections with real life experiences allowing for better cataloging and retrieval of that information.  She obviously has not studied or even read about Multiple Intelligences and how not every child can learn by drills. And she does not have a real grasp of what it means to be poor.

The Truth:

Most of the people I spoke to were unable to read the entire article. They said it was too hard to stomach the inaccuracies and leaps of logic. I agree with the assessment, but I did read it to the end. I found it very amusing that someone with such a high opinion of themselves, could [click to continue…]

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