Beet Holiday Harvest

This past weekend we excitedly harvested and consumed the 1st of the season beets. See their 2 month story.

Quick Beet Salad

Trim the greens and add to your compost. (I have seen some beet green recipes online, but haven't tried them myself.) Rinse the beets and use a potato scrubber to get the dirt off and clean them up. Cut them in half and toss them in a pot of salted water. Boil the water and let them simmer for about 30 minutes or until tender. Drain and cut into smaller pieces or whatever you choose. The skin should easily peel off. Compost the remaining waste.

I chilled the beets and added toasted almonds, blue cheese and a quick dressing (1 part olive oil, 1 part orange juice, 1 part balsamic vinegar wisked together).

We just planted some more seeds and may try pickling them next time.

Nature Mill in the News

I have been gone from this blog for a bit because work has taken over all my free time.  I have every intention of doing a few Thanksgiving posts after the fact.  Some of the recipes I used went over like gangbusters with my group and maybe some of you can use them for the upcoming holidays later this month.

In the meantime, I'd love to talk about my Nature Mill composter.  I have been posting for months about the problems Donny and I have encountered with our composter.  Our latest version still can't transfer even though Donny recently replaced the springplate and mixing bar.  This sad fact turns a great indoor composter into a messy bucket.  I felt obligated to post today because the LA Times put out a review of the Nature Mill (unbeknownst to me Smith & Hawken now sells the composter).  Take a look at the review and then come back to my site for more discussion.

I had a good feeling about this writer because right off the bat he seemed to have a clear sense of what it takes to compost.  He also mentioned that he grows cuccumbers in rain barrels, so thats pretty cool.  On the other hand, I don't think he gave the Nature Mill a chance.  Since Donny and I had not endeavored on anything so "hippie" as the composter beforehand, its not impossible to think perfecting your compost is something you can learn about and get used to easily.   

At the end of the day, we're both just looking for an easy composting experience.  If the Nature Mill doesn't do the job soon there are many kitchen top manual composters I might start looking in to.  The real question is whether I will get refunded for the machine AND the upgrade.  

Moving plants

The reason for planting veggies is to harvest and eat them. I feel like we spend way more time tending to them, which isn't so bad because we love our free time together up on the roof and in the sun. Today was half harvest, half moving day for some of our plants. Donny noticed the tomato and pepper plants outgrowing their pots. We ended up moving the 2 tomato and 2 of the pepper into larger 14 in. pots. Moving the peppers opened up new real estate, so I planted more garlic cloves. We also have 2 other pepper plants and are experimenting by planting them right into the ground. However the front garden has limited sun, so we are taking a risk. When I first started planting in the front garden I littered it with tons of different seeds. It was covered with carrots, but they had been in the ground for almost 4 months. This was way past their harvest. Unfortunately it seems that my first attempt at gardening was met with a bit of my laziness. The carrots probably could have grown to full size, but the soil was so compacted there was no more room for them to grow. As you can see these carrots are piddly, but so cute! Donny tilled the ground so that planting anything new will have a better chance at life.

And back to the old times of gardening out front. Our neighbor caught us and convinced us to plant her own basil plant. Since she's had it sitting in the tiny plastic container it came in when she bought it from Trader Joe's, we took pity on her. She actually told us that she and her partner had been talking about how I'd been neglecting the front garden. Awesome.

This is going to sound a bit crazy, considering a recent post, but although they are gross and live in a smelly trashcan, I think I am starting to like the maggots. They eat our food and turn it into compost so fast - its amazing. We still don't have our replacement composter and with the full day of gardening, I had to make a lot of trips to that maggot-filled can. I won't say I enjoyed myself, but I am getting to be quite fascinated with the maggots and have managed to move past the terror. I am pretty happy with myself about that. I had actually thrown away food last week just so I wouldn't have to go over to that can. I am glad to be beyond that so all composting at our house can continue on with business as usual.

We hope to use these carrots, along with our caribbean red peppers for some homemade hot sauce. I'll pass along the recipe after we make the attempt.

Westside vs. San Fernando Valley

There are many reasons why I choose to live on the Westside versus the Valley, but for this forum I will stick to issues based on local living.

LA City Council is starting a pilot program for the city to do our composting for us. They will provide us with kitchen pails to throw our scraps into. Each residence would then collect their scraps in the large green bins we already have, for the city to pick-up each week. If it passes they would start in just 5,000 homes. San Francisco has been doing this for a while already, but I am so glad to be living in a place where we too can be on the forefront of convenient local living. I don't think our household will stop using the indoor composter, but now we can have the city compost our soiled pizza boxes and corn cobs instead of throwing them out.

The Valley, on the other hand, is preventing people from expanding their yards past the water-sucking, boring green grass. Glendale, specifically, has their own guidelines about how your front lawn can look and be manicured. They want you to believe you can do whatever you want to your lawn and that you can have "any number of types of vegetation". Many residents are finding out if they pull up the grass, they had better have an immediate solution for making it look pristine again. Of course we all know that gardens take time and while you wait for things to grow it could look like rows and rows of dirt for weeks. Everyone in this country is aware of concerns about drought, but it is a really big issue here in southern California. If the city of Glendale was just as concerned about it, they would not send their officials out to starting fining people. Instead they should come up with alternate plans as to how to help their residents.

Circa 1940, a couple in their Los Angeles Victory Garden. F.Haeg's "Edible Estates"

Rooftop Gardening continues

I would like to say that our rooftop garden is flourishing, but that is only partially true. Our neighbor's cat as continued to cross over onto our part of the roof and do his business. Donny even called him an expletive at dinner last night, so you know its getting bad. This cat is a real menace and will do anything it takes to squat on our veggies, even if he gets a little metal fencing up his butt. He has now officially killed a pepper plant and I'm pretty sure he has deterred our 5 garlic cloves from sprouting. I'm hoping that our recent additions of oregano and green onions don't encourage to him to hang out in our area more. Donny is going to great lengths to keep this cat out. I'm not sure if we will ever truly win this fight. It is exciting, however that the asparagus are growing like gangbusters and if anyone is looking for a habanero pepper, we've got a half dozen already. Also, we moved our english mint to the front garden, which goes right into the ground. The mint has been looking quite sickly for a while. We took it out of the pot this weekend and realized that it might have just outgrown the pot because the bulb is huge. Hopefully it will spread out under the ground next to the lemon tree and live a healthier life.

In other news I wanted to let everyone know how easy Naturemill has been to deal with, regarding our broken composter. They are sending us a replacement, giving us a pre-paid UPS sticker to mail back the old one and letting us pay the difference to upgrade to the Pro edition. Although we keep our composter up on the counter, the foot pedal will still be useful for those who don't want to get too close to the mixture. The Pro also comes in a variety of colors, so we ordered the new one in Slate, which is a dark grey. I'll let you know how different the Pro is from the Plus once we've used it for a few weeks. Until then we will continue to use a metal pot for all of our scraps.

Tonite I am going to make some homemade bison lasagna. Lasagna feels like one of those very American home cooked meals. It is definitely not something my mother would have made for me as a child. It doesn't look pretty and its not that hard to make, but it is so delicious. I found this recipe and I will just add the bison to it. My favorit part of this recipe website is that you can control the servings and it will automatically adjust the quanity of ingredients. I think it is a nice tool when you are cooking for a specific number of people.

Maggots

Warning!

If you gag easily, then I urge you NOT to read the rest of this posting.

Maggots have taken over our compost. I knew this already, but seeing it by myself today made it a little more real. I have to be honest. I have a problem with small creepy crawlies. My definition of a creepy crawly is usually a mouse, a rat or even something as large as a possum. Something that I feel has no problem biting me or crawling up my arm. Those things all scare me. I’m actually stressing out right now. My boss’s daughter has 2 pet rats and I am absolutely freaked out by them. However, I usually have no problem with insects, like spiders, cockroaches, flies, etc... I don’t like them in my house, of course, but I can easy squash them with my hand, my foot or a fly swatter. And now maggots are on my list of things to get used to. I’m not talking about a few maggots. I’m pretty sure there were millions of maggots in that bin. The entire contents of the bin were practically moving in unison. I’ve read many articles that say maggots are good for your compost and that they will reduce the size of your compost at a rapid speed. All of that aside, maggots are just pretty nasty. I couldn’t even make breakfast after I got a glimpse of them. My brain immediately went to that visual of all the maggots moving around. For a moment I thought they were going to climb out of the bin and grab me. I want to get used to the maggots. I really do. At this juncture, though, I will keep my distance and let Donny be the front line. Sorry buddy.

Composter Down!

I biked to the twice monthly Santa Monica Flea Market at the Santa Monica Airport. The selection of goods was so much better than the Fairfax High Flea Market last month. I walked away with two tablecloths and a kitchen towel. I could’ve bought a lot more, but I am trying to cut back.

Donny and I planned on rinsing out the composter today. Fun Sunday, right?? Stringy food and large pieces have made the inside a bit messy. The motor sounds like it is overheating and stuff is getting stuck inside. I pull the tray out to empty it before we could get the cleaning underway and a weird red plastic stripe had become visible. There is no way the composter can be fixed. I called Naturemill, but their phone number doesn’t transfer you to a live person. I think it is because they are such a small company. I emailed them and posted a comment to their website. Hopefully whatever is broken is covered under the 1 year warranty and they will send us a replacement. We have gotten used to it for months now. It completely changed our kitchen habits and without it all we really have is a big steel pot to throw our scraps in. I hope they get back to us soon.

After a 24 mile evening bike ride down to Hermosa Beach and back up to Venice we walked to a sushi restaurant nearby home for dinner. On the walk Donny and I passed by a 3 day new restaurant on Abbot Kinney called Gjelina (pronounced "jelina"). The interesting thing about this place is that their slogan is "EAT LOCAL". We nabbed a menu and right off the bat noticed German beer on tap, French wine and proscuitto from Iowa. However they also noted having market lettuce, homemade condiments and San Fransisco steak. Our waitress at the sushi joint, Wabi Sabi, told us that her manager, Robert Schwan, had left them to manage Gjelina. The waitress also thought the local aspect went only as far as delights from the farmer's market. It seems like kind of a cop out in my mind, considering all that is available in this region. And for a restaurant with such a strong slogan it doesn't add up but hey, I'll talk to the restaurant directly and get the scoop. To be continued.

Homemade Party

So we finally had our housewarming party. After a week of cleaning & organizing, 2 trips to the farmer’s market, 2 stops at the Ralph’s, and 2 passes at the Whole Foods, we were ready. We had a mostly local/organic/homemade menu: 2 pitchers of Bloody Marys made with my own tomato juice, a pitcher of Mojitos, Mimosas, onion dip, a plate of fromage & charcuterie from Joan’s on Third (our favorite gourmet deli in Donny’s old hood – not local food, but a great local vendor), smoked salmon tea sandwiches, pretzel rolls, red velvet ice cream cone cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, brownies and a fruit tart.

I also purchased compostable cups & straws made out of corn, sugarcane plates and silverware made out of vegetables from BiodegradableStore.com, of Eco-Products. Please note**these products are not local. In fact, they are not even made in the US. After many hours of research I have found that almost every single option for biodegradable or compostable tableware come from Asia. Many companies will confuse you by saying they are distributed in the US, but do not be fooled. Those that are honest and upfront about where they manufacture are also forward that they have all fair trade workers. Greenfeet does sell Nat-ur Corn's silverware that is made out of corn from the US, but since I was making a last minute purchase, it was cheaper to buy everything from just one company. Now, there is still a question about where to dispose these products once they are used. Most of them call for commercial composting, but others say you can cut them up into small pieces and throw in your own outdoor composter. One company called, EATware, even boasts that you can eat their products. If you are not in the mood to snack on your plate – they claim to have a composting turnover of only 2 weeks if you leave it in water. Since local is not an option, here is a list of the other websites I compared products/prices: Branch, Treecycle, and Earth-Friendly Home. I can’t comment on any of these companies, but I can say that Biodegradablestore.com was very helpful and easy to order from. They also seem to have the largest selection of options and quantities.

All of our guests responded well to our request to consider the environment when gifting. We excitedly got some potted flowers/cactus, a fish named Milkshake and several bottles of California wine. Katie & Junio even recycled a book to us. Though it did travel 3000 miles from their home in Brooklyn, NY, we were its fifth recipient. And our favorite was a gift certificate to Whole Foods.

Alcohol

I woke up this morning, excited to make homemade moonshine. The recipe, which I give Junio credit for finding, had too many steps. All I wanted to do was pour everything in a mason jar. And that is exactly what I did. 2 small containers of blueberries (frozen) from the Culver City Farmer’s Market, ¾ cup pure white cane sugar that we already had in the cupboard, 1 ½ cups + unidentified extra topper Sky Vodka we have had in the freezer since we moved in. Oh, and I also picked a lemon from our dwarf lemon tree and sliced off pieces of zest to add in. There is a blueberry lemon martini at the Whisper lounge at the Grove I hope to replicate. This will sit on my counter to turn for weeks to come. Donny and I have decided to have a housewarming party and I’d like to share my moonshine with our guests then. I called my mom today about said housewarming party. We are about to send out the invitation via email to our intended guests. I’d like to put a line on the invite that says something like “Please consider the environment if gifting.” I wanted to get my mother’s opinion on the matter. When I called her and started to explain the invite: black & white architectural photograph, yellow type that is straight to the point with only the necessary information, i.e. date, time, our address. She said she immediately knew I was going to ask her about this issue. Here is the thing. I like gifts, but I don’t want people to feel so obligated to get us something that the need to pause for the environment is lost. I told her about the wedding invitation etiquette I read about online that said even the mere mention of gifts was taboo. My mom agreed the way we worded the invite seemed appropriate and necessary. If we left it off then potentially we would leave ourselves open to guests getting us anything and everything, which is a waste we don’t want to incur. I also think that it is valuable to try starting the conversation with our friends. Most of the people we know do not have composters in their house. They do not recycle regularly and they do not buy mostly organic and local foods. It will be an opportunity to share ideas on projects and see what other people are doing in their homes. I hope to find out things I didn’t know.