Brown bagging it

Our fair capital city has a lot of problems, it's true. Overzealous parking enforcement. Corrupt politicians. Outrageous rush hour traffic. But every so often our DC city council does something truly great. Thank you to our local officials for allowing to-go cocktails during these crazy times. It supports our local bars and restaurants AND our sanity.

I very much enjoyed the some-assembly-required negroni Matt ordered for me last night as part of our delicious takeout dinner from Copycat. Props to my friend Jenny for telling me about their tasty food (and also forewarning me that they would not sell me a cocktail unless I also ordered food). I would bike over to H Street for more of those dumplings and hand pulled noodles any day. And they do make a mean cocktail. Or, rather, they gave me the tools to make my own, including a piece of fresh orange zest and a rather sizeable ice cube.

Classy, delicious, and earth friendly with its reusable packaging, this was my kind of drink:

 

Happy Earth Month, indeed!

Gardening has NOT been cancelled

A dear friend sent this to me a few weeks ago and I have kept it on my desktop ever since:

During relative seclusion and 10-hour days in front of a computer in recent weeks, I've made it a point to get outdoors -- safely -- and be around green things as much as possible. Though I did go into a bit of a weeding frenzy in the backyard garden after a couple brunch cocktails on Easter Sunday, most of my outdoor time lately has been spent at my school's garden. I think some days it's the best part of my week to spend a couple of hours shoveling wheelbarrowfuls of wood chips or digging up tenacious wire grass invading the garden paths. (It's a great workout, too -- thanks for allowing us to garden, Mayor Bowser.) I didn't even mind getting my shoes and pants completely soaked last week while repairing the drip irrigation system. Nor was I phased by getting sprayed in the face a few times on a warm, sunny afternoon as I fumbled to turn off the water source.

Many folks have walked past -- at a safe distance -- while I've been in the garden in recent weeks. Some of them have been kids and parents that I know, and who were excited to see that I was still nurturing the spaces they'd helped with earlier this school year. But many of the casual, garden-side conversations were with total strangers strolling past. A few stopped to ask how they might help, and a handful of them commented on how they pass by the garden regularly and are elated to see healthy, colorful living things thriving amid these times where it seems like all there is is bad news. (While I still support my local NPR station, I can't handle more than 30 minutes of news a day these days.) Gardens are a sign of hope, proof that life continues, and plants can nourish our bodies and souls.

Since I technically can't invite any of you to join me in the garden in person, let me offer you some virtual good news for your soul by way of the garden video I made for my students a few weeks ago. It is my first official stint on YouTube, but luckily I am behind the camera for most of it:

Yes, I love being in the garden. But when it comes down to it, nothing is as fun or rewarding as gardening with kiddos. I hope we can get back to this soon:

Plant more plants

Last night, I finished reading an excellent book that my friend Amanda recently gave me about women's sexuality. While the focus of Come as you Are is on cultivating a sex-positive attitude amid a sex-negative culture, the parts that resonated so deeply with me were the sections on letting go, on allowing oneself to do what author Emily Nagoski calls "completing the cycle" of painful feelings -- be the feeling fear, grief, or anger, it needs to be recognized and expressed. Crying. Yelling. Exercising. Sharing a bottle of wine with a friend and talking til three in the morning. There are many ways to process painful emotions, and sometimes the process takes a while. Often the processing itself feels painful and endless, but it has to happen if we are to move on. (Yes, this is a blog about gardening and cooking and sustainability and not particularly about sex beyond the occasional reference to the literal birds and bees. Stay with me here....)

This morning, I attended a memorial herb garden dedication for my friend Tricia at Common Good City Farm. I've been mourning my friend's absence over the past two and a half years, grappling to make sense of a senseless murder and struggling to find a way to move on. Her memory, and my sadness, have caught me off guard more than a few times, and I've found myself suddenly misty-eyed while biking around her old neighborhood or meditating during a yoga class or just mixing up a cocktail in my apartment. Apparently I'm still processing. Making bitters, hosting clothing swaps, gardening, joining an herbal CSA to learn more about medicinal herbs -- all of these have been attempts to continue the joy and learning that my yoga teacher and go-to herbalist Tricia inspired over the course of our years of friendship.

It was only today that I finally felt the beginning of real healing around the raw place in my heart, when others shared stories about her exuberance and welcoming spirit and passion for the earth and growing things and building community. When we wrote messages on ribbons and tied them to the fence -- akin to Tibetan prayer flags -- behind the Tricia McCauley Memorial Herb Garden. When we took home smooth stones with Tricia quotes and medicinal herb seedlings to plant in our own gardens. When we honored her legacy by continuing to connect with and educate and look out for each other. I myself picked up some chamomile and holy basil plants for my school garden's herb bed, and mentioned to a few gardening newbies asking about what to grow that holy basil is especially good for calming and quieting the mind -- it's a nervine and an adaptogen, which I learned from my more recent herbal guru, Holly. Everyone left with at least one herb to grow at home or in a community plot. Because if there was one quote we could all agree on that encapsulated our dear Tricia, it was "Plant More Plants!" It's the best way to heal ourselves, each other, and the planet.

Do the rot thing

"You're asking me what my favorite vegetable is to eat? I don't really see how that question is relevant,"  grumbled Nate after giving his impassioned testimony at last week's Oversight Hearing for the Department of General Services down at City Hall.

I ducked my head and winced, but the autistic 6th grader had a point. We had come to advocate for environmental responsibility within the DC public school system, not chit chat about carrot sticks. Nate had just suggested on-site composting as a possible solution to our school's need for responsible food waste disposal, perhaps even better than the heavily polluting transfer trucks that had been picking up our food waste. We didn't understand why the composting program we'd been participating in for the past three years at our school had suddenly stopped mattering to the DC government: last June, the compost pickup contract had mysteriously lapsed and now all school waste was going into the landfill. We were there to find out why, and how to get things up and running again.

"We were taught how to put things into recycling, trash, and compost bins. We have done it and it worked. But then -- kaboom! -- it stopped. We want to know how this happened. Who exactly is responsible?" demanded 8-year-old Zia. The audience actually clapped. In spite of the clear "no applause allowed" sign posted outside of the hearing.

"What I see in the adult world looks like you don't care. Kids do. It matters to us more because we will live longer than you. We want to live healthier, too." explained her classmate, Eli.

"Are you calling me old?" joked the panel chair, Councilman White. Eli visibly blushed, and squeaked out a timid "Um, yes?"

I know our eleven-person group was primarily comprised of people too young to vote (yet), but we knew our stuff and presented an articulate and compelling case for restarting composting at our school. Was Councilman White taking us seriously? I found out later that we'd ended up on his twitter feed, but maybe kids testifying was simply an unusual form of entertainment, a break from the norm. Would anything be done to get cafeteria composting up and running at our school any time soon? I was proud of my students' civic activism, but dubious about our impact.

Well it turns out that someone was listening after all. Earlier this week, our friend Bobby at DGS stopped by the school to thank student testifiers in person for their efforts that have apparently lit a fire under the new DGS director. He demanded that his department prioritize school composting, and indicated that he would visit our school and others doing this critical environmental education work. Until we testified, and wrangled a few other passionate environmental educators at other public schools to submit their own testimony, Bobby had been pretty sure nothing would happen this school year. Now there was an urgent demand from the top to get a compost pickup service in place, and retraining for custodial staff on the calendar in the near future.

I'm so proud of our students!!

Maybe in coming years we can even get composting going at City Hall. I mean, seriously, Mayor Bowser, for all of this talk about DC's focus on the environment, the security guard didn't want to let me into the building with a non-plastic fork to eat my salad and I had to pack out the banana peel left from my lunch so I could compost it at home....

American Pie

What could be more American than apple pie on Thanksgiving? Readers, you know that I am more of a cook than a baker, so when I got so many compliments on the pie I made this year at mom and dad's house it inspired me to get back to blogging after a few months off. I need to make this again.

The crust is adapted from the Foolproof Pie Crust recipe in Cooks Illustrated, courtesy of my neighbor, Marilyn -- one of the best bakers I've ever met, which is the sole reason I set aside my long-standing bias against all-purpose flour and shortening to try it out. See, I'm not a purist! The pie filling and baking instructions are adapted from Epicurious' Favorite Apple Pie recipe.

The pie itself resulted from a group effort: my landlady, Jacky, supplied some of the ingredients, including delicious Cortland apples from her recent trip to upstate New York; mom did serious KP duty peeling, coring, and slicing the apples; Matt mixed up the pie filling ingredients, with extra cinnamon for good measure (or perhaps a lack of looking closely at the measuring spoons); dad supplied the butter pecan ice cream to top our still-warm pie during the Thanksgiving dinner.

American Apple Pie
Ingredients

2 ½ cups + 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
12 Tablespoons cold, unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), cut into 1 Tablespoon slices
½ cup chilled solid vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces
¼ cup vodka, cold
¼ cup ice cold water
5 large fresh apples
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
Additional sugar, for sprinkling

Directions

Process 1 1/2 cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined, about 2 one-second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until homogeneous dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 15 seconds (dough will resemble cottage cheese curds and there should be no uncoated flour). Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add 1 more cup of flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around the bowl and any masses of dough have been broken up -- this will only take a few quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium mixing bowl.

Sprinkle vodka and 1/4 cup ice water over mixture. With a rubber spatula, use a folding motion to mix in the liquids, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Pat dough into two evenly sized balls, flatten each to about 1" tall discs, and wrap each in a piece of parchment paper or wax paper. Chill your piecrust dough discs in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (and up to 2 days).

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Peel, core, and slice the apples into 1/4" thick wedges. Place apples in a large bowl and mix with 1/4 cup flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 2 Tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice. (Matt lobbied for more cinnamon. He got it.)

Unwrap the first ball of piecrust dough. Sprinkle with a little flour and use a rolling pin to roll it out into a uniformly thick circle that is about an inch wider than the pie dish on all sides. (You can eyeball the size, or place the pie dish on top of it to check.) Gently lift the dough, then flip into the pie dish and gently peel back the paper. Gently press the dough to fit the pie dish contours, then trim the excess dough using scissors. Fill the dough-lined pan with the apple mixture.

Take out and lightly flour the second disc of piecrust dough on its piece of parchment paper, then roll it out to the same size as the first. Drape your top crust gently atop the apple mixture, again peeling away the parchment paper, then press the edges of the top and bottom crusts together, trimming excess crust as needed. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and milk. Brush top crust with egg wash and sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Carefully cut five 1" vents in the top crust for steam to escape.

Gently cover the delicate crust edges with aluminum foil -- this prevents them from burning.

Place pie in the oven and bake until the crust begins to turn golden, about 20 minutes. Rotate pie and reduce oven temperature to 350°F. Continue baking until the crust is golden brown and you can see the thickened juices bubbling, about 50 minutes more.

Cool on a rack for at least 45 minutes to allow juices to set before slicing. Delish. I just had the last slice with coffee this morning....

Bikers to the rescue!

Readers, there is nothing more attractive than a man doing good. Well, maybe a man on a bicycle doing good. And I am lucky enough to be dating one. Fancy that.

I hate wasting food. It is shocking the amount of perfectly edible food that is thrown away in this country every day, especially while an unacceptable number of Americans suffer from malnutrition and food insecurity. I regularly see giant trash bins outside of supermarkets and restaurants spilling over. I hear food waste and hunger statistics bandied about so frequently that the problems seem too big to take personally, and I worry that the majority of us don't understand that these problems concern each and every one of us. Some days I find it hard not to lose hope. But then there are moments that I realize that the solution can also concern each and every one of us....

Today I had the good fortune to accompany Matt on his first shift as a food rescuer: picking up already prepared, delicious, unsold food and delivering it to a great, local program that needed food. Usually a car is needed for this sort of assignment, but after a bit of research Matt learned that some food donations can be delivered on two wheels. It was actually pretty easy, and we ended what was otherwise a rather lazy Sunday feeling pretty good about life.

12:30pm - While checking his email at the farmers market, Matt learns that the load of baked goods he'd signed up on his Food Rescue app to deliver this evening was going to be a bit large for a single cyclist to haul, so he asks me to join him. I happily agree, eager to see the program in action.

1:00pm - Eat lunch near the farmers market.

2:00pm - Start watching Game of Thrones, Season 6. (Don't judge me, it's good. And don't you dare tell me what happens in Season 7!)

4:30pm - Thunder and rain begin.

5:30pm - Bike over to Seylou -- home to the most amazing whole grain breads, including croissants (I know, I couldn't believe such a thing existed!) -- to pick up bread donation.

6:00pm - Load 4 enormous bags of bread into our (thankfully waterproof) bike panniers and start heading north to Christ House. Rain intensifies.

6:30pm - Bread delivered. Delivery volunteers adequately soaked and smiling, and about 50 pounds lighter. Rain stops. Head back to my apartment to change into dry clothes and watch a bit more Game of Thrones. Easy peasy.

Interested in helping to address hunger in your area? Consider joining the Food Rescue project, as a donor, recipient, or transporter. Or maybe starting a chapter in your town. Learn more here.

Get your hands on plants

Readers, I'm a night owl. It is a tough sell to get me out of bed, nevermind dressed and at a workshop at the crack of 9am. Especially during the summer, and especially the Monday after school lets out. But every so often an amazing opportunity comes along that has me out of bed and excitedly biking headlong into a humid, 100F+ degree day: the U.S. Botanic Gardens' HOPS Teacher Institute was one of these instances.

Over the course of two, very busy days this past June, I and a couple dozen other environmental educators explored water, soil, sunlight, and plants in ways that I can't wait to bring back to my classroom. We got to play with all kinds of cool gadgets: looking at the critters wriggling around in water droplets under our microscopes; analyzing soil samples as part of a CSI-style plant theft mystery; discovering that grape juice has more sugar than cola using our refractometers; making our own sundials; building a model watershed; making found object collages with photo paper and the power of the sun. We got to mess around with pH testing strips, create botanic paintings, dissect flowers, melt chocolate in a solar cooker, and fiddle with thermometers and compasses. I think my favorite moment was getting to poke at a venus fly trap. I'm sure that video clip, which for some reason I cannot locate, will surface if I run for public office one day....

Many thanks to our fearless instructor, Lee, who sent us all home with a GIANT bag filled with all of the tools we used throughout the training, so that we can get out students excited about plants and their surroundings, too! If you ever have a chance to attend this summer teacher training at the Botanic Gardens, go!!

(Ah, this photo? It's my view from Ollie's saddle, biking down Pennsylvania Avenue with our treasure trove of scientific tools, posters, and a banana tree seedling last week.)

Don't forget to vote!

Yes, I know that DC always votes overwhelmingly Democratic, but I'm telling you your vote matters. While we don't get to have a voice about, say, who runs the EPA, alas, there are folks who are doing important work to further human rights, environmental justice, and access to healthy food in our city. Don't forget to vote tomorrow: find out where here.

(Oh, that sign? Yeah, I couldn't stop giggling when I saw it last week on my walk to the P Street Whole Foods.)

Bee careful

The pungent aroma of raw honey and herbal tea permeates the air in my kitchen as I type this, and I think to myself: I'm glad I didn't die from a bee sting earlier this week. I love honey, and quite enjoy beekeeping, but after a bee sting about a little over a month ago I began to worry that I was developing a more serious allergy to the little flying ladies.

It was late April, and had finally stopped raining for a day. My beekeeping mentor, Kevin, and I were inspecting the West End Community Garden's five hives. All was going fine that sunny afternoon, except I was getting a bit antsy with us poking and prodding around, box by box, frame by frame, for a solid hour and a half as we checked for brood, hive beetles, and nectar stores. I had been feeling a little tickle on my shin for a few minutes, and began to worry that a bee had wandered up my untucked pant leg. Foolishly, perhaps, I gently shook my leg a bit while I tried to remain calm and pry another frame out of the hive. The tickle moved a bit further up the inside of my pantleg. I froze. I lifted another hive frame out for inspection. Further north still, the tickle moved. I shook my leg a little more and started to sweat. Bam! Stung. Right on the ankle, probably while the disoriented bee was trying to escape my khakis. It hurt, sure -- it always does -- but a few hours later my ankle began to swell. The couple glasses of wine I had at the WAMU donor reception that evening meant that popping a couple of Benadryl probably wasn't a good idea, so I just slapped an ice pack on it, put my foot up, and called it a night. I wasn't having trouble breathing, at least, and there wasn't a rash. See? Nothing to worry about.

The next morning, as Matt and I took the bus up to Connecticut for the weekend, the swelling and aching continued. By that night, one couldn't even tell I had anklebones. For the next week, I popped a couple of Benadryl a few times a day, icing and elevating my foot whenever possible. I got back to town and checked in with my doctor, and though the swelling was going down she immediately had me tested for bee venom sensitivity. I figured it was just a precaution: I've been stung a few times in my life and while it smarts for a few minutes, or at most a day, I never showed signs of a serious allergic reaction. Well. It turns out you can develop a serious allergy to bees. My bee venom blood test came back positive. Suddenly everyone I mentioned this to had a story to share about a friend or family member who had an extreme and unforeseen bee sting reaction. Not the best thing for a hypochodriac to be hearing.

My doctor prescribed an EpiPen. Wouldn't you know it, there is a shortage of EpiPens on the market right now. "Just call back at the beginning of July and check and see if we have any in stock," the pharmacy worker at Kaiser told me over the phone, "And try to stay away from bees."

I work in school gardens, lady! And what exactly am I paying hundreds of dollars a month for, if my insurance company doesn't have a common medicine in stock and can't be bothered to call me when the potentially life-saving medicine is ready for me to pick up? Honestly.... So now I carry around a bottle of liquid children's Benadryl to chug if I get stung. Because I certainly wasn't going to miss out on the honey harvesting last week. Luckily we were only messing with the bees for about 30 minutes, then it was on to the serious -- or perhaps not so serious -- harvesting of the honey from the frames:

Bees, I would like to propose a truce. I will continue to make sure your hive stays healthy, and you don't sting me. We can split the honey 50/50. Okay. Okay! 60/40, you win.

Swim to Work day

I've been a dues paying member of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association for almost a decade now. And though I bike to work most every day, today was the first time I officially registered for Bike to Work Day. Mother Nature decided to weed out the fair weather bikers, it seems, but the upshot was that the Shaw rest stop on my way to work had plenty of size small tshirts and snacks for those of us who braved the wind and rain. So did the rest stop in Foggy Bottom on my way home, so I picked up a tshirt for Matt, too, who recently was in a little bike accident and so was not able to bike -- or swim -- to work today. (Oh, he's fine, just a little banged up, and with a front brake that needs adjusting.)

But seriously, this rain. It's been nearly a solid week of precipitation, readers! My cabbages have more than doubled in size over the past two weeks, as have the lettuces, kohlrabi, late-starting sugar snap peas, and too-early-transplanted tomatoes. My plants have gone a bit nuts in the school garden, to be honest. The flora may be loving this break in the drought, but I am getting a little bit tired of it. Also: my rain pants, it seems, are no longer waterproof. *sigh* I think there's an REI sale coming up soon, at least....

As Ollie and I sloshed through the rain on the way home from school this afternoon, I mused that perhaps WABA might broaden their efforts beyond cycling to triathalon training. Then they could have easily marketed today as Swim to Work Day!

Mead Day!

It is a bit of a meadstravaganza around my apartment these days:

By now you must sense that I love any reason to celebrate food and drink. In fact, I was just talking with some neighbors this weekend about our need to celebrate International Crepe Day. The group agreed that it's too many months away, as is Nutella Day, though felicitously the two are a mere three days apart, so we agreed we needed to make some practice batches between now and then. For research.

While sipping on a little snifter of mead after dinner tonight, I realized that many of you might not know there is a National Mead Day. It was on August 5th this year, and I was fortunate to have my mead making mentor, Tysen (yes, I have a mead mentor!), and my boyfriend  Matt, (yes, I have a boyfriend!) over to celebrate. After a lovely brunch, we got to tasting five different varieties.

I'll be writing a full post on the mead making process and results -- Tysen will be editing the excerpts from our planning, brewing, and tasting sessions, and posting the finished podcast in coming months on his site -- but as I decompress from my amazing summer travels and dive back into teaching, I didn't want to miss the chance to share this most important day that you should mark on your calendar so you don't miss Mead Day next year: it's the first Saturday in August. You have almost a whole year to learn about and learn to love mead before then! Those who are around may be invited to taste the by then 18-month-aged varieties pictured here:

Which will you prefer, I wonder? The classic? The quince-infused? The tangerine and thyme variety? What I can say is that there will be no more of this smooth, barrel aged one, hand carried all the way from western Poland:

Take comfort, though, DC-area mead lovers (or those who are mead-curious): you can reference Tysen's awesome website to learn how easy it is to make your own mead. Or you can pick up some of Charm City's latest limited-release meads at many a local grocery. I have a can each of raspberry coconut and orange lavender in the fridge now. For research, you know. Cheers!

Food and philanthropy

The last weekend of January marked the ninth annual Sips & Suppers fundraiser here in our nation's capital. Talented chefs and mixologists, mostly from around DC, donate their time, homeowners donate their space, and people of means buy tickets to happy hours or fancy small group dinners around town. All funds raised go to two awesome local nonprofits -- DC Central Kitchen and Martha's Table. I usually miss the boat on such things, and read about them in the Post Food Section after the fact, but this year I managed to hear about a call for volunteers about a month beforehand. By sheer coincidence, I ended up as a waitress at a dinner in my neighborhood led by a pair of vegan chefs from Philadelphia. Between serving courses, volunteers got to taste some of the goodies, too, and I was privy to some of the best butter-free dishes I've ever come across. Not that having a vegan repertoire is a particular point of interest these days, but I do appreciate plant-based foods and folks who make them well.

At the end of the evening, as well fed neighbors tottered back to their homes or their waiting Ubers, I leaned back against the counter and smiled to myself. THIS warm fuzzy feeling was only slightly attributable to the grappa our host poured at the end of the night, and mostly due to the realization that we, as community members, CAN do good things when we come together over food.

Flash forward a couple of weeks. A daily stream of horrific White House actions and cabinet appointments found me again lapsing into anger and frustration. Then my new friends Amy and Liz had a BRILLIANT idea: cook a bunch of food, get a case of wine, invite a bunch of friends over, and raise money for a charity that is working to address some of the fears and concerns we have about what's going on in this country. We don't need to be restaurant chefs or wealthy people. We can cook. We have friends who are conscientious, like good food, and can kick in a little. Every little bit helps.

The hostesses decided to prepare a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern feast. (Take that, Muslim ban!) And because it was looking like almost two dozen people might show up last night, and I know a thing or two about food from that part of the world, I offered to help cook.... Hummus. Tabbouleh. And I think I counted four other salads. Peppers stuffed with lamb and spices. Carrot and chickpea tajine. Roast chicken with fennel and tangerines. I could barely pedal my way to the salsa club after not one but TWO dessert courses. But I did, of course. (I saw the concern on your face just then.)

In the end, eleven dinner guests left with full bellies and happy hearts, and, bolstered by an additional eight or nine contributors in absentia, we raised a thousand dollars for the ACLU. That warm glow resurfaced, and this time it was only slightly due to the champagne. We can help each other, and save this country, one meal at a time. We might just need to make this a regular thing!

The winter ale of our discontent

You may recall that the weekend after the election I headed out to visit my friends Matt and Amanda near Charlottesville, VA. While I was officially there for the Homebrew for Hunger event, we also got to brewing our first collaborative ale. When planning our first co-brewed beer in the months leading up to the election, we'd thought to call it Across the Aisle Ale or somesuch. You see, though Matt is a card-carrying Republican, and I am obviously not one, we could agree on a few things:
1) Trump is a jerk
2) Beer is awesome
3) After a handful of years of friendship and beer drinking it was about time we brewed something together

By the time I arrived in Barboursville in early November, we had decided to rename the beer: The Winter Ale of our Discontent was born. It was to be a winter warmer-style beer, with cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla bean, and featuring honey from both DC and VA. Yum, eh?

It was a lot of fun, and marked my first time getting to play with tools that are part of the next level of homebrewing. First, we got our wort going on a serious propane stove on the back deck:

Once cooled, we added yeast and aerated our brew with a stirring spoon drill attachment:

I totally want one of those now. Then we waited a couple of months for it to ferment to perfection.

The cold and rainy Saturday before the inauguration of He Who is Orange and Shall Not Be Named, Matt and Amanda came for a visit, with TWAOOD in tow:

After a few beers and some snacks, it was time to break out the bottling equipment. Things went quickly, thanks to Jess and Ben who joined us for bottling... and dinner and cocktails out, but who's keeping track?:

It's going to be a rough winter -- who am I kidding, it's going to be a rough FOUR YEARS -- but at least I've got a few 6-packs of homebrewed winter warmer to get me through the first bit. Cheers to collaboration beers!!

The pink pantsuit

Readers, you know I try to leave national politics out of this blog, but after recent comments from a certain presidential candidate I find I can't keep quiet. Not just because one of the contenders for our nation's top job is likely to pave over the White House garden to build a Putin guest house. Our former secretary of state's response to the constant stream of insults and outright harassment was nicer than mine would have been under the circumstances. Heck, even Will Shakespeare might've broken out a line from Alls Well that Ends Well during that last debate, countering,

"A most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality."

I love Shakespeare. I also love old friends and tasty cocktails. As fate would have it, my friend and NYC Teaching Fellows mentor Colette was visiting last weekend. As we sat chatting after a great visit and lunch at the new African American museum, I learned that along with a few "nasty woman" buttons, Colette had brought with her a new cocktail recipe from her favorite Brooklyn mixologist.

Of course Jacky and I couldn't wait to have one, so after a quick run to the liquor store and the Whole Foods, Colette got to work:

Tart, strong, and brightly colored like its namesake, I give you...

The Nasty Woman (Or, my rename: The Pink Pantsuit)

Ingredients

150 ml tart cherry juice (preferably cold pressed)
100 ml white tequila
50 ml fresh lime juice
50 ml simple syrup

Directions

Stir all ingredients together, then divide among 3 ice-filled glasses.

It scales up rather well, so you can make a whole pitcher and watch the election results with friends....

In Memorium

I've been feeling out of sorts for a few days now. I realized why when my eyes started tearing up at the farmers market this morning: I would never again see my friend Tom.

Tom Hubric, retired commercial airline pilot, free-range egg farmer, mentor, activist, and insatiable jokester, has been my friend for nearly a decade. He was raising happy hens on Maryland's Eastern Shore before I had ever even heard of free-range eggs, and was one of the original farmers selling at the now prestigious Dupont market. When I started shopping for eggs at the Waterview Foods stand -- gosh, 10 years ago? -- I remember Tom smiling no matter the weather, telling me silly jokes -- sometimes the same joke for three weeks in a row, but I always looked forward to it. We became friends, and during our market chats and periodic phone calls I learned not only more jokes but also about the changing agricultural landscape and policies in Maryland and DC, about the rewards and challenges of raising chickens outdoors, and different ways to enjoy chicken and duck eggs.

After returning from my round-the-country bike trip in 2010, I began to learn more about Tom's work, including his mentoring of Ned and Eileen, a pair of egg farmers transitioning from a conventional to a free-range operation not far from his place in Nanticoke. After a series of calls and follow-up emails, my friend Jeff and I ventured out to the farms to photograph Tom and his protégés for a feature article in  the sustainable farming journal, Acres, USA. When the print issue came out, I'm not sure who was more proud of the other, Tom or me! He continued to encourage me to write, and despite his declining health in recent years remained a mainstay at the market and a thoughtful friend. In recent weeks, his mentee Ned has been helping at the market stand, and today it was only Ned selling eggs....

Tom died this past Thursday, after a multi year battle with cancer. I know his memory will live on within many of us that he has fed -- both intellectually and literally -- during his lifetime. Still, I will miss our chats terribly.

Feed me!

My teeth hurt on Thursday afternoon as I stirred the cauldron, waiting for 40 CUPS of sugar to dissolve in 20 cups of water. Bubble, bubble, toil and... well, you know. Filling and hauling two big jugs of simple syrup out to the hives was more of a workout than one might expect, especially after a full day of teaching. (For those of you into math and/or weightlifting, it works out to about 3.75 gallons, roughly 40 pounds. Next time I'm getting the wheelbarrow.) This afternoon, when I lifted the lids of the three hives, I couldn't help but smile beneath my veil. Thank you, my busy little friends, for the bountiful honey you've given us to enjoy. It was the least I could do to help them build their stores for the winter, after my mentor and a few other community beekeepers and I harvested nearly 80 pounds earlier this season. (Don't worry, mom, I've got a jar set aside for you.)

Though I've been helping with the hives for about a year now, today was my first time feeding them solo. I'd done a feeding a few weeks ago with Kevin, and everything had gone smoothly, but you never know. (No, I am not allergic to bee stings, but my friend Suzanne was telling me the other week that she suddenly developed an allergy, of the throat-closing variety(!), after 60+ years of no bee sting reactions.) With my insurance card in my pants pocket, and my pants dorkily tucked into my socks, I gathered my tools -- two jugs of syrup, scissors, ziploc baggies, hive tool -- and attempted to light the smoker. After five minutes and three attempts, I threw up my (gloved) hands and gave up on the smoker. Bees don't like the smell of sweat, apparently, and the longer I sat in my beekeeping gear in the 80F sunshine, the more torrential the river of sweat that ran down my back. Sweat = a higher likelihood of getting stung. Forget it, no smoker....

I was glad to have a full belly and a few mimosas in me -- thanks for brunch, mom and dad! -- just in case things went awry and I ended up in the emergency room. Hospital food. [Shudder.] Nothing like champagne cocktails to steel the nerves. Moving efficiently but not knocking things around -- bees don't like abrupt movements or their home being bumped (rushed movements, loud noises, or banging of equipment = a higher likelihood of getting stung -- I opened each hive and deposited the solution that should last them about a week, then carefully replaced the inner and outer lids. Lots of bees were out foraging, and many more were crawling over the remnants of last week's near empty baggies. A number of them landed on me, and I cursed my failure to pick off the excess propolis still stuck to my gloves from last time. Stay calm....

Twenty minutes after I had arrived, I was locking up the beekeeping shed and peeling off my gear. A quick bike ride home and a nap later, I'm happy to report my first independent bee feeding was a success! Now to start working on my next project: a fun recipe to use my thank-you pound of West End Community Garden honey. Maybe a honey ale?

Local honey is the bees knees

Today marked my first ever opportunity to participate in a honey harvest! I can think of few things that would cause me to happily bike through the hellacious traffic that is DC rush hour, but local honey is one of them. Some small part of me felt bad smoking the bees earlier today and stealing their food. But just a small part.

Amazed that I hadn't been run off the road during my commute from Chinatown to Foggy Bottom in 5pm traffic, I arrived to find Toni and Kevin -- my beekeeping teacher and mentor, respectively -- just getting the smoker going and pulling on safety gear at the West End Community Garden. We got right to work, checking the frames for honey and estimating how many boxes we could safely take so that the bees would have enough remaining stores to get them through the cold months. (It was strange to be thinking of winter as I stood there sweating in my veil, long sleeved shirt, long pans, and socks in the late afternoon sun.) Each box we harvested had to be bee-free, so Toni applied her special menthol-and-almond-extract-soaked hive lid to each of the chosen hive boxes. This cleared out about 90 percent of the little buzzers, leaving us to gently brush any remaining bees off the individual frames. It's funny that bees don't like the almond odor -- I thought it smelled delicious! -- but it totally worked. I think we only had 5 or 6 hangers on by the time we got to the processing stage.

You will notice that there are no photos of us working with the hives -- I know some of you would love to see me in my orange pants tucked into grey stripey socks and my oh-so-fashionable bee veil. No time for photo ops, people, there was much to be done in the short time: we had to get four hives checked, bees evacuated, and boxes into the back of Toni's car.

Here we are set up for honey extraction at the Boys and Girls Club in Georgetown where, for the price of a few bottles of our honey, the staff kindly let us use one of their classrooms. We got right to work, using some crazy tools to upcap the honey frames: two of us worked with a "scratchers" (glorified metal picks) while the third person attempted to use the "cold knife" (which we later determined was more useful as a spatula):

Here are Toni, Kevin, and Tom trying to figure out how best to balance the 9 frames we would be spinning at a time.

I spent most of my time working with Annie at the upcapping station, using the scratchers to scrape off the outer layer of wax so the honey would be able to flow freely in the frame spinner.

Here's our team pouring our beautiful, freshly spun honey through a strainer.

Straining removes the little bits of dead bees, honeycomb, and other detritus. Not that I am a total purist -- I actually quite enjoyed chomping on some of the honey-coated comb when we sampled some from a blown out hive frame -- but a nice, clear bottle of honey is pretty special.

80 pounds of strained honey later, we were done!

Now it's time for a quick dinner and change of clothes before heading out for a night of salsa dancing. I wonder if I still smell like propolis....

Happy farmers market week!

Did you know this week is National Farmers Market Week? It may not have a Hallmark card section yet, but it's something to celebrate. Hug a farmer! Show up at a friend's house with a local watermelon! Try a new seasonal recipe!

You might imagine my elation when a colleague of mine asked me to do a chef demo at the market earlier today. I was especially honored as the market was to be visited by the undersecretary of the USDA. (That is quite a celebrity in my line of work.) He even stopped by for a bite of my raw zucchini noodle salad -- a brief visit as he was learning all about the Foggy Bottom market's awesome farmers and food benefits initiatives in action.

Here I am, all packed up after a successful demo. Note the trendy "I heart farmers markets" temporary tattoo. (It may be hard to see quite how overloaded Ollie was after the first market visit in two weeks -- my kitchen was quite bare when I returned from Connecticut on Monday night. That situation has been fixed.)

See, mom, I occasionally have a picture of myself on here.... in motion, as usual.


Herbal first aid

I have always been fascinated by idea that plants have medicinal properties. The power of plants to affect us, positively or negatively, to heal us, to alter our perception of reality, is something I've been ruminating about more than usual, having just finished reading Michael Pollan's brilliant Botany of Desire during my flight back from California last week. And wouldn't you know it, mere days after my return my friend and local herbalist, Tricia*, sent an email advertising her class on herbal first-aid remedies. A class on identifying and local plants to alleviate common maladies? Sign me up!

Actually, I signed myself up as well as my dear friend Tinka, who is visiting from Germany for the week. As usual, it was both enjoyable and informative -- Tricia's such a great teacher. During the first segment of the class, we learned how to identify, cultivate, and take advantage of the basic medicinal properties of some culinary herbs as well as plants often considered weeds (like wild plantain, no relation to the banana). Talk about practical: Tinka immediately chewed up a couple of plantain leaves to create a "spit poultice" that immediately reduced the irritation from some recently acquired mosquito bites. The technical term for this property is anti-pruritic, which means it stops things from itching. And two days later, when I found myself with a scratchy throat, chocking down a mug of freshly boiled oregano tea knocked whatever was breeding in my respiratory system RIGHT out of there. (It is quite an intense concoction, with 1 cup of hot water to 1 packed teaspoon of fresh oregano leaves. Not a remedy for the faint of heart. Or rather, the faint of tastebuds.) It turns out that both oregano and thyme are not only delicious but also naturally antibacterial. We also learned about the medicinal uses of plants that were vulnerary (heal tissue damage), anti-inflammatory (reduce swelling), and anti-microbial (kill germs). Suddenly I felt like a shaman-in-training. Well, without the drums or animal bones.

After Tricia talked the group through harvesting and storing everything from thyme and yarrow branches to comfrey and chamomile flowers, we headed into the fire station for some hands-on work making infused oils, salves, and balms. (What's that? Oh yes, I should mention that the class took place at one of the local firehouses, which partners with a cool local nonprofit called Everybody Grows. Two guys from the EG team manage the on-site demonstration garden out front, and were as excited as I was to learn more cool things to do with the stuff growing out there.) Together, we proceeded to make a batch of calendula-infused olive oil. Tricia explained that it needed to steep for anywhere from 4 hours (in a warm water bath) to 2 weeks (in a hot car -- no, really), so she did a TV-style quick change and whipped out a second jar of already steeped calendula oil.

We used the herbalist's medieval torture-style mini press to extract as much infused oil from the soaked flowers, stirred in some natural beeswax, and warmed the viscous mixture. The result was now considered a salve. We removed it from the heat and added a few drops of lavender essential oil. What we had now was a balm, which Tricia carefully poured into cute little tins that we labeled and brought home.

Pretty awesome, no? I can't wait for Tricia's next class....

(*You may remember reading about Tricia in an earlier post on making homemade bitters. I learn so much from this lady! Incidentally, a blogpost on other cocktail-related bitters I've been concocting since then is currently under development...)

Mycelium rumbling

There are few things as delicious as a good mushroom. Last week, I was honored to be a part of my friend Jonathan's "test kitchen" dinner party, which featured some of the most delicious fungi I have ever sampled. That's not just the prosecco talking, either (though there was plenty of that, chilled, on hand.)

I've known Jonathan -- local cookbook author and lover of all things farmers market -- for a handful of years now. He's the real deal: a man who talks to farmers in detail about their crops, who talks at length with market shoppers in search of new recipe ideas or cooking tips, who talks to me for hours about making food more fun and accessible to everyone. My people, this one. For years I've known he hosts regular recipe testing gatherings at his house, yet last Tuesday night was the first one I'd joined. I'm wondering why the heck it took me so long. I have no good answer to this question. What I do have is another great recipe, courtesy of Jonathan and the good folks at Mycolumbia Mushrooms -- James and Natalia were our culinary co-conspirators for the evening, as we brainstormed, chopped, and tasted our way through the evening, along with my gentleman friend, Harlan.

Actually, we made a few different recipes -- chicken and mushroom dumplings with three trial dipping sauces (all delicious), a spinach salad with oven fried mushrooms, a seared steak with sauteed oyster mushrooms and bleu cheese (who knew I liked bleu cheese that much?), and, the one I begged the recipe for afterwards, a hearty mushroom and barley soup. My tummy was rumbling for it for days. This weekend I'll be picking up ingredients to make more....

Mushroom barley soup
Recipe notes courtesy of Jonathan Bardzik

Ingredients

Soup

• 3 oz dried oyster mushrooms soaked in 4 cups boiling water
• 2 TBSP butter -- I'd brought some leftover from the day's classes, handshaken by 1st graders
• olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 cup uncooked pearled barley, rinsed
• 6 cups chicken stock
• 2 TBSP yellow miso -- I'm obsessed with this stuff, be warned
• Rice wine vinegar
• 1/4 lb fresh pea tendrils, tough stems removed

Miso butter: 

• 4 TBSP butter
• 2 TBSP yellow miso -- see what I mean?

Directions

Place dried mushrooms in a medium bowl and cover with boiling water. Let rest for 20-30 minutes to reconstitute. Drain mushrooms through cheese cloth, reserving both mushrooms and liquid.

Melt 2 TBSP butter with 2 TBSP olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.

Add barley and cook an additional 5 minutes to toast, stirring occasionally.

Add mushroom liquid and cook approximately 1 hour until barley is tender. 

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400F. Separate reconstituted mushroom stems and caps. Shred caps  with a knife and thinly slice stems. Toss with remaining 2 TBSP olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Spread on a baking sheet and roast until mushrooms are deep brown and crisp. Remove from pan and set aside to cool.

Add mushroom stock and miso to the barley mixture and simmer for 5 minutes longer allowing flavors to blend.

Remove soup from heat and stir in pea tendrils. Season to taste with salt, pepper and a splash of rice wine vinegar.

Make miso butter: Melt butter and yellow miso in a small pan over medium heat. Whisk together.

Serve soup garnished with miso butter and toasted mushrooms. OMG, so good!!

This spring is so wonky lately, it's actually, strangely, soup weather again. So get yourself out to the farmers' market to get your oyster mushrooms and get cooking! (What's that? Oh! Mycolumbia will be at the 14&U market and the Bloomingdale market on alternating Saturdays and Sundays this season... starting this weekend!)