Good Food is Everybody's Business
All about growing and making good food, including gardening, foraging, gleaning, processing and cooking.
Despite minor setbacks, we’ve made a lot of strides in the last month. I joined Missoula’s community food co-op and have been shopping there pretty regularly. We haven’t bought bread in a grocery store for several months now, making it at home instead.
Christina Hahs is a sprite with a direct stare. Even at the age of 27 she is not one of the youngest farmers in the City of Seattle. In the egalitarian context of urban agriculture it would be wrong to describe her with any other superlative or enumerator but she is, on her own, guiding a group known as the Harvest Collective. It has not been an easy year, however.
Who needs “Better living with chemistry” when you have “Better breeding with Monsanto?” If you thought that planting your own garden and growing and harvesting your own crops would keep you safe from the long arm of Monsanto, think again!
I’m starting off with the idea… no, the belief… that food can be all at once delicious, healthy, and affordable. I mean healthy in the minimally processed, as-natural-as-possible kind of way and I mean delicious in the easy-from-scratch cook-at-home meals kind of way. I’ve got a good start with many years experience cooking delicious meals on a budget. What I’m aiming to do is add organic and local to the equation, educating myself (and readers) along the way.
Imagine a big room full of tables, each covered with samples of apples, pears, and grapes ready for you to taste. Best to bring a note pad and paper if you want to remember the ones you REALLY liked, because after tasting dozens of delicious fruit it will be hard to recollect which was which.
For those of us who don’t have a lovely brick oven in the backyard, we can still make wonderful bread in our own ovens. And it’s “no-knead” so it’s easy! Many thanks to Jack Jenkins for this recipe!
Jack Jenkin’s secret for wild yeast levain (pronounced le-van, like the vehicle, with the accent on the last syllable).
Fruit harvest is in full swing now and from what I’ve learned, you can pickle almost any of them. My grandmother would be proud of me, to see me putting by some fresh cherries, pickled for winter enjoyment!
