Archive for the 'farms and farming' Category
One City Garden
November 10th, 2009by Caroline I grew up in a little town (it calls itself a village, and while I find the word a little precious, it fits) of big, pretty houses on smallish lawns. The yards weren’t fenced, and my neighborhood didn’t have sidewalks, which made it a pretty soft place for a kid to grow up [...]
Pumpkin Time
October 22nd, 2009by Caroline It happens every year, the clamor for pumpkin treats: pie, cupcakes, pancakes, muffins. Eli, particularly, adores all things pumpkin and thinks it’s quite reasonable to expect a pumpkin pie for dessert an hour after we return from the pumpkin patch. Well, maybe so, but not with the new pumpkins, certainly. In fact, you [...]
Eating Beans
September 11th, 2009by Caroline Until recently, we have usually used dried beans around here mostly in craft projects: sandwiched between a stapled pair of paper plates, they make excellent tambourines; Ben’s made a mancala game with a handful of dry beans and an egg carton; and of course the possibilities with construction paper, glue, and beans are [...]
Digging Potatoes
September 4th, 2009by Caroline My kids are having the typical city kid experience of farming: they visit farmer’s markets regularly; they have both visited local farms and gotten to plant and pick vegetables. But they are lucky in that every summer, we visit my parents and the boys get dirty in my dad’s big vegetable garden. We [...]
Really Urban Farming
July 15th, 2009by Lisa Who needs a house, or even a yard, or even a few pots when you have a truck? This one parks in front of my friend’s home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where they let him use their water. He’s got lettuce, arugula, squash, basil, nasturtiums, tomatoes…all ready to go from truck to table…
Life is a bowl of…
May 26th, 2009by Lisa All of a sudden, it seems, the stone fruit is in the market. We have peaches, plums, apricots–and big, sloping piles of bright red cherries. The cherry season is short, and very sweet. And while we have a cherry pitter, and sometimes use it (ice cream, tarts, once in a red wine reduction [...]
Car-what? Cardoons.
May 5th, 2009by Caroline Learning to eat isn’t just for the kids in our house. Recently we’ve taken to picking up a bi-weekly “mystery box” from a local farmer. She comes to the city to make restaurant deliveries, and makes her extra produce available to those who are willing to pick up an unpredictable assortment. The benefit [...]
Simple.
May 1st, 2009by Lisa In 1854 Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Our life is frittered away by detail” and called for “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a milion count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. ” It’s [...]
Dessert, (urban) homestead style
November 18th, 2008by Lisa Unlike Caroline, I don’t bake a lot. We were joking the other day about our families and how although we have many things in common, there are some major differences. The fact that we eat meat for one. The fact–as she joked–that I’m going “going urban homestead.” I demurred, but she’s not entirely [...]
Peppers, The Prequel
November 7th, 2008By Lisa The padrone-eating incident (now updated with pictures) was not without precedent. One of our family staples, especially when it’s high pepper season, is dish of roasted red peppers bathed in olive oil, with capers, garlic, and anchovies. Before you stop reading at “anchovy,” please consider this: a mysterious alchemy occurs when the peppers [...]