Visualize whirled peas

Today I made my way out to the Master Peace Community Garden -- part of UMD's Engaged University. Sheldon and I took the metro most of the way there (I woke up a bit later than anticipated) and arrived around 10:30 to discover the garden abuzz with workers. The program coordinator, Vinnie, who I had met at a gardening forum a few weeks earlier, welcomed me and set me to work: first weeding, then digging holes for kale transplants, then mulching, then removing a cover crop from around the soon-to-be raspberry patch (my favorite!), then more mulching. It was a gorgeous day and a friendly group -- a mix of high school and college students on alternative spring breaks, a few other first time volunteers, and a mix of all ages of community members. I seemed to do particularly well with the group of 8-year-old boys who were soon bumping into each other in the excited rush to bring me the next kale seedling for the holes I was digging. But my favorite part of the afternoon came just before the tasty lunch of hearty lentil soup: when precocious Nicholas brought me a handful of purple flowers that he had picked from the edge of the garden as thanks for "all the squirmy worms you gave me." What a charmer.

Here's a picture of Nicholas kicking back while mom (Jennifer, who manages the community plots) puts some final touches on a future patch.



There are so many reasons to garden. To beautify your space. To be outside. To grow things with your own two hands. Some think these homegrown things look less perfect than what you can buy -- I tend to disagree: they're beautiful -- but in any case they sure taste better. Mmmm... heirloom tomatoes. And many dozens of tomatoes for the price of a packet of seeds, not $5 per pound. There is something empowering about being able to feed yourself. I mean actually take ownership of the food from beginning (seed) to end (sauteed beet greens with garlic, nutmeg, and cinnamon sticks). And community gardening, well, there's the whole other amazing piece of getting to know people. Sharing recipes and gardening tips. Marveling at the number of worms. Remarking on the richness of the soil. Learning about how things grow and the marvelous varieties of things you can grow. And heading to a bike shop still smelling faintly like mulch, well, now there's a selling point....

I read the news today

Reason number 342 why I should not read The New York Times online before going to bed: I get too excited. It seems that Mrs. Obama has taken to heart the advice of the rising tide of agricultural and culinary activists who have been clamoring for an executive gesture that would signal this administration's commitment to health and responsible agricultural policies.

Yes, it's really happening. Fast approaching Eleanor Roosevelt as my favorite first lady of all time, Michelle Obama, it seems, is behind the effort to dig up part of the White House lawn to plant a garden. A vegetable garden. An organic one. And the first shovelful of dirt is to be cast tomorrow. (I'm so excited I can barely type!) I wonder if they'll need help with the weeding? Now let me check my schedule... yep, I'm free.

P.S.- Apparently the president doesn't like beets. I'll bet he'd change his mind after having my roasted beet salad with goat cheese and lemon viniagrette. And I have a wicked good recipe for sauteed beet greens, inspired by my best friend, Felicity. (Actually, I think I would faint from excitement if I ever got near the presidential kitchen.)

Vegetable, Miracle

So my pal Ronn, fearless leader of a local Bike& Brunch group, invited me to a cycle maintenance talk yesterday at Bethesda's cool new Conte's bike shop. It's tough to beat free bagels and chats with bike experts, so of course I went. During the tire repair portion of the demonstration, the instructor advised checking the inside of the tire and wheel when you get a flat to see what caused it. Makes sense. Wish I had thought of that for my first, some may say valiant, attempt at changing my rear tire (for more details, see the premature celebration in my previous post, after which the patched tire promptly reflatted). I figured it out, though... on my second attempt. I think I nailed it (ha ha). And of course, I took some silly pictures.

Saturday was supposed to be my first visit to a local farm. I woke up to discover that while it was early it was nowhere near bright, but rather damp and around 40 degrees. Miserable. The group -- Meghan (one of my oldest friends who is visiting from Houston) and Mike (unflagging in his encouragement and advice on all things long-distance-biking who had offered to drive) -- opted to reschedule our visit and we settled in for a brunch of waffles and wild blueberries at my place. But today, still early and still far from bright, Meghan and I braved the PG County local bus system and general lack of signage and made it out to friendly Claggett Farm. We mostly worked in the greenhouse with a few other volunteers, led by Gail (who works there full time).

While I've started things from seed before -- tomatoes, peppers, various herbs and flowers -- never had I planted so many of them, nor organized them so meticulously, or really noticed how very tiny they are. (You pay attention to these things when trying to get only one seed per planter cell, or, as I like to call them, dirt divots, over the course of many hours.) I found myself meditating on more than one occasion, finding myself in awe of these tiny, hard little things -- especially the almost too small to see parsley or stevia (an herbal sweetener) seeds -- which would miraculously grow into beautiful, aromatic bursts of foliage and nutrients in a matter of weeks. Okay, maybe I was a little delirious from getting up earlier than usual or being out in the country (and Upper Marlboro is the country, in spite of the random McMansion developments not far up the road). Maybe I was a little hungry. (Reading all of the delectable sounding names of the varietals and chatting about ways to use various types of hot peppers will do that to me.) In any case, it was a good introduction to the farm and allowed us to get our hands into lots of dirt and help out. We came home to my apartment mud-caked, exhausted, and satisfied. And I can't wait to do it again!

The art of bicycle maintenance

It was a day of milestones. I patched my first tire. I biked my first trail. I cursed audibly at my first DC cab driver -- he totally swerved into my lane not two feet ahead of me. Jerk. That was not the term I used. Sorry, mom. (For those who know me, this is uncommon. In fact, in two years of teaching in the Brooklyn public schools, my high school students found it a source of constant wonder that I never swore in class. One time, about a year and a half into my teaching career, I said "crap" in a moment of frustration over my students' failure to proofread their formal essays -- come on, people! -- and I think three of the kids nearly fainted. True story.)

So, the tire patch: Sheldon Brown came to the rescue yet again, though I would have liked some visuals on this section of the website. For your reference, should you need to patch a tire tube one day, here are a few tricks I had to figure out for myself:
1. Throwing your hands up in despair doesn't make your rear wheel come off the bike. (Finding the quick release knob and jiggling it is considerably more effective.)
2. Mark the leak location with a twist tie (because pen/marker doesn't show up on a black tube).
3. Taking silly pictures helps make things less exasperating.

Next, the trail: Today marked my longest ride to date -- up 13th Street, through downtown Silver Spring (had a bit of trouble with the routing, obviously), and, finally, the length of the Capital Crescent Trail. Whew! I think that comes out to something around 15 miles, give or take. The low point was when I almost got run over by a van while in a crosswalk (apparently the walk signal does not apply to bikers) near the Silver Spring metro/entrance to the proposed Crescent Trail extension. This time it was the pedestrian about 5 feet behind me in the crosswalk who cursed. (Sheldon remained stoic throughout the whole incident.) Once I made it onto the Crescent Trail proper, though, the ride was much smoother. There were quite a number of other cyclists (do I dare count myself among them?) and joggers, some of whom even smiled back as I coasted along. While not a clear day, it was right around 65 degrees, and the lack of cabs trying to run me over made the ride rather pleasant.

I made it to Mitch's place near Foggy Bottom in time to make dinner and catch... a rerun of Lost?! At least the company was pleasant, the food was good, it was one of the better episodes so far this season so warranted a rewatch, and to top it all off I had no broken bones. Upon my arrival home, though, I'm wondering if there's another leak in the rear tire. Hmmm. It's feeling a little flabby again... Good thing I picked up a spare tire at the bike shop today (ba dum bum).

You say you want a revolution

Well, you know, we all want to change the world. With food, we can. And it starts in our kitchens and our gardens. No guns, just forks.


So, there are a few things on my mind these days. One is something I came across in my recent reading of "In Defense of Food," by one of my favorite authors ever, Michael Pollan. (To be honest, it is not his best work, and I kept putting it down as I struggled through the first 2/3 of the relatively short work -- dry and academic, this section, if shortened, might have fit well in a medical journal. Oh, but the last 1/3 of the book makes it all worthwhile. There was the writer I knew and loved.) Near the end, Pollan touches on the Slow Food movement and pitches the idea that to spend the time and money to prepare good food is just the ticket we need to reform the disaster which is the widely accepted American view of food. Don't get me wrong, I love America and Americans, but I also love food and it needs a bit of a leg-up in the cultural appreciation department these days.


Of course the Slow Food movement was started by the Italians (who else?) in response to this very thing: fast food and the attendant decline of culture. (And, yes, at the risk of sounding like a foodie, I do agree with Pollan and others that the decline in the value placed on food in our country is nothing short of a national tragedy.) It will take deliberate -- and, fortunately, delicious -- action to transition the dominant American perception of food as nothing more than cheap, fast fuel for our bodies into something we relish with all of our senses and enjoy with others. (I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.) When and where did we lose sight of the connection between the land, our food, and ourselves (our culture)? Pollan offers some theories and, thankfully, some solutions. Most of his recommendations are pretty sound. (While I don't agree with the anti-snacking -- I am a lifelong proponent of grazing -- I think I understand the reason it was included in the "How to Eat" section: too much snacking on low quality "food products" is a bad idea. Well... yes.)


Slow Food is "precisely the wedge that can begin to crack the whole edifice [...] To reclaim this much control over one's food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts." Now, I wonder if he is going to wind up on the list of most dangerous Americans for a statement like that, much as Barbara Kingsolver did when she promoted a similar idea in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." (Wait, will this post get me on that list? Shoot. I can see the headline now: "Food-obsessed Gardening Cyclist Sows Seeds of Discontent Across America." Kind of catchy, actually.)

Do the right thing

I've been having a lot of opportunities to feed some of my favorite people lately, at least a few each week: wine dinners, soup dinners, impromptu dinners, the occasional weekend brunch. (These are above and beyond the weekly dinners with my buddy Mitch, who not only lets me take over his kitchen but also has a working TV and doesn't make fun of me too much when I urge my favorite characters in Lost not to listen to Ben! He's not to be trusted! Oh. Sorry about that, I get excited.) I have been making an effort to experiment with as much local, seasonal, organic produce as I can these days. I feel proud to be supporting local producers, but beyond that I love the challenge: my days are filled with roasting beets, sauteeing sunchokes, inventing new ways to incorporate potatoes into, well, whatever I can (there are so many potatoes, in fact, that I have sometimes secretly snuck them into friends' handbags and backpacks), baking apples, braising rainbow chard, and figuring out what to do with things I had never cooked before, like rutabaga (I like roasting these with honey). It's like Iron Chef... without the fabulous cookware... or competition. (I win.)

A few of my recent dinner guests have apologized nervously, sometimes sheepishly, for having brought something that was not local/seasonal/organic (let's just call it "LSO" -- I'm feeling silly typing it out every time). It's prompted a number of interesting conversations, along with apologies from my side for giving the impression that any friend gracing my table with their presence -- or some food or beverage that they have been kind enough to contribute -- would be unwelcome. Goodness!

As much as possible, I have been trying to stay as close to LSO* as I can in my own cooking. It's not always possible. I mean, if I happen to have a bottle of good Armenian cognac around, I should use it, right? (It was a gift and I discovered that it is great to flambe with. I'd like to dispel any images of me guzzling it.) I also have a soft spot for lemons in my water. Sure, I buy lemon juice, but it's not the same. And I drink a lot of water, so I generally buy lemons by the bag. I make concessions. French wine, say, or coffee, coconut milk, almonds. When I deviate from my LSO model, I make the decision to do so deliberately, and I'm okay with that. (Incidentally, my cousin Sonia mentioned that she'd heard somewhere that, environmentally speaking, a bottle of French wine often has a smaller carbon footprint than a California one, since French wine is shipped rather than flown. I should look into this, though, and see if it might be the case for my favorite South American vintages as well. I love California wines, too. And Italian ones. And... well, I don't want to give the wrong impression so I will stop talking about wine here.)

I think the trick is something that I hear most often in the context of my yoga class: mindfulness. Basically, it means being aware of our thoughts and actions. Making the best choice for ourselves at the time, being gentle and forgiving with ourselves when our choice isn't ideal. Like when I need fresh lemons in my water. I'm not moving to Florida. (I do try to buy organic when I can, at least.)

*See how catchy it is? You read it first here, folks. Someone call the OED!

Snow day!

Remember when you used to do snow dances as a little kid? Oh, who am I kidding, I still do them. And apparently I've still got it: I woke up this morning to maybe 6 inches blanketing the neighborhood, with delightful snowglobe flakes still swirling about. The perfect flakes for catching on my tongue and making snowballs. No biking today. And I needed something to get me moving around before hunkering down to (finally) do my taxes. I patted Sheldon on the handlebars, pulled on my outrageously bright magenta snow pants, and sprinted outside. My neighbor, Henry, came out for a few minutes to drop off some compost scraps and help me pile up some snow for the base of my winter masterpiece, what I envisioned as a tribute to FDR. (He's on my mind a lot these days, what with the nature of many of our president's new proposed programs reminiscent of the New Deal in general, and the Civilian Community Corps in particular.) So I got to work, incorporating some of the most recent compost contributions into the evolving sculpture. In the end, he wound up looking a lot more like Teddy Roosevelt -- I think it was the banana peel mustache -- but I'm okay with that. Sometimes the art controls the artist, what can I say.



Okay, now time to do my taxes. Well, maybe after a snack....