Give me a brake!

Readers, you know I love puns. And I love learning how to fix things. And I love my dear Ollie. And now I can take even better care of her than ever, with my growing repertoire of bicycle maintenance skills. I've been patching tires and cleaning chains for some years now, but fiddling with brakes has always made me a little nervous....

No, you're not the only ones to shake your heads with incredulity. My bike class compatriots at The Bike House were surprised as well. It's true: I have ridden well over 10,000 miles at this point and only this weekend replaced my brake pads for the first time. Til about 48 hours ago, I'd always taken Ollie to a bike shop, fearing some small but disastrous installation error might lead to brake failure and the subsequent careening down a hill through a busy intersection toward my own imminent death as I smashed, pancake-style, into something made of steel and/or cement. (Sorry, dad, I should've probably warned you to put down your cup of coffee before reading this post.)

A couple of months ago, I'd noticed I had to grip the brake levers pretty tightly to get the brakes to make contact on the wheel. I thought I needed to replace the pads, and after purchasing a new set over at The Bicycle Space one afternoon I tried to cajole my bike-savvy gentleman friend into helping me install them. He pointed out that I had plenty of brake pad surface left, and that I could simply tighten the cable and wait on installing new pads. So I did. Because of course there is way less room for error tightening a brake cable than installing a slip-in brake pad...? I assure you it made sense at the time. And I did it all on my own a few days later. But at the first bike-mechanics-in-training class over at Annie's Hardware earlier this month, instructors Carol and Faye pointed out that I would do well to install some new rear brake pads.

Gulp.

At least I already had the new brake pads handy. Our second class finished up after I removed Ollie's old brake pads but before I spilled the various flat, concave, and convex washers all over the pavement in front of the hardware store. But with some help from a friendly volunteer mechanic, and some reworking of the brake cable once more (this time to loosen it), Ollie and I biked home with fresh new brakes. Ahhh. (See, dad? A happy ending!)

I'm not saying I'm an expert now -- chain cleaning and tire patching will remain my milieu for awhile yet, I suspect -- but should you have any lingering fears about fixing your bike, fear not. For free help with brake installation, cable and derailleur adjustments, wheel truing, and more, head on down to The Bike House: at Annie's Hardware in Petworth on Saturdays from 12-3 or, once the Bloomingdale farmers' market starts up next month, in front of Big Bear Cafe in Bloomingdale on Sundays from 11-1.

Invest in patch kits

Sure, I mean, you should probably have one or two on hand, but at the rate I'm going through 'em, I'd suggest you buy *stock* in patch kits! Check out this "good morning" flat. Sheesh.

I wonder if REI sells them in 10-packs.... :s

Strawberry shortcake stampede

I spent my mornings last week teaching a week-long "Intersession" cooking class to a dozen 9th graders at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School. Were it not for the amazing staff and students, I would not have been able to haul myself and an average of about 50 lbs of ingredients and equipment uphill to Petworth for a 9am class each day, let me tell you. Wooh! (Just like the old days on the bike tour. Actually, I think on the days I dragged along the food processor, Ollie weighed about the same as she did as we huffed our way down the Pacific Highway. In short: too much.) As a group, we made a whole bunch of soups and salads and spreads that week. Pickles and kim chi and bagel chips and garlic bread, too. Even a few desserts. And some fried  food.

Wait... what?? Yes.

See? I'm not a purist. I encourage mostly healthy, mostly fruit and veggie-based diets. To be completely fair, though, the frying came in only during the "Feed a Family of 4 for $15: The Great Grocery Store Challenge" activity on Thursday. I was so proud of my student chefs, as they worked in teams to plan a menu, shop at the local Safeway, and prepare delectable meals that included a minimum of 1 protein, 1 starch, and at least 1 fruit or vegetable. Dishes like chicken fried rice with carrots and shallots, egg and turkey bacon breakfast sandwiches with a side of pineapple, and porkchops and strawberry shortcake graced our classroom that day. Speaking of strawberry shortcake...

There was something of a stampede during the final day of Intersession, as we invited the various students and staff to join us for fresh herbal lemonade and just-baked strawberry shortcake following the whole-group presentation. Those who tasted our class offerings – as well as those who were not quick enough to try the many dozens of samples – asked for the recipe so they could make their own at home.

Strawberry Shortcake

This shortbread recipe is adapted from a fluffy biscuit recipe in my old, falling apart paperback copy of The Joy of Cooking. It makes about 6 large (or 12 small) servings.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• 2 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 ¼ tsp salt
• 1 TBSP sugar
• ¾ cream or milk (we made ours with ¼ cup whipping cream + ½ cup whole milk)
• 1/8 cup chilled butter, cut into small pieces
• 2 pints of fresh strawberries
• 1 pint whipping cream (get that Cool Whip away from me, I mean real cream!)
• 1-2 tsp sugar
• vanilla extract (the real stuff, if you can get it)

Directions 

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Wash and chop strawberries. Toss in a bowl with 1 tsp sugar.

In another bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together. Mix in butter with your fingers. Stir in the milk/cream until combined. Knead slightly on a floured surface (or in the bowl, if you want a bit less of a mess), then press into a lightly floured baking pan to a thickness of about ¼ inch. (We used a toaster oven pan.) Bake for about 12 minutes, until just lightly browned. Cool slightly, then cut into squares or rectangles.

Beat the pint of whipping cream with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of vanilla until fluffy. (This might take as little as 3 minutes or as many as 15 minutes, depending on if you are using a hand mixer like I do, or a fork like DeMarco did.)

Top shortbread pieces with freshly whipped cream and a few spoonfuls of chopped fresh strawberries. *Beware of adding too much sugar to your whipping cream. You can always add more, but you can't take it away. Just ask the morning cooking crew from March Intersession….

What's that? You're wondering why there is no picture of a finished shortbread, eh? Did I mention the stampede? I was lucky to escape with my body and camera intact! Yes, the shortbread is that good. And the students made it that well. Hope I get to work with them again some day.

Still leaking after all these years

This week marked Ollie's and my 3-year anniversary! Yes, it's true: my longest, most stable relationship thus far has been with a bicycle. C'est la vie.

I marked the occasion -- I thought quite fittingly -- by visiting a local farm with my friend Jon, who invited me to tag along on his visit to High View Farm out in Berryville, VA for a White House Meats pickup. I myself picked up a beautiful, 7-lb bird (already processed, thank you) and a dozen eggs from Farmer Craig. Well, after we cavorted with his hens and Scottish Highland calf out in the pasture.

Ollie was not with me, and apparently decided that she had her own way to mark the occasion: a string of 3 flat tires this week. Just like old times....

Still Leaking After All These Years 

I heard that old air hissing
On my ride today –
It seemed nearly impossible
so soon!
But I checked and, sure enough,
There was a pinch in Ollie’s rear –
She's still leaking after all these years.
Oh, still leaking after all these years.

I’m not the kind of girl
Who tends to curse too much,
but my tires seem to deflate
quite a lot.
Yes, I always have a patch kit
So that we can persevere
When she’s leaking after all these years.
Oh, still leaking after all these years.

Three flats since Tuesday
(It’s hardly news today) –
I’m covered in grease again.
I pumped the tires
To the max
(It’s probably in vain….)

Now I sit by my Ollie
And I flip her right side up
I fear my pump will break
One day soon.
But to heck with it, it’s time for
Me to have a couple beers
With my Ollie, leaking all these years.
Oh, still leaking…
Still leaking…
Still leaking after all these years.

(Yes, another Paul Simon parody....)

Call the Mayor today: a quick way to support healthy food in DC!

During yesterday's monthly meeting of farmers' market managers from around the city, I learned that Mayor Gray is finalizing the budget for the 2013 fiscal year and is considering designating a small amount to farmers' market incentive programs for the very first time in our city. But he needs to hear from DC farmers' market supporters about making nutrition incentives a priority. Currently, the budget does not include any funding for farmers' market incentive programs. (I know! Embarrassing. Boston's Mayor Menino realized the need for city-supported Bonus Bucks way back in 2009....)

On behalf of the D.C. Farmers Market Collaborative, I have a call to action for you:
Please call Mayor Gray TODAY!

I know it's a beautiful day, so maybe you can use this call from your cell phone as an excuse to step outside for a few minutes....

Please call the Mayor's Office at 202-727-6263 -- okay, or you can stay at your computer and email vincent.gray@dc.gov -- and relay the following message:

"My name is ____ and I am a supporter of D.C. farmers' markets, especially [name of market(s) you support]. It is critical that you designate $150,000 into the fiscal year 2013 budget for farmers' market incentive programs. These include SNAP (formerly the Food Stamp Program), WIC, and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) recipients. This District support would help leverage additional investments from foundations and other donors. It would help low-income consumers double the amount of fruits and vegetables they can purchase at participating farmers markets and generate local economic activity."

Background:
By providing an incentive for SNAP, WIC, and FMNP shoppers, farmers market incentive programs benefit low-income consumers, bolster the local economy, and promote consumption of fruits and vegetables. For example, a SNAP recipient who redeems $5 of these federal benefits at a D.C. farmers market that operates a "Bonus Bucks" program would then receive $5 worth of those Bonus Bucks (matching incentives) to spend on healthful, locally grown food. This means that the SNAP recipient ended up with $10 to spend on produce that day. In DC, such grant-funded pilot programs are working effectively at eight markets (in fact, the Columbia Heights and Ward 8 markets did so well they had to apply for additional funding!) and are expanding to even more DC markets (including a few some of you all helped to raise funds for back in December -- remember?) in the 2012 season.  These incentive programs benefit low-income consumers, but they also bolster the local economy and promote consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Please forward this message far and wide! We need your help!

What a day to have my hands in the dirt

One of the things I love about my job(s) is the flexibility to work somewhat on my own schedule. So when days like this past Friday happen, I'm out there with my hands in the dirt.

It was truly one of the most gloriously beautiful days on record. I didn't even need a jacket at the crack of 8:30am when I started puttering around in the garden plot out back. (Today wasn't too shabby, either, though taking into account the time change, I didn't emerge from bed til after 11am. I partly blame Kevin's bourbon and barbecue birthday bash last night for that one....)

What better way to celebrate the onset of spring and its requisite sun and warmth than by spending quality time in the garden? I also couldn't think of a better way to celebrate my new job as the outreach specialist for my local farmers' market. Yep, it's official, as of Thursday morning. (Okay, admittedly, the celebrating began with a couple of drinks at Wonderland on Thursday night.) Starting this week I'll be helping to organize outreach efforts and cooking demonstrations and even a bit of media around the Columbia Heights Community Marketplace.

[Don't worry, I still have my other... six jobs... and volunteer stuff... and writing... and I'm more than half way through the DC Master Gardening program. I'm still managing the garden at Drew Freeman, and will be helping the brand new Wangari Gardens get started in coming weeks, so in theory playing in my garden plot could be considered research...of the kind I love: involving my hands, dirt, plants, and lots of warm sunshine.]

See those carrots? Those are the ones that self-seeded last year after I let a couple of intentional-but-underwhelming carrots go to flower, and though small they are pretty tasty. I removed them to make space for some parsnips and spring onions and snap peas. (If you're wondering about their ultimate fate, most ended up in a variation of my favorite lentil soup, a pot of which I cooked up tonight and will be devouring in coming days. Want some? Stop by for dinner tomorrow.) Beets and chard will be in the next little planting section over. Radishes, too -- see how far I've come? -- to help break up the soil. Garlic's still looking good, and I'm looking forward to some garlic scapes in the next month or so. The strawberries and parsley and cutting celery seem to be doing well in the coldframe. And once I get my soil test results back for the other small plot of dirt out back, I have grand plans for tomatoes and herbs. Yes, a girl could used to this weather. And you'd better believe I can find other things to do in the garden with more of it. So bring on the sunshine!

Spent

I have a new favorite ingredient: spent grain.

You know, the stuff left over after making beer? Yep, that's the stuff.

I'd first heard of using spent grain for cooking about 3 weeks ago when I was helping my buddy Bobby start a 5-gallon batch of whiskey porter at his apartment. While the wort simmered, we did a little looking around online and I discovered my new favorite webpage: The Mash: Spent Grain Recipes from the Brooklyn Brew Shop. We made some pseudo granola (a dense, energy-laden snack that I enjoyed but would not feed to others), a stack of veggie burgers (which I only tried a bite of as I was on my way to dinner), and dough for 2 loaves of bread (the loaf I baked the next morning was delicious, kind of like a dense, almost earthy pumpernickel). Recycling brewing grains into tasty and unusual dishes? I'm so there.

This past Saturday night, Ryan and I made our way up to Silver Spring to help my pal Joey make a little beer. I'd never made a 1-gallon batch before, and to be honest I wasn't all that involved in the brewing process this time around -- I will admit that I spent most of the time sipping wine and nibbling on appetizers and chatting with Joey's wife Katie while the menfolk sterilized equipment and set timers and took temperatures -- but I was right there waiting when the spent grains had cooled enough to be tossed into a gallon-sized ziploc bag and then into my purse. Katie also handed me the beer-simmered pecans we'd used for our gallon of pecan nut brown ale. "Oh, goody," I cackled to myself as Joey gave us a ride home, "A whole big bag of goodies to continue experimenting with...."

Sure enough, date night rolled around last night and since I was in charge of dinner I started pulling together ingredients for spent grain veggie burgers, version 2. Only I realized that I didn't have all of the ingredients for the burgers. I was not about to tramp back out into the pouring rain to go to the store to buy barbecue sauce, which appeared to be the only missing ingredient. So I made my own (and, objectively speaking, it's damn good). Well, so now I had all of the required ingredients to start making burgers. Then I started thinking that the burgers needed a little more protein. So I cooked up some french lentils to mix in. And I had some flax seed in the fridge that I thought might add some vitamins, so I pulsed up a couple of spoonfuls in my coffee grinder. A couple of pastured eggs, some panko breadcrumbs.... Ryan showed up just in time to form the mix into little mini patties, so as he took over burger patrol I checked on the sweet potato fries and whipped up a few dipping sauces. (After my first trip to the stellar Good Stuff Eatery downtown a couple of weeks ago, I've decided that fries need at least 3 dipping sauces for any meal: in this case barbecue sauce, a creamy lemon and edamame concoction, and a greek yoghurt and habanero sauce. Don't give me that look. I didn't have any mayonnaise around, either, but I wasn't about to make a batch of that, too. Besides, by this point I'd gotten distracted making oatmeal cookie batter using some applesauce and coconut flakes and some of the beer-infused pecans....)

As we devoured our mini grain burgers on little slabs of sourdough I'd made a few days earlier and sipped on our beers, I couldn't help but smile. Wooh, what a night of cooking (and eating)! I think that I, like my grains, am spent. Time to catch up on a little more sleep tonight.