green. grey. brown.

compost and greywater have been popping up a lot in projects and conversation lately. my lovely mom is taking a green gardening class with some of her friends and is setting up her very first compost bin and i'm especially proud of my folks in this endeavor. i make a lot of jokes about how my parents are the hippies of delaware because they're the only people who will spend the extra $3 a month for curbside recycling and before that they would actually take their recycling to the recycling center once a week. her last weeks class was on water conservation and we had a quick chat about low-flow showerheads (of which she apparently has some to give away after having one of the plumbers at the contractor she works for order the heads she wanted, and you had to buy at least 8 at a time). I recently picked up a niagara showerhead myself, to replace our previous low flow head, but this new one is even lower flow and has a "pause" button so you can take a military shower and not lose your water temp setting. i love it.

anyway, we talked about rain barrels and such, but the conversation took a turn before we made it to greywater, which is too bad, because i think i could have given her some tips that would've really taken their DE hippie status to the next level. we've got a bucket in our shower and under our bathroom sink, both of which are used to flush the toilet (which we generally abide by the "if it's yellow, let it mellow" standard. tmi? a little? nah.) since we've gotten the washing machine, i've been quite literally obsessing over the idea of creating a greywater wetland to filter the water so we can use it in our garden. they're actually not very complicated to make and since our washer is relatively close to hot tub room, which is where the wetland would live, it would really only require a fairly small hole to be cut through the wall of the house to put the pipe through. i know, i know, this is an over the top absurd idea for a house that we RENT, but if you could see all the, well, we'll just call them renovations, we've already done, this would seem like peas and carrots. i also had the awesome pleasure of seeing the wall to wall skateboard ramp that my friend emily's roommate is building in his bedroom, and just witnessing that someone else is out there fulfilling their bizarro, extravagant, and likely illegal projects was highly motivational. still, my wetland is only in the thinking and planning stage. i've so far resisted any urges to attain supplies so we'll talk about this further as it goes.





we have already set up our worm bin and i finished our new compost bin which doubles as a table made from a large wooden shipping crate, some metal mesh, and an old weathered fence gate door. jill ordered some red wrigglers (which they refer to as red wiggly worms at the hardware store) and got the worm bin going. the worms are now munching away on some delicious broccoli stems, sunchoke peels, and wilty greens. we're still feeling out how much they can eat and how fast, i think we might have overfed them last week, but apparently you can smell ammonia if the food isn't being processed fast enough, so I'll just keep sniffing them out to see how it goes. i'm trying to convince my mom to start a worm bin also, but after my selling point of "you can keep it under the sink" was met with a swift "ew, worms under the sink!" i think i'll have to come up with a new sales tactic.

busy weekend eats

this weekend was one of those full force ADD weekends, running around spastically jumping from one project to the next, to the next to the next. a little crazed, but mostly productive, i had some interesting and some strange ideas, and actually saw several things through to completion. usually days like this mean that i eat cereal and frozen veggie burgers supplemented with emergen-c and coffee, but somehow i managed to find time to wash my filthy hands and cook a few times this weekend.

i think i've mentioned that our garden is in a, ahem, transitional state right now, so there is little to eat, some tiny lemons, a little chard and kale, a few herbs... and a ton of flourishing arugula and nasturtiums. i had seen a recipe in the millennium cookbook for arugula pesto, and thought i'd give it a try and put a little spicy nasturtium spin on it. i used the millennium recipe as a jumping-off point and then changed mostly everything. it came out way too bitter for my taste so i added basil to counteract it and that worked pretty well, although i still wasn't wholly convinced i had come up with a winner. the next day i made soup, which began as orangette's celery root soup, but quickly became celery root/sunchoke/potato/leek soup. the soup turned out great, rich, but subtle, but i kept thinking that it needed something a little fresh, you know, a little green to bring it all together. eureka! i put a spoonful of the pesto into a bowl of soup and voila... yum yum yum.



here's the recipe (although i should probably start calling these 'guess-ipes' because, i won't lie to you, i make up the measurements. unless it's baking, i've made some too flat muffins and too puffy pancakes, so i'm fairly true to the measurements of baked goods). Also, I think of a 'bunch' as what you could hold if you put your two hands together and made a cup. highly scientific, of course.

arugula.nasturtium.basil pesto

2 bunches of arugula
1 bunch nasturtium (if you don't have nasturtium you could add spinach or parsley or more arugula/basil depending on whether you like more bitter/more sweet)
1 1/2 bunches basil (a little less than the arugula)
1/2-3/4 c. toasted nuts (pine nuts are standard, i used a mix of pine nuts, walnuts and almonds dry toasted in a frying pan on med-low heat)
3 tbs olive oil
1/2 c. water
salt and pepper to taste

put all the leaves and nuts (cooled) into a blender or food processor and chop it up. keep it chopping and stream in the olive oil through the top like they do on the cooking shows. stream in the water through the top until it gets about the consistency you like (i like mine wet-ish so i used it all). add the salt and pepper.

rooty good soup
2 tbs. olive oil
2 celery roots (peeled and chopped)
5-8 sunchokes (peeled and chopped)
2-3 small or one large potato (chopped)
2 small leeks (mostly the white part, chopped then washed)
1 sm/med onion (chopped)
2-3 cloves garlic (sliced)
1 stalk celery (chopped)
3 c. veggie stock
salt and pepper to taste

Heat up the olive oil in a good sized pot, wash, peel and chop all your veggies. you're going to want to wash the leek after you chop it to get all the grit out from between the layers. throw it all in the pot, i'm sure there's some order that would be appropriate but i don't know it, so toss it all in at once, or toss it in as you chop it. cook it in the oil until it starts to smell delicious or the onions become translucent. add the veggie stock, bring it to boil and then turn it down low to simmer. put a lid on it and simmer until all the root veggies get soft enough that you can easily smash them with a fork, about 40 minutes. blend in batches (carefully, with an open top) til pureed smooth. add the salt and pepper. serve alone or with a dollop of pesto in the middle to be stirred in by the lucky recipient.


(organic generic brand cheez-its, for real.)

blowing in the wind

my household recently invested in used washer and dryer, a well worth it splurge despite the fact that the laundromat is quite literally half a block from our house. i hooked up the washer pretty immediately, but the dryer is still free wheeling, partially because i'm scared of making gas connections and partially because i hung a new and super fantastic clothesline in the garden. i mean, when you got a breeze, who needs a dryer?

i thought i'd give a how to but really it was so simple, i almost feel silly doing it. i made mine out of two 2x4's, 8 screw eyes and 30 or 40 some odd feet of rope. fortunately we have a fence and a hot tub shack that i screwed the 2x4's into after i had attached the screw eyes (about a foot apart) and then threaded the rope through and pulled it tight as i could. our fence is inclined to do the lean back after some lovely and charming police officers lumbered over it one time to get to our neighbors house, so this made the clothesline pull itself pretty tight. you can also use clothesline pulleys if you intend to stand in the same place to put your clothes on the line (like out the window or something), but i put ours over a concrete slab so it wasn't really necessary.



being as i google everything, i stumbled on this great clothesline activist group called project laundry list that puts together an annual event called national hanging out day. their website has a lot of good info and statistics about dryer energy and clothesline politics. it hadn't occurred to me that a lot of communities ban clotheslines because they think they're ugly. sure, call me a hippie, but i actually find ours quite beautiful.

homemade yogurt

About a year and a half ago my life was in the midst of a long, drawn-out move. months and months of everything in a box in a pile in the corner. no circular saw, no sewing machine, just some clothes and a mattress and my frantic, anxiety-ridden fingers tapping the table, desperate to get into something.

it's these most desperate times, the times when you can do nothing but take a few deep breaths and let your eyes sink back in your head, that i nuzzle up to my consistent companion, the warmest place in the house, the place the knows my deepest desires, the kitchen. i had been wanting for a while to learn how to ferment my own wine, and what better time to learn the more stable side of patient anticipation, then a time when i felt so wholly ungrounded.



i started with Sandor Ellix Katz's book, Wild Fermentation, which i would highly reccommend to anyone, whether you're just getting started or you're already a fermetnation enthusiast. i started with red wine vinegar (which, to this day, i still have going with the same 'mother'), and since have made plum honey mead, maple honey mead, white wine vinegar, sourdough starter, dairy yogurt, soy yogurt, saurkraut, ginger ale, sweet potato soda, hard apple cider, kombucha, and probably a few others that i'm forgetting. i still have my eye on some spicy kimchi, miso, pickles and beer.



i most consistently make yogurt (aside from the few things like kombucha and vinegar that are always quietly chugging along in various jars in various corners of the kitchen), and i've made it in a good handful of different ways. sometimes i sweeten it with honey or maple syrup or homemade jam, and sometimes i don't sweeten it at all and i eat it with lentils and cucumbers. sometimes i strain it for a thick greek style yogurt and sometimes it turns out runny and i stir it into smoothies or drink it out of the jar like kefir. i've tried soy, rice, cow and coconut milk. it's an experiment each time, a micro/macro collaboration, a guessing game, with varied but consistently yummy results. this week i made soy coconut with maple and honey yogurt to go with a new granola recipe i got from orangette.



here's my recipe adapted from the yogurt making instructions in Wild Fermentation. My measurements are guesses and you could substitute almost any kind of milk or sweetener. the result might be thinner/thicker, sweeter/sour, but if you continue to experiment, you'll most definitely find your favorites. this is my favorite sweet non-dairy concoction.

INGREDIENTS:
1 carton soy milk (the standard tetra-pak kind, whatever brand you like)

1 can coconut milk (you know i like the fatty kind, but you could use the "lite" if you want, however more fat seems to result
in thicker yogurt)

1 heaping tbs honey

1 heaping tbs maple syrup (it's best to start slow with the sweeteners, then stir and taste your mixture while it's heating up. it will be about the same sweetness when it's finished, unlike other ferments that eat up all the sweetness during the fermentation)

1 tbs pre-existing yogurt with live and active cultures, set out for a bit to get it to around room temp (can be homemade, store-bought etc. you can also use different milks and the cultures will still work, although you might not want to contaminate your soy yogurt with milk cultures if you're sharing it with your vegan friends)

PROCESS:
mix the milks and the sweeteners in a saucepan on med-med/hi heat stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't burn. if you have a candy or deep fry thermometer, pop it in, you're trying to get it to around 180 degrees, or until small bubbles start to form. you don't really want it to boil, but if you space out and it does, just keep trucking, it'll still work. at around 180, take it off the heat, put a lid on it and let it sit until it cools to about 110 degrees, or as katz describes, til you can comfortably dunk a (clean) finger in. i find this takes about an hour. at 110, you mix in your spoonful of live yogurt and stir it well because you want to be sure the cultures distribute and all your milk gets yog-y. then you pour it into jars and put the jars into a cooler. if there's room i like to put some towels in there around the jars and sometimes i put other jars that just have hot water in there as well because you want it to stay warm for about 12 hours. then you leave the cooler be and let the microorganisms work their magic (yogurt doesn't like to be jostled or moved around while it's fermenting). after 12 hours, pull it out of the cooler and eat it, strain it, mix in some fruit or veggies, and stick it in the fridge. when you're about out, you can use the last spoonful to make your next batch!

making something out of nothing

you know it might be my all time most fulfilling feeling to make something useful and/or beautiful out of garbage. i have a frightening (truly frightening, anyone who's helped me move can attest) collection of scrap fabric, a scavenged wood pile that threatens to crush me on a daily basis, stacks of junky roadside furniture that i just know are hiding a gem underneath a thin layer of ugly, a closet/dresser/under-the-bed container full of clothes from only the finest dumpsters/hand-me-downs/dollar-a-pound piles.



it's true i'm a hoarder, but a hoarder that believes hugely in the power of reuse, in the second, third, fifteenth life of objects, in the beauty of age and history and process and reclaimation. yes, i might be a hippie. yes, i might have ocd, big time. yes, i might be willing to talk on a public forum about how i get my mattresses from complete strangers on craigslist and i don't feel funny about it at all. but how else could i be when i've got to, need to, would simply shrivel up and die if i didn't make stuff, and this world is already near bursting with stuff.

san francisco is working towards being a zero waste city by 2020. i might stick around for no other reason then to see this happen. maybe then i'll move to austin, which has recently hired a california firm to creat a zero waste plan with a goal of 2040. we'll see. this idea of zero waste is so monumental even i can barely wrap my head around it. i am so inspired by ideas that are so massive, but so community based these days. people that are re-thinking everything, not just the way we dispose of stuff, but what products are available and the way they're made, and how each person doing a small act can amount to something huge.

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my past week was a whopper of goodness and inspiration. on tuesday i had the pleasure of meeting up with joe gebbia, one of the founders of ecolect, an online sustainable materials community, which was only recently launched but is already taking the design community by storm. we talked shop (for those of you who don't know, i'm a materials librarian. i know, a what?) about our libraries, about what we're working on, what we're having problems with, etc. joe is one of those people that is so honestly thrilled and amazed by what they're working on that it makes you want to do better.

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then friday the rains parted and i got my new-to-me bed for $50 and it's awesome and my back is already feeling better. saturday the grey skies returned but i hauled my old bed out to the damp, drippy east bay anyway and we set it up in esti's new minimalist bed room. like i said folks, win win.

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before the bed delivery on saturday i went to compost workshop at Garden for the Environment, which was also really inspirational. we have a slow poke compost bin so my housemate jill and i went to get some pointers, and learn more about worm bins which neither of us have ever had. we learned some great tips (to turn their compost they just take it all out and put it all back in, which totally solves my problem of not being able to get my shovel into the bin far enough to flip it all over) and got a red wiggler tutorial, and i've already lined up a free worm bin from a delightful woman on freecycle.




(i forgot my camera on saturday so these photos are stolen from the SF Gro website)

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ah. this upcoming week has it's work cut out to live up to last week. fortunately i'm still riding the positive energy train, so maybe it'll just self-perpetuate. i got my fingers crossed.

movin' on up cupcakes

last friday was the well wishing party for my co-worker friend lia (of small stump), as she heads on to bigger and brighter libraries. despite the fact that i work in no man's land and not in the actual library, lia was the only work friend i had that would visit me just to chat, let me complain endlessly about the bureaucracy of working for a private college (clearly i have a lot to say), call me when the boss was stopping by and i was most likely goofing off, sit in the anti-social corner of the sweaty outdoor all-staff meetings, etc. etc. the list goes on. she was simply one of those work friends that makes work bearable if not humorous, and work friends like that deserve cupcakes at their going away parties.



i went for carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, it's as wintery as san fran tends to get lately, so i've been on a roots and nuts kick as it is. i thought they came out pretty tasty, so much so that i made a vegan version later that weekend for erin and the house, although I probably ate half the batch or more myself. what can i say, my willpower is a little wobbly when it comes to sweets.



here's the recipes, slightly adapted from recipes i pulled off of epicurious, the cupcakes from gourmet mag and the icing from bon appetit mag. to make the vegan version i just substituted Ener-G egg replacer, Tofutti cream cheese, and Earth Balance and although the icing wasn't quite as thick, it didn't make a bit of difference in the taste.

cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups finely shredded carrots (about 4)
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped fine, toasted lightly, and cooled

preheat oven to 350. stir or whisk together the dry (first 5) ingredients, set aside. mix together the wet ingredients (next 4). add the dry to the wet and mix. stir in the carrots and walnuts. set cupcake liners into a muffin pan and spoon batter in about 2/3 full. bake 18 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. cool before frosting. makes about a dozen cupcakes.

frosting:
1 8oz pkg cream cheese (room temp)
2 tbs. unsalted butter (room temp)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 cup powdered sugar

mix cream cheese, butter and vanilla until creamy. add powdered sugar and mix until smooth. refrigerate at least 15 min before frosting cooled cupcakes.

monday morning recap

another jampacked weekend of making and eating, my two favorite things to fill my days with. thanksgiving was perfect, sorta slow, sorta quiet. the last few years we've been doing big potluck dinners, but this year i had rice and beans with esti and her mom and i couldn't have been happier to just relax and eat. i made a few simple things to share, oven roasted potatoes, maple brussel sprouts with tempeh bacon, and a cream cheese pumpkin pie (which i just finished the last slice of my half yesterday. yes, i ate half a pie by myself in 3 days, you wanna make something of it?) i also received a lovely box of quinces, persimmons and pomegranates from my friend jason and his sweetheart maggie, which came from maggie's family's farm up north. i'm still looking for a good recipe for the quinces, but you know i already dove right in to the pomegranates.





i've been holed up in the house the last few days, making books and stationary packs, sewing away at curtains and flannel maxi pads and some other random goodies. i'm trying to set the end of the month as my deadline to get some little stuff up on my etsy shop, so we'll see how that goes because it is a busy week with the new roommate and we have another little art thingee friday night also. whew.



i also whipped up a ramshackled set of benches and table for our garden out of an old window, a shipping crate, some cabinet doors, some scrap plywood, some chair frames, and some 2 x 4s (that's no joke, sometimes i like to think of myself as the macgyver or junky old furniture). they're not quite finished, i'm going to make some cushions and maybe add a cute fabric so you can't see the bags of potting soil and compost inside.




aaannnnd... i finished the walls at femina potens! nothing too exciting, but there you have it, wally wall walls. i haven't said enough to sing the praises of what an amazing organization femina potens is, i mean how many feminist art spaces exist nowadays, let alone one that evens out the playing field by only exhibiting the work/films/writing of women and transfolk. pretty revolutionary if you ask me. they have an opening for beth stephens and annie sprinkle's love art lab this saturday, and if you are in the area, you should not miss it. they are in the 3rd year of a 7 year project exploring love as art, and are some of the more radiant people i've had the pleasure and good fortune of getting to meet. and there will be a seance to summon the spirit of marcel duchamp. seriously, you won't be disappointed.

the cool down, the warm up

i have cold feet today, literally and figuratively. i haven't managed to give up the faux espadrille summery flats i've been wearing for months now, even though it is consistently chillier and drearier as the weeks go (flying) by. somedays i put big slouchy leg warmers over top of them and that tends to do the trick, but you know when you're considering tube socks, it's probably time to retire them til next summer. we're also looking for a new roommate, and after having met 10 strangers for about half hour each this past weekend, i'm feeling indecisive and exhausted. it's so difficult to patch together the overlap between a person's spiel with your needs. and then when you factor in their zodiac sign, i mean, geez.

but enough about that. let's talk about things. projects. cordless drills. sewing needles. let's not talk about my (still non-existant) etsy shop that everyone's bored to tears by, but let's talk about things that are actually happening in three dimensional, real life space and time. big things, important things, and stuff too. things AND stuff.

yes. so i'm building these walls at femina potens gallery. mysterious floating (although painfully heavy) walls. hmmm. yes. i'm also going to sew some curtains for their acres of windows. they will be off white muslin and curtain-y. well then, i guess not too much to report about all that for now.







i've also started a new project in spite of the four thousand open ended projects i can't seem to find the time for these days. it's a stealing project. a succulent stealing project. i mostly work on it on my lunch breaks, when i walk around potrero hill and take cuttings off of succulents and put them in a paper bag. then i sort them out at home and have plans to start rooting them in jars or paper cups. something about regeneration and resource, about perpetuating life in your environment, something about sharing, something about taking. we'll see how it develops.







and we had another art opening last friday, which went off without a hitch and drew quite a crowd for it only being our second show in our humble little spare room. i'm so glad to be working on this project. even in the tiny bit of time we've been working on it, i already feel more in touch and more inspired. and meeting people who are making amazing work and having such brilliant beautiful ideas, that they're willing to share in my home, well, what could be better?

monday space out

ahhh, monday.

here we are again, monday. just you and me. mano y mano.

ahhh, yeah. i don't actually dislike mondays. sure i sit around sunday night bellyaching about having to go back to work the next morning, but i tend to think of the work week as more cyclic then stop and go, so that's not really what gets me. it's more the demarcation of time lately that's giving me the old one-two punch. like there is not even close to enough time for anything and i find myself amazed by anyone who's actually getting things done. finishing stuff has become the holy grail of making for me, and let me tell you folks, i am seldom acheiving it. my to-do lists and my idea books just get longer and more full, but there never seems to be more to show for any of it. i wonder where i found the time before and where, oh where, has it gone?

alas. well, i guess a nice counterpoint to this dreary diatribe would be a little photo montage of something i actually did finish. here's a little ditty about a soft sculpture fence that lives at Southern Exposure:


the humble beginnings.


piecing it together.


hanging it up.


that'd be me on the rickety ladder fastening it together (the backstage ain't always pretty, you know)


almost finished.


a close up.


the whole shebang.

so there you have it. i guess i do things every once in a while. now if i could only get that etsy shop up and running darnit!

praises for beneficial insects

so last january erin schelpped out here from the coldy moldy northeast and for three months we looked at every god-awful apartment in san francisco, trying to find something that was better than the place in the mission i had been living for the past 2 1/2 years. it was a rude and ugly awakening to realize i had commited to leave what turned out to be a diamond in the rough, and that i could no longer afford to live in even the tiniest, dirtiest, sketchiest places in the mission. so in the 11th hour, i think 2 days to be exact, before we had to be out, we found a horribly decorated, stained wall to wall carpet, scrambled egg tiled, most perfect ever single family home in bernal heights, with everything, seriously everything, that we had been longing for. we moved our stuff into the garage before we even signed the lease or the painter had finished painting, made a deal with the landlord to do rent/work exchange to refinish the hardwood floors, and slept on a mattress on the kitchen floor for the first month while we sanded ourselves into carpal tunnel oblivion.

the point of this story is that one day, if you're lucky, i'll post some pictures of our darkroom in the bathroom, our shabby chic hot tub retreat guest room, our in-house art gallery, our garage studios and everything else wonderful and amazing in our house... no, no. that wasn't the point. the point was that we have a garden! a garden that has changed me and now i can't imagine living without one ever again.



our garden was mostly weeds and oddly placed bricks and dirt mounds when we moved in. we had a few largely overgrown jasmine plants and a science fiction-like monster aloe plant, some scraggly trees and a ton of horsetails. so we trimmed and pulled and dug and composted, and eventually our roommate set up a waterfall of succulents and we planted a ton of new seeds and seedlings, mostly vegetables, but a good handful of flowers because i buy a lot of those half dead 25cent plants at the hardware store because, well, i can't just leave them there so sad and lonely. so we were set, and things started to grow. a few things grew really well like tomatoes and zucchini and cucumbers and arugula. but all the leafies, especially the dark leafies were getting eaten up more and more, no matter how much soapy hot pepper yadda yadda we would put on them (of course we're organic, you know we're hippies). we couldn't figure out what the problem was until one day i realized that the cute little caterpillers that were always hanging out were getting fatter and fatter and the cute little moths that the cats would chase were getting more and more prolific. turns out those cute little caterpillers were cutworms and cabbage loopers. drats.



we weighed our options and after feeling severly emotionally scarred by putting a caterpiller in a bucket of soapy water after a book told me to, we started looking into benefical insects. we bought trichogramma wasps, which are teeny tiny little wasps that feed on the larvae of the caterpillers. they come on postage stamp sized papers that look like sandpaper, and we hung them from thread in the trees and in a few days all the little rough bits were gone from the papers and our wasps were off fighting the good fight, the collard greens and swiss chard fight. and wouldn't you know it, about a month later and our greens are growing with minimal chewed bits and we're getting ready to dig a bunch of sad stuff up, move it around and re-plant. i can't wait.


i'll be unleashing some more beneficial insects on the garden this weekend- predatory nematodes. they are supposedly the end all, be all of beneficial insects because they'll eat anything that lives in the soil and is smaller than an earthworm. they come in a sponge which you rinse in a gallon of water and then water them into the soil (i know, it's all so sci-fi). i'll let you know how that goes and keep you updated on all the rainy season gardening fun that ensues in the next few months.