Archive for February, 2009
Primer on [Urban] Permaculture
I’ve just returned from a great little workshop hosted at the fabulous historical Wyck Garden on the topic of applying permaculture principles to the urban landscape. Led by Phil Forsyth, director of the Philadelphia Orchard Project, participants got a great tutorial on how to put permaculture to use here in our Philadelphia neighborhoods. Many of those in attendance were already practicing sustainability in their gardens and found the principles overlap quite a bit with permaculture.
Sheet Mulching Step 1: Cut back any vegetation, soak the ground, place a single layer of cardboard and/or newspaper on the ground and soak it again.
I bet several of you are scratching your heads, wondering what the heck permaculture means. I won’t bog you down with a detailed history on what amounts to an interesting marriage between science and philosophy-bordering-on-spirituality. If you want more on that, you can start your reading here and here. The short and sweet version is that the term was coined in Australia in the 1970s to describe an official movement to design agriculture practices that were more….well, sustainable and permanent (as in not depleting our earth to the point that it would cease to be productive). But the practices of permaculture have been around a lot longer than that; they are really the mantras of any indigenous people that has had to live off of the land, particularly in wooded areas. At the end of the day, permacutlure, like the more mainstream sustainable agriculture philosophy, is all about balancing our consumption and waste in the natural world.
Sheet Mulching Step 2: Cover soaked cardboard and
newspaper with two inches of compost.
In my limited experience, it’s my understanding that permaculture has four main principles: care of the earth as a whole, care of people in our neighborhoods, reducing consumption in all areas of our lives, and sharing our surplus with others, including knowledge on such topics as growing food. Practitioners of permacutlure carry out these principles by employing multifunctional tools (i.e., putting chickens in your garden to eat pests while also fertilizing and giving your eggs), striving to be self-sufficient (i.e., use solar energy and grow your own food), and re-using everything they can (i.e., putting down cardboard and newspaper in the garden to suppress weeds and create a base for composting).
Sheet Mulching Step 3: Add a layer of leaves and then add another layer of compost and of leaves (4 layers altogether and about 8 inches deep). Rake out to be even and wet down if leaves are blowing away. Wait patiently for six months, and you’ll have a beautiful bed in which to plant.
The Lay of the Land
Any of you who have a garden surely are familiar with the yin and yang of winter. These months of dormancy in the garden are a blessing in that they provide the busy gardener with time at his or her desk (or kitchen table) to sort through the catalogues and draft up the plans for the coming season’s garden. But winter, as it trudges along to late February, can be downright painful for the gardener psyche, having been penned up inside for so long. I have turned with new zest to house plants this winter, having missed my garden so very much. I have also been soothing the burning desire to get in the garden by meticulously planning on paper every detail of my little patch of green goodness.
Plotting out all the details of the garden has become increasingly important for me, thanks to both my experiences gardening in a small plot with an ambitious crop list and my reading list over this winter. One of the books I read from front to back and then again was Sarah Raven’s The Great Vegetable Plot. Just like her The Cutting Garden, this volume is jammed full of great tips for getting the most out of a small piece of land, focusing in great detail on succession planting, trellising, the most productive varieties of any given vegetable, and how to push the limits of the seasons. With these words of wisdom in mind, I drafted my layout for this year’s vegetable garden.
Parsnip Soufflés
I realize I’ve left you for nearly a week without a new recipe. I don’t know what I was thinking. Actually, I do. I was thinking how nice it would be to get away and enjoy a little winter sporting, namely cross country skiing at beautiful Crystal Lake. So, instead of cooking and writing a post over the weekend like usual, I got some gear together and headed north with D.
Before any of you ski enthusiast out there start thinking about leaving comments regarding the technicalities of cross country skiing and my experiences, let me put a stop to it right here. I’m thatperson, the one puttzing around the trails, falling at least once every mile and laughing at myself. I am not a good skier, but I do love being out in the snow, filling my lungs with clean winter air and getting some much needed vitamin D from the sun’s rays. I spend as much time stopped, gazing out among the towering pine trees at some bit of wildlife, as I do gliding along on my skis.
So that’s what I did this weekend instead of blogging. Now, more importantly, let’s talk about what I did rigtht before I left for this mini-vacation. I made my very first soufflés ever. They were Parsnip Soufflés to boot. Fancy, eh?
I’m not sure why I’d never made a soufflé before last week – probably something to do with my general disinterest in heavily egg-y savory dishes – but I’m quite happy I finally gave soufflé-ing a shot. Yes, they deflated within moments of exiting the oven, but the color was gorgeous and, thanks to the parsnip, the flavor was complex and not at all eggy. On the flip side of that coin, these soufflés are heavy on the parsnip “zing” so if you’re not a huge parsnip proponent, it might not be the recipe for you.
Creamy Lemon Bars
There are angels among us, I’m sure of it. They might not be beings from heaven, but they do make our lives much much better. I have a “lemon angel”. She gave me a Wilson lemon tree of my very own! I’ve always wanted a lemon tree, but somehow never got around to getting one (if I’m honest with myself, I think I’ve always been a bit intimidated by the thought of growing citrus in my windowsill…it seems like it should be difficult, doesn’t it?). But now that I have my lemon tree from my lemon angel, I’m on Cloud 9!
Have you ever buried your nose in a lemon blossom? It has the most ethereal scent, even better than jasmine. On those oddball warm days we had last week, I had the window where this lemon tree is sitting open a crack while I studied at my desk. I immediately became enveloped in the fragrance that dance along the warm breeze. I will forever be supremely jealous of anyone who lives near a citrus orchard!
Along with the lemon tree came one lone ripe lemon that I determined should definitely go towards an appropriate “thank you” for my lemon angel. Creamy Dreamy Lemon Bars fit the bill nicely, and I had all the ingredients on hand. Can I tell you that I giggled aloud at the realization that I didn’t have to run out to buy a lemon? And I’ve now discovered that the great thing about a lemon fully ripened on the tree is that it contains a great deal more juice than the hard pale ones I’m used to picking up at the grocery store. It also probably has a higher content of aromatic oils in its rind since the zest this time was extremely fragrant.
Cranberry Champagne Sorbet
Happy Valentine’s Day, my dear readers! This is my love letter to you…a bright pink scoop of Cranberry Champagne Sorbet. This is a truly over-the-top and colorful dessert that is made with couples in mind, but it certainly could be shared among friends too. Perhaps it’s not the best option for the kiddies though.
Thanks to the alcohol in the champagne, the consistency of this frozen treat is silky smooth and not the least bit crystallized like many sorbets. But don’t worry; while you may get intoxicated by the fun of sharing spoonfuls with your sweetie, there’s not enough alcohol left in the mix after cooking to do any real harm. Do make sure to use a high quality champagne though as the flavor of the bubbly is rather prominent in the final dish. If you don’t like the taste of the champagne before it goes into the sorbet, you won’t like afterwards either.
Now I realize some of you might not be as huge a fan of cranberries as I am. If that’s the case, you will want to be very generous with the sugar. Or you can try using strawberries instead if they are in season around you or you have some frozen from last year’s crop. I don’t recommend buying out-of-season berries as they are usual white and tasteless, really rather disappointing in the end. I personally adore the tart zing of this particular cranberry combination with a hint of cinnamon. It really gets my engines revving, if you know what I mean!
It’s even more fun when a small rounded scoop is gently dropped into a glass of champagne and slowly sipped as the bubbles work their way into the frozen sphere. Really, it’s all rather very sexy.
Love,
Jennie
Recipe after the jump
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