On the food front… The figs are finally ripe so we devoured our first fig quesadilla of the season. I know, sounds odd but it’s soooo delicious!
For centuries every culture has been on a question for beauty but these days our obsession with beauty is proving not only to be toxic and deadly. Every year millions of woman get sick or die because of what they are putting on their skin and hair.
It’s spring! Well actually, this week it feels more like SUMMER!
And that means lots of fun culinary delights coming out of the urban homestead’s kitchen.
Combining edible flower, herbs and butter for a delightful treat to slather on biscuits or smother veggies.
Here’s a recipe for HERB BUTTER
Fresh From Our Garden to Your Table
Our front porch farm [...]
Recipe will make eight 16oz bottles
INGREDIENTS:
3 ounces of fresh ginger root (You can add more if you like strong ginger taste.)
6 tablespoons of citrus juice (Lemon &/ or orange)
3/4 cup of sugar (Natural cane is best. Light brown sugar gives an extra richness to the flavor.)
4 1/2 quarts of water
Some yeast from the supermarket. Bread [...]
We hosted a FOOD INC screening & potluck on Sunday night and you can too – in your own home!
Tomorrow night at 9 PM (April 21) PBS POV will air FOOD INC in its entirety and is encouraging folks to host a potluck too
Here are some ways you can help (I’ve taken the liberty to [...]
Good little article but there are some slight misstatements. 1.) We grow 99 percent of our PRODUCE not diet 2) We do buy supplement animal feed (grains pellets) oh, and our goal is “ZERO” food miles!
Path to Freedom conserves water while cutting ‘food miles’ from Dervaes family’s carbon footprint
By Carolyn Neuhausen PASADENA WEEKLY
On a quiet [...]
Though winter is still lingering (there’s a huge storm set to pound the LA area this weekend!), it’s canning time again!
What’s in season is citrus and what’s on the stove top is marmalade! Thanks to a local, organic supply of citrus from Sergio’s farm we gals are back in the kitchen – jammin.
With the versatile [...]
Now to the biggest, best farming conference in the West!
Monterey Bay/Asilomar, EcoFarm Conference Jan 20-23
Before the conference started, we needed a place to stay for night or two before we were given our designated rooms on the conference grounds and were blessed with a place to stay beachside. (A big thanks to the Bakke family [...]
Meadow Vista Jan 17-18
Saying our goodbyes to all the wonderful folks at Nevada City Wild & Scenic Festival (read all about it in case you missed it!), it was time to mosey down the mountain to a little one stoplight town nestled amongst the pines, Meadow Vista, where we were to meet up with a [...]
This holiday as we sit down and enjoy good food with friends and family here’s some links about the future of our food supply.
Monsanto’s Monopoly
Monsanto Squeezes Out Seed Business Competition, AP Investigation Finds- Huffington Post
Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price hikes that ripple out to every family’s dinner table. That’s because [...]
Come into the urban homestead’s kitchen this time of year and there’s blood splattered everywhere – pomegranate “blood”
Getting to their tangy delicious fruits sometimes causes some uncontrolled spurts (got a direct hit in my eye the other day, stung for a bit) – not to mention staining one’s hands a lovely red color (wonder if [...]
image courtesy of Elements kitchen weekly enewsletter
Look what was in our email box today!
“We Love Freshly Picked Dervaes Greens… We make special salads featuring them, always lightly dressed so their fresh flavors are enhanced. The unique blend of mesclun greens (which might include anything from baby celery leaves to baby arugula or mizuna to kale) [...]
“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” –Laura Ingalls Wilder
Canning season has begun in earnest here on the urban homestead. Slowly the empty kitchen shelves are being filled with blessings from the urban homestead. On days like this with garden [...]
Boy, it’s hot out! Yeah, I know, what should expect now that’s it is July.
We’ve been at or hoovering around 100 degrees this whole week. When the temperatures rise my enthusiasm for cooking wanes (except for solar cooking which keeps the kitchen cool) Instead opt for no cook/bake foods like salads and slaw.
Using the [...]
Via THE FILM YAP.com
“HomeGrown” is a documentary about a family running an urban organic farm that holds a twofold fascination: The amazing process by which the Dervaes clan reaps such a bountiful harvest from a miniscule piece of land, and the way living in tune with nature binds them together as a family.
Jules is the [...]
Keeps us busy here at the urban homestead kitchen. This low chill variety (Anna) does well here in the heat of Southern California and we have been pleased with its productivity.
Apple butter is one of the ways we preserve the apples. Also drying a few on the solar food pantrie – and with the hot [...]
Made another batch of veggie kimchi (aka Korean Sauerkraut) yesterday (recipe courtesy of Nourishing Traditions Cookbook)
I can’t believe we ate almost the entire first batch. I first thought when I was putting the fermented kimchi into jars for cold storage “this stuff should last us for awhile.” Alas I was mistaken. Thankfully we still have [...]
Sure, it’s exciting to get out of the blue calls from media outlets but it’s a superficial sort of excitement. It passes very quickly.
The other day we got an unexpected phone call which has me/us all excited still three weeks later.
It went something like this……
The person on the other line: “Hello, I was told by [...]
With two baskets full of loquats and a bag of extra raisins leftover from the potluck on Sunday, I whipped up this very simple yet tasty loquat dessert.
Everyone enjoyed it so I was glad I made enough for breakfast tomorrow.
Read more about growing and using highly nutritious loquats.
If we aren’t already busy enough the days just got busier. My day goes something like this (while others are similar if not busier than mine)
Wake up, eat, emails, tidy up, feed the animals, spring cleaning, work on e-newsletter, send out e-newsletter, lunch, help pack seeds, print more seed labels, sort seeds, work on compost power point [...]
Food lessons from the Great Depression
Today, learning how to cook on a budget is becoming important to more families. In the 1930s, making do was a kitchen art, honed by necessity. Sour grass soup, anyone?
At a time when Americans face frightening and disorienting economic uncertainty, the Great Depression provides valuable lessons. For many people, putting [...]
Jordanne gives Fairlight a tomato and what happens next…. we’ll just let the pictures tell the story
Every morning the goats love to visit the kitchen to see what’s all going on and perhaps get some tasty hand outs. They’ve figured out where all the tasty treats are stored. The urban homestead kitchen is a goat’s [...]
“During World War II many consumer goods were rationed for civilians in order to supply more goods for both American and Allied troops. Among the items rationed were sugar, red meat, gas, oil, coffee, and rubber. In October 1942 fuel oil was rationed. During the especially cold winter of 1942-43 this brought numerous protests from [...]
Someone just informed me that I posted two duplicated video pieces from LivingGreenChannel.com. Sorry!
Thanks for letting me know, that’s what happens when you have a bazillion things going on all at once and can’t stand to see yourself on camera.
The correct (2nd installment) video segment has been RePosted, with the correct link this time from [...]
Another busy week of harvesting and preserving in our efforts to bring food security closer to home.
While the kitchen is hub for the harvest happenings and we gals hang out with the likes of Ms Guava and Mr Pepper, outside we shift gears into a fall garden mode.
In the kitchen, since we had an abundance [...]
Here on the urban homestead one never knows what strange creatures will show up on the kitchen counter. This week’s unusual edible is a tiny little cucumber with spiky warts – not very appetizing! The urban farmers here tell me it’s called a West Indian Gerkin
So these little spiky creatures not meant to be eaten [...]
“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels.”*
From Oily Food, by Steven Hopp.
That was Then, This is Now.
In response to the [...]
Another canning day yesterday. Yep three days in a row – we’re on a roll! When the bounty calls you have to be there to answer – no ands, ifs or buts.
Yesterday’s preservation efforts were canning up some tomato sauce, marinated peppers and the rest of the ‘crop swap’ plums (the plums are absolutely delicious [...]
Clay pot irrigation tomato bed. Cassidy, our cat, sleeps among the rows of tomatoes
Plants are heavy with sun ripen tomatoes. No salmonella worries on our farm!
Summer blooms.
It’s a jungle out there. Lady bug earth oven nestles amongst the garden greenery
Backyard garden growing up!
The garden giants take over! The four corners of the yard are [...]
On our 10 acres, we didn’t have to really concern ourselves with proper methods of composting since we were basically in the boondocks. We had a huge vermicompost system located under an oak tree out by the garden, a goat and a low spot towards the back of the property which we threw all [...]
It was certainly busy morning today (and will be again tomorrow)- we had lots of orders to fill (and harvest for personal use here on the urban homestead).
Both the owner and executive chef of ELEMENTS KITCHEN dropped by to get a first hand view of what’s growing on the urban farm so they can adjust and [...]
Colorful salad: homegrown field greens with peppery edible nasturtiums
Homemade sprout bread
Homegrown potatoes, squash, fava beans and assorted field green salad
Homegrown pototoes, broccoli and assorted field green salad
Here’s where we last left off. From what readers have said, the weekly meal wrap up is one of their favorite features here on the journal. Thanks for the [...]
I know from past comments, the unplugged kitchen holds a fascination with some our readers. Like I blabbed in the Video the urban homestead’s kitchen has only one plug in appliance and that is our ENERGY STAR (efficient) fridge. Some of the plugless “appliances” featured on the NY TIMES Video can be purchased via our [...]
