Humanize the Earth!

tinctures and community assets

My friend Nance is an amazing asset to the Little Village community of Chicago.  Several weeks ago she hosted a dinner conversation in her garden about The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  She showed us around her garden suggesting items for the salad, and then let us forage our collective dinner.  She calls it foraging because she doesn’t plant things in specific spots.  She’s more interested in seeing where they come up.  Where do they want to live?

Anyway, very interesting conversation about the tradeoffs between shipping organicly grown food long distances (lots of fossil fuels for transport) and closer-to-home, yet not organic.  We also talked a lot about food as conversation, as relationship.  If something is grown in the backyard, even if not organic, we have a relationship with that plant, or with the people that grew that plant.  This matters.

This past Saturday, I foraged some more in Nance’s garden, this time for herbs to make tinctures.  We learned about a lot of different herbs and their healing properties, and how to harvest the flowers, leaves and roots and convert them to a usable form using alcohol, glycerin or vinegar and time.

Good stuff and very inspiring.  I want to grow more!

Turkey

I’ve been saving this post in my newsreader for the last 11 months. Thought since I’m going to use it this week, it’d be good to share it as well. Turkey for the Holidays:

Making a turkey for the holidays? A few weeks ago Anne Holub shared her Turkey 101 in One Good Meal. But if you’re in need of extra help, check out the Turkey for the Holidays website from the University of Illinois Extension. You can find how to select a turkey, cooking techniques, carving tips and recipe suggestions for what to do with leftovers. And, if you want a really fresh bird for your holiday dinner, check out this list of local poultry farms in Illinois. Although most birds are sold-out for this year, farms are already taking reservations for 2005.

(Follow the link to get to the other links. I used this post last year to find an Illinois organic turkey for this year. It’s thawing in the fridge right now!)

biking joyful and not

This summer I’ve been sharing a box of Angelic Organics veggies with Sarah and Sam, also members of the Hub Co-op where I live. This means once every 3rd Wednesday, I need to ride by bike 9 miles from my downtown office to the drop-site in Oak Park and then another 6 miles home. Tonight was my night. It was chilly and rainy and windy as I left the office and I seemed to be in for a very long miserable bike ride. So I started singing at the top of my lungs about the long bike ride ahead of me in the rain, against the wind and all that, cold ears and all. Before I knew it I was in Oak Park and loading the veggies into the trailer. I didn’t sing as much coming home with the wind at my back and the rain stopped, but did sing a big more. And before I knew it I was home.

So I got to thinking about this and realized that on my weeks to pick up the veggies in the past I ended up with a really sore body afterwards and I think it’s due to riding with the goal in mind, and thus with tension in my body. Tonight I certainly knew where I was going so it’s not that I forgot the goal, but I occupied myself with expression instead of concentrating on the physical sensations of riding. And my body feels great! Could it be that I was more physically relaxed tonight? I think that seems like a pretty good explanation.

So on tonight’s conference call we discussed # 7. The Principle of Immediate Action

“If you pursue an end you enchain yourself. If everything you do is realised as though it were an end in itself, you liberate yourself.”

Seems to fit with that biking story, doesn’t it?

Ted’s Cole Slaw

For years I’ve been getting Angelic Organics veggies and every year, there’s tons of cabbage I don’t know what to do with. Today I made cole slaw for the first time and it’s pretty darn good, methinks. Here’s what I put in it:

• cabbage, lots of it
• pineapple, fresh
• cucumber
• apple, gala
• red wine vinegar
• olive oil
• honey
• salt

Could also use black pepper, if you like that sort of thing. I also might try it with grated beets. Yum!

Categories: cabbage, Chicago, recipe, coleslaw