Jonathan Chen Chosen by Change by Us Seattle
Check out this new site to promote community building ideas via the web. On this post they feature Jonathan Chen from the Danny Woo Garden.
Today the Code for America Seattle team has two big announcements.
The first is that this morning we launched a beta version of Change by Us Seattle, a new application to support volunteerism.
Change by Us is an online marketplace for community projects. The idea behind Change by Us is to empower neighbors in Seattle to coordinate offline efforts to make their city better — from building a skate park to cleaning up their street to hosting a block party. The site allows you to build teams, promote your project, and connect with other community leaders who can point you in the right direction — to the right grants, resources and people.
Change by Us originally launched in New York in July as a project by Local Projects, a New York-based media design firm, and CEOs for Cities, a national urban advocacy non-profit. Code for America fellows are helping to standardize the site to bring it to more cities and add new features, the first of which, “needs,” a way for organizers to post requests for people and stuff, made its debut this morning.
City Fruit September Update
Aimee in a plum tree
From our friends at City Fruit:
Hi everyone,
Indian summer is the best – especially when it’s our only summer. Italian plums and Asian pears are coming in this month, and it was an amazing fig year. So, please, enjoy the harvest and eat some fruit. And take a cooking class (see below)! Fruit tip: It’s time (or almost time) to harvest pears. Read our Blog to find out how and then read “Green Pear Tree in September” (attached) by Freya Manfred.
Save your Saturdays for our new cooking series!
Five teachers with deep roots in Seattle’s culinary community expand the ways we think about fruit in our new cooking series, Beyond the Canning Jar. Amy Pennington will tackle quince and Laurie Pfalzer will roast, braise and poach fruit – plus much more. Enrollment is limited. Register at Brown Paper Tickets or send a check to City Fruit, PO Box 28577, Seattle WA 98118. Classes are $30 members, $35 non members, $120 ($140) for the five-class series. Special thanks to Dish It Up! and The Pantry at Delancey for partnering with us on these classes and to Morgan Larsen for setting them up.
Oct 1 – Fruit Pies and Pastries – Marcee Clark of Seattle Culinary Academy
Oct 8 - Demystifying Quince – Amy Pennington, author of Urban Pantry
Oct 15 – Shrubs (Drinking Vinegars) – Patricia Eddy of Cooklocal.com (featured on KUOW)
Oct 22 – Fall Fruit from Start to Finish – Roxanne Viera of PCC Cooks
Oct 29 – Simple Fruit: Poaching, Roasting and Braising – Laurie Pfalzer of Pastry Craft
City Fruit News
Harvest: In mid-August the figs finally kicked in and now Italian plums are on the horizon. Although we have harvested at many sites, in general we’re getting about half as much fruit per tree as we did in 2010 – probably due to the spring weather. We deliver to ‘small’ sites (shelters, meals programs, schools) and to ‘large’ sites, e.g., food banks. Several loyal — and local–partners buy a portion of City Fruit fruit: Bar del Corso (Beacon Ave), Dahlia Workshop (Belltown), De Luxe Foods (Wallingford), Le Gourmand Restaurant (Ballard) and Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream (Capitol Hill). Support them, and when you do, tell them you’re also a City Fruit supporter.
Grant: The Horizons Foundation awarded us a general support grant to help with our core projects–the fruit harvests, educational programs, and movement toward becoming a self-sustaining organization. We thank them for this, and also thank Katherine Ransel, an excellent proposal writer.
Media blitz: Check out “City Fruit helps feed the hungry from our backyards” at the Seattle P-I online and then go out–this week–and buy the September issue of Edible Seattle, with Abra Bennett’s four-page color spread on City Fruit, “Closing the Urban Fruit Loop.”
Harvest Festivals
Sept 10 Seattle Tilth’s Harvest Fair, Meridian Park. 10 am – 4 pm. Workshops, music, farmer’s market, local food.
Sept 11 Jubilee County Fair in the Holy Cross Lutheran Church orchard, 4315 -129th Pl SE, Bellevue (across from Newport High School.) Food, games, cider, and music. Noon to 5 pm.
Sept 24 Festival of Fruit at Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park, 9:30 am – 3 pm. Celebrate the 120th anniversary of Piper’s Orchard and hear speakers on historic orchards and fruit foraging. Also, pie competition, cider pressing, apple identification and lectures in the orchard. Oct 2 Salt Spring Island Apple Festival, Salt Spring Island, BC. Orchard tour of heritage and organic apples, pie contest, apple identification. Contact Seattle Tree Fruit Society for group outing info: lorineb@mindspring.com . Don’t be left out — join us! As you must know by now, City Fruit has no fat. Your memberhip directly supports our fruit harvesting and donations, our educational work, and our lobbying for the importance of urban fruit with whoever will listen. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and read the Blog. Take care, and have a great month. Gail
Hi everyone,
Save your Saturdays for our new cooking series!
Five teachers with deep roots in Seattle’s culinary community expand the ways we think about fruit in our new cooking series, Beyond the Canning Jar. Amy Pennington will tackle quince and Laurie Pfalzer will roast, braise and poach fruit – plus much more. Enrollment is limited. Register at Brown Paper Tickets or send a check to City Fruit, PO Box 28577, Seattle WA 98118. Classes are $30 members, $35 non members, $120 ($140) for the five-class series. Special thanks to Dish It Up! and The Pantry at Delancey for partnering with us on these classes and to Morgan Larsen for setting them up.
Oct 1 – Fruit Pies and Pastries – Marcee Clark of Seattle Culinary Academy
Oct 15 – Shrubs (Drinking Vinegars) – Patricia Eddy of Cooklocal.com (featured on KUOW)
Oct 22 – Fall Fruit from Start to Finish – Roxanne Viera of PCC Cooks
Oct 29 – Simple Fruit: Poaching, Roasting and Braising – Laurie Pfalzer of Pastry Craft
City Fruit News
Harvest: In mid-August the figs finally kicked in and now Italian plums are on the horizon. Although we have harvested at many sites, in general we’re getting about half as much fruit per tree as we did in 2010 – probably due to the spring weather. We deliver to ‘small’ sites (shelters, meals programs, schools) and to ‘large’ sites, e.g., food banks. Several loyal — and local–partners buy a portion of City Fruit fruit: Bar del Corso (Beacon Ave), Dahlia Workshop (Belltown), De Luxe Foods (Wallingford), Le Gourmand Restaurant (Ballard) and Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream (Capitol Hill). Support them, and when you do, tell them you’re also a City Fruit supporter.
Grant: The Horizons Foundation awarded us a general support grant to help with our core projects–the fruit harvests, educational programs, and movement toward becoming a self-sustaining organization. We thank them for this, and also thank Katherine Ransel, an excellent proposal writer.
Media blitz: Check out “City Fruit helps feed the hungry from our backyards” at the Seattle P-I online and then go out–this week–and buy the September issue of Edible Seattle, with Abra Bennett’s four-page color spread on City Fruit, “Closing the Urban Fruit Loop.”
Harvest Festivals
Sept 10 Seattle Tilth’s Harvest Fair, Meridian Park. 10 am – 4 pm. Workshops, music, farmer’s market, local food.
Sept 11 Jubilee County Fair in the Holy Cross Lutheran Church orchard, 4315 -129th Pl SE, Bellevue (across from Newport High School.) Food, games, cider, and music. Noon to 5 pm.
Bring Back Home-Ec!
From the New York Times here’s a great article on why we need to bring back the teaching of home economics. What are your memories of home ec? I remember making aprons and really great beef stroganoff.
NOBODY likes home economics. For most people, the phrase evokes bland food, bad sewing and self-righteous fussiness.
But home economics is more than a 1950s teacher in cat’s-eye glasses showing her female students how to make a white sauce. Reviving the program, and its original premises — that producing good, nutritious food is profoundly important, that it takes study and practice, and that it can and should be taught through the public school system — could help us in the fight against obesity and chronic disease today.
The home economics movement was founded on the belief that housework and food preparation were important subjects that should be studied scientifically. The first classes occurred in the agricultural and technical colleges that were built from the proceeds of federal land grants in the 1860s. By the early 20th century, and increasingly after the passage of federal legislation like the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act, which provided support for the training of teachers in home economics, there were classes in elementary, middle and high schools across the country. When universities excluded women from most departments, home economics was a back door into higher education. Once there, women worked hard to make the case that “domestic science” was in fact a scientific discipline, linked to chemistry, biology and bacteriology. More…
New Research on Composting Garden Waste
From Denmark here’s new research on composting courtesy of PubMed:
Environmental assessment of garden waste management in the Municipality of Aarhus, Denmark
Boldrin A, Andersen JK, Christensen TH.
Department of Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark. aleb@env.dtu.dk
An environmental assessment of six scenarios for handling of garden waste in the Municipality of Aarhus (Denmark) was performed from a life cycle perspective by means of the LCA-model EASEWASTE. In the first (baseline) scenario, the current garden waste management system based on windrow composting was assessed, while in the other five scenarios alternative solutions including incineration and home composting of fractions of the garden waste were evaluated. The environmental profile (normalised to Person Equivalent, PE) of the current garden waste management in Aarhus is in the order of -6 to 8 mPE Mg(-1) ww for the non-toxic categories and up to 100 mPE Mg(-1) ww for the toxic categories. The potential impacts on non-toxic categories are much smaller than what is found for other fractions of municipal solid waste. Incineration (up to 35% of the garden waste) and home composting (up to 18% of the garden waste) seem from an environmental point of view suitable for diverting waste away from the composting facility in order to increase its capacity. In particular the incineration of woody parts of the garden waste improved the environmental profile of the garden waste management significantly.
Waste Manag. 2011 Jul;31(7):1560-9. Epub 2011 Feb 11.
Beacon Food Forest Celebrates!
More fresh tomatoes
Here’s great news from the Food Forest team – a huge congrats!
Celebrate the final design for the Beacon Food Forest:
Tuesday, September 20, 20ll
6:30pm till 8:30 pm
Jefferson Park Community Center (3801 Beacon Ave. S.)
Background
Community design of the Food Forest began in June and was supported by funds from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods Matching Fund. Beacon Hill residents and other local advocates of urban agriculture worked together on a design for up to 7 acres of land owned by Seattle Public Utilities. The Beacon Food Forest is located directly west of Jefferson Park
Nearly 100 folks worked to supply designers of the Harrison Design Team with a long list of features to include in the Food Forest. Fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, herbs, snack fruits and arbors of grapes, hops and kiwis all had strong support. These will be grown to demonstrate the principles of permaculture and showcase the high yields that can result from intensive plantings of selected edibles.
The Food Forest will also feature a community gathering space and children’s’ area and room for native varieties of food bearing plants. Community support for traditional gardening resulted in the design of many individual p-patch plots, larger allotment plots and a community growing space for single crops like corn or pumpkins.
Beacon Hill is a diverse neighborhood and organizers of the Food Forest look forward to learning more about the traditions of growing food from our neighbors and friends.
To learn more, visit our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/beaconfoodforest
If you would like to schedule a personal tour of the Food Forest site or need more information, please contact:
Glenn Herlihy, 206-251-9814 or glennherlihy@speakeasy.net
Jacqueline Cramer, 206-526-5660 or rockit99@wildmail.com
Jenny Pell, designer, jennypell@gmail.com
Seattle Public Schools Removing Healthy Food Advocate
Let's keep working to get the best food for kids.
From the Seattle Times here’s news on another setback in the efforts to get healthier foods served at Seattle Public Schools.
On the very day that Seattle magazine chronicled the progress Eric Boutin had made in making Seattle school menus healthier, the district moved him out.
“Life’s funny that way, I guess,” Boutin told me the other day.
He had become the nutrition director of Seattle Public Schools just a year ago and with great fanfare, after holding the same job at the Auburn School District.
There, Boutin drove his pickup to local farms for freshly harvested potatoes that Auburn schools served instead of French fries, and for watermelon instead of fruit cocktail. He visited farmers markets to hand out business cards, hoping to spend the district’s money locally. More…
Garden Dinner
What to make for dinner is always a big question at my house. Last night I decided to let the garden decide; whatever was ripe was what was going on the table.
Collards
We have collards coming out our ears right now so they definitely needed a place on the menu. Here’s an easy recipe even my kids like to eat:
Zesty Collards
Wash all those little aphids off and any other bugs that might be lurking under those nice shady leaves. Cut the ribs out, roll up the leaves and cut them in thin strips. Put canola oil in a frying pan and saute onion and garlic until soft. Add in 1-2 tablespoons of peanut butter, salt and hot pepper to taste. Cover and simmer about five minutes until soft.
Fingerling potatoes
Fresh Potato Salad
Boil unpeeled potatoes until fork tender. Drain off water. To make the sauce: combine one part vinegar and two parts olive oil, add in 2-3 crushed garlic cloves, sliced onion, salt, black pepper and dijon mustard to taste. Mix and toss over the taters.
Zuchinni
Italian Zuchinni
Saute zuchinni until soft. Drain off water. Top with cheese and a bit of hot pepper.
Beets
Tangy Beet Salad
Boil unpeeled beets until fork tender. Peel off skins and cut into quarters. To make the sauce combine one part vinegar, two parts olive oil, two cloves crushed garlic and salt and pepper to taste. Add in onions and toss beets.
Rhubarb
Rhubarb Pie
Prepare your favorite pie crust. Slice the rhubarb and mix with 1/4 cup quick tapioca, add one to two cups of sugar depending on how sweet you like. Let mixture sit for 30 minutes. Put in pie crust. Place in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes then reduce to 375 degrees for 45 minutes.
Now gather your friends and family and feast!
Jammin’ With Figs
Figs are now in season and each bite takes me back to desert days in Arizona. This season I got enough of the succulent fruit to make jam. Gail Savina from City Fruit suggested using a recipe from Alice Water’s Fruit cookbook. So here it is:
Life and Death and Urban Ag
Increasing numbers of the world’s poor now live in urban areas. How can urban ag feed this population and what are the risks to farming in the urban environment? Richard Stren from the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, seeks to answer this question in his publication: Healthy city harvests: Generating evidence to guide policy on urban agriculture
The subject of this book has been an important one to many of us researchers and policy-makers – for many years now. It has been important since so many urban residents, both in developed, and developing countries, have been raising animals and cultivating fruits and vegetables to enhance their incomes and to improve their families’ food security. These activities, invisible to many, have at best been defined as “illegal” or a “concern”, even though they are widely practiced. But in very recent months, just preceding the completion of the book, the issue of urban food supply has become a matter of extreme apprehension and even alarm. Why? Note the following, typical headlines over the last six months: “Forget oil, the new global crisis is food”, “Soaring food prices threaten stability” “Fear of rice riots as surge in demand hits nations across the Far East”, and “World in grip of food crisis”. Clearly, what was already a tight situation for millions of the urban poor in cities across the world – but particularly in the poorest developing countries – has become even more widespread and desperate. Urban food supplies are not only an important and central policy issue, but in some countries they are the central policy issue.
Increasing Local Foods in School Lunches
Check out this report to see what a difference seven cents can make in increasing local foods in school meals.
What if schools had an additional $.07 per meal to spend on buying local foods for the lunch line?
During the 2008-2009 school year, researchers at Ecotrust set out to answer this question, placing particular emphasis on evaluating the economic effects of increased procurement of local foods. Based on financial data provided by the Oregon Department of Education, schools in Oregon spent about $1.31 per meal on food costs during the 2008-2009 school year after paying for labor, overhead, and other non-food related expenditures.
In 2009, as the Oregon Legislature debated whether to allocate state funding to increase schools’ purchasing power for foods grown, processed and manufactured in Oregon, the question at hand was whether an additional investment of just pennies per meal could provide significant economic benefit to the state. Beyond economic effects, researchers also explored the potential public health benefits of bringing more local products into the lunch room. See full report here.
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