Urban Dacha

Today I was sworn in to the Texas Bar. It was on the floor of the Erwin Center and thus eerily reminiscent of law school graduation. The ceremony took about 45 minutes, at least half of which consisted of an introduction for each Justice on the Texas Supreme Court and Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Then the top-scorer on the exam gave a speech. Then we went to lunch at the Clay Pit, a very delicious Indian restaurant which I just now remembered is the same place we went after my high school graduation!! Huh.

Last night the Brain Trust and I attended a very different ceremony- my graduation from the Citizen Gardener program. CG was the first agricultural activity I did when we got back to Austin. I learned plenty in the class but more importantly I met the woman who runs Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms where I am now apprenticing! So all in all a good move.

This ceremony was at the Barr Mansion, where the Brain Trust and I got married. It was billed as "local food pot luck" and we were all asked to bring a dish made from local ingredients. We made a truly marvelous frittata and I am very proud to say that the only ingredient we used money to purchase was the milk! Here's the recipe, with product origins:

Backyard Frittata

6 eggs (Urban Patchwork Backyard Chickens)
2 cups milk (Water Oak Goat Dairy)
3 small onions (My mom's backyard)
1/2 Hungarian Hot Wax Pepper (Urban Patchwork)
2 cloves green elephant garlic (Green Gate Farms)
3 stalks (about 1.5 cups) Wild Spinach aka Lambsquarters (Urban Patchwork)
1/2 cup bleu cheese, cubed (Pure Luck Goat Dairy)

Sautee onions, pepper and garlic in a pan until translucent. Add the wild spinach and cook until wilted. Allow to cool slightly

Preheat oven to 350. Beat the eggs and the milk together. Add the cheese. Add the sauteed veggies. Pour into greased baking dish. Bake for about 25 minutes, until just a little bit wobbly in the center. Serve warm or at room temperature.

In December, after much deliberation and incessant planning, my husband and I packed up our storied Brooklyn apartment and said our goodbyes to New York. Just days after the first huge snowstorm to hit the East Coast this winter, we saw our things off on a moving truck, muscled our kitties into carry-on bags, and flew to Austin, Texas. Four months in, Austin is home again. I have been doing things.

A list of the things I've done in the first third of 2011 (in rough chronological order):
• Studied for Texas Bar Exam
• Took class on backyard gardening
• Volunteered in field at Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farms
• Planted garden in my mom's backyard
• Acted in a short play while wearing a pink halter top
• Considered getting paid job. Thought better of it.
• SXSW
• Took Texas Bar Exam
• Created fundraising materials with Urban Patchwork
• Volunteered in field at Green Gate Farms
• Helped manage Austin's newest Farmers' Market
• Got some MRIs (all is well)
• Saw four friends get married
• Held a chicken
• Networked (amazing how much easier that is when you love what you're doing)
• Learned to use charcoal grill
• Got some sun
• Ate barbecue at Kreutz's and The Salt Lick
• Ate beets just 30 minutes after they'd been pulled from the earth
• Learned I have PASSED the Texas Bar Exam
• Killed harlequin bugs, aphids and squash vine borers with my hands
• Bought floppy hat

This is pretty much exactly how I hoped my first four months after law firm life would be. I am now working in the field three days a week, at a farmers' market two days a week, and starting to lend a hand with farm management. Also one of the farms I'm working with has goats. And it is spring so there are baby goats. The other day I met them and one of them butted his tiny goat head against my hand. Mission accomplished.

A lot of my dreams and plans for the future involve an open-door policy. I envision my home as the site of gatherings, both planned and spontaneous, that build a community around good food, arts, crafts, family, gardens- a hub of my life and the lives of my friends and family. I get wistful when I read about farm dinners and music evenings and knitting circles and husking bees and canning parities and barn dances and backyard yoga classes.

In order to make it work, I want to create an environment where friends, neighbors, and customers don't feel like guests but like family. And I'm starting to realize that means letting go of some of the ideas I have about being a good hostess. I have been a guest in the homes of generous families all over the globe and one constant is that I was never allowed to work. Washing dishes, clearing the table, caring for the children- I was a guest and it was not for me to lift a finger. It is kind to relieve your guests of the obligation to work, but it also shuts them out. It lays down a boundary and reminds them that they are visitors. I'm thinking about ways to remove those sorts of boundaries- or at least blur them a bit.

The first example that comes to mind of would-be guests working together to create community is at St. Lydia's. That's the dinner church I wrote about a few months ago. I have been several times and every time I am so grateful when I show up and am put to work. It gives me something to talk about with my fellow attendees who would otherwise be strangers. It puts something in my hands so I don't have to stand there feeling awkward. It welcomes me in as a member rather than a guest so that even though I'm getting a free dinner I feel like I have given something to be at that table. I like the food. I value the thoughtful sermons. I am interested in theology. The conversations are surprisingly painless for a closet introvert like me. But the thing that brings me back is the work.

In my own home, it is hard to be so generous. I don't have a great track record of passing tasks around when people offer to help. I shut them out. I say "Thanks so much but you don't have to do that! This is my house!" So the trick is to find a way to keep my house- because everyone needs a place where she feels secure and private- but invite people in in that more meaningful way so that the place where I live is more than my house but can also become home and community and the world.

When I was very young my family lived in Northern Indiana. We would go for walks through fields and woods near my house and would pick up acorns and leaves and milkweed pods along the way. I loved playing with the silky threads inside those pods, which I would use to make hair to go under the hats of the acorn people I created. Today I saw milkweed for the first time since those days- at the New Amsterdam Market of all places! The foragers at Wild Gourmet Food were there from Vermont, nestled in among the cheese mongers and bread bakeries and wineries under the FDR expressway near the South Street Seaport- right in front of the now defunct Fulton Fish Market. They were selling wild mushrooms, wild ginger and -yes!- milkweed. I had no idea it was even edible, and when I asked the purveyor about it she told me that it could be steamed, sautéed or roasted just like asparagus. Or, she suggested, a more adventurous cook could split the pods along their spine, remove the silky strands, and boil them to make a cheese-like sauce for vegetables or pasta. Then the empty husks could be steamed or blanched and then filled with cream cheese for a unique party food. I couldn't resist. We bought a baker's dozen for $3.50 and were off on a culinary adventure.

Among foragers who write on the internet there is some debate as to whether milkweed needs to be boiled in multiple pots of water in order to remove its bitterness. Since the woman who sold the pods to me didn't mention anything about such onerous undertakings, I just sautéed the things for a couple of minutes in olive oil, added a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper, took a deep breath, and sampled. So how does it taste? The pods have a very mild taste and salt, pepper and olive oil were lovely on them. They do have a slight bitterness, but nothing that made them outright yucky. It is not dissimilar to okra, but instead of the mucosal slime those pods produce, the inner fibers take on a cheesy texture (only slightly slimy) when cooked- so in a way it's like eating a cheese-stuffed okra pod. They were an interesting adventure, but something about the texture is definitely an acquired taste. The Brain Trust declared that if he were "stranded in the wilderness and needed sustenance, these would be ok." I pretty much agree.

This was a fabulous year for strawberries! Early June farmers markets were stocked to the gills with green quart cartons of small, sweet-tart darlings. We bought six quarts for $20 and I set about preserving a taste of early summer. In Kazakhstan I learned to make a traditional style jam from my Turkish host family: 1 part fresh fruit to 1 part sugar. It makes a jam that is thin--more like fruit preserved in thick, sweet, flavorful syrup. We would eat it spooned onto fresh bread or stirred into a strong cup of black tea.

My book on preserved foods, Putting Food By, seconds this method. I added rhubarb to cut the sweetness and lemon and ginger to capture that summer-fresh taste. The Brain Trust had an inspired suggestion for a few jars- jalapenos! I boiled the mixture on the stove until it seemed to be thickening. Meanwhile I prepared my jars, washing them in scalding hot soapy water and boiling the lids. I also prepared a water bath for the filled cans.

I ladled the cooked jam into the pint jars and processed them in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. The result--delicious! The non-jalapeno version is an excellent jam--perfect on a slice of bread with some cultured butter or cream cheese! And the jalapeno version... well it's just out of this world. About 5 years ago in Austin Raspberry-Chipotle sauce was all the rage poured over cream cheese and served with crackers. This Strawberry-jalapeno jam is perfect for that purpose but instead of the dark richness of chipotle it has a bright fresh zing of fresh jalapenos. Definitely a summer recipe we'll keep for years to come!

For the first time, insect invaders have disrupted our happy home! This afternoon I noticed some odd white dots on the leaves of the succulent I bought at the farmers' market a couple of weeks ago. I leaned closer and discovered the dots had six legs each, and were in fact light green and pear-shaped. In short- the dreaded aphid!! The internet tells me I have basically three options (short of chemical weaponry): I can bring in an army of hungry ladybugs, I can spray the plant liberally with a mixture of detergent, vegetable oil and warm water, or I can chuck it. Bringing even MORE insects into the house seems a bit like swallowing a spider to catch a fly-- in other words not a solution at all, just a different sort of problem. I'm not ready to throw the pretty thing out. So I have sprayed it and am crossing fingers. Any advice is welcome!

There was a season of lettuce on our windowsill in April but whether it was the small volume or my general disinterest in lettuce we just never got too excited about it. We had a few cherry tomatoes and a lone jalapeno as well but those plants were so low-producing it seemed wasteful to keep the aerogarden plugged in for their sake. Now the only food growing in our house is a pot of mint and two scraggly basil plants (not hydroponic this time). I have a pretty good colony of aloe plants going from a kit that we received as a gift. They've outgrown their starter pot and seem to have survived their transplants to individual pots pretty well. I also have really lovely flowering succulent that I bought at the greenmarket a couple of weeks ago that is flourishing on the windowsill. It's been producing a lot of delicate orange flowers and has been really fun to watch.

The aerogarden is temporarily out of commission with a busted motor and our windowsill space is pretty well full but I'm not too worried about our lack of home-grown produce because the CSA season starts next week!! We've switched CSAs this year to one that has pickup right around the corner from our house. Sooo nice. Now instead of stressing out the entire dayabout whether I'll get out of work in time to make it out to the wilds of central Brooklyn by 8PM, the Brain Trust can meander over any time in the afternoon and grab our box of treats for the week. We're clearing out the veggie drawers and getting our kale recipes ready!

Today was my sixth Saturday working on the farm at the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn. I've mentioned the farm here before- it's a project of a small Brooklyn company called BK Farmyards which started up a little over a year ago to farm the backyards of brownstones and create a totally Brooklyn-based CSA. The Stacy Murphy and Bee Ayers, the two women who founded BK Farmyards, are cool cats and you can learn more about them and the company here. Every time I go to the farm I get a taste of what an apprenticeship will be like in the future- strenuous, dirty and a bit monotonous but instantly rewarding as I see a lawn transformed into a local food source--not just before my eyes but by my hands!

Today our project was digging out the last four beds, breaking up the clods of dirt, raking in compost, covering with landscaping fabric to ensure the demise of the sod and keep down weeds, and, finally, planting! We planted Swallow Eggplant today. Going down the rows on my knees, reaching my hands into the soil to make room for the seedlings, and easing the loose soil in around the young plants makes for an incredibly satisfying couple of hours! I will admit that I prefer the planting to the digging, and Bee and Stacey are kind enough to offer my many opportunities to indulge that preference. So far I've planted turnips, dill, collards and callaloo in addition to today's eggplant.

The community is increasingly engaged in and curious about the farm. The number of students coming to work with us has steadily increased since work days started in March. That's students coming to school on SATURDAY to dig in the dirt!! And every time we work some pedestrians will stop and ask about the project. It feels good to be contributing to such a dynamic community improvement project.

One final note- the biggest lesson I've learned over the last weeks is that grass sod is inedible, resource intensive, and incredibly difficult to get rid of. Why bother?! I'm not lucky enough to have a yard just yet, but I will take this opportunity to encourage you to kill your lawn- or at least a bit of it. For just a couple of hours a week you can grow food or herbs or flowers or put in some bioregion-appropriate plants that will require basically zero maintenance. The bees, birds, bugs and maybe even your neighbors will thank you! (and I will admire you even more than I already do!)

Do not be alarmed. We are still here, holding down the fort here with the yuppies of park slope. Life has been busy since our trip to Austin! The sun is out, the tomato plants are fruiting, I'm dancing and gardening my booty off every weekend, the Brain Trust and I are busily plotting the Dacha of the Future, and everything is generally swimming along.

This past weekend my dear friend J. and I drove up the Hudson Valley to the Culinary Institute of America to attend a class on Artisan Bread Baking. It was a fabulous way to spend a Saturday. We watched and helped to mix the doughs for 6 different breads. We manipulated the doughs as they rose, shaped 6 different types of loaves, put them in the huge industrial ovens and removed them with wooden peels. Then we took our loaves home to feed our friends!

We made Sourdough, Ciabata, Baguettes, Cinnamon Raisin, Pizza dough, Onion-Cheddar Rolls. A couple of universal lessons about all these breads: use INSTANT yeast rather than active dry yeast; make a starter or sponge the day before you mix up your bread dough to improve flavor; the time available to make your bread is inversely proportional to the amount of muscle you need to prepare it; resist the urge to add more flour--if the dough is sticky you need to work with it more. I'm going to try out my new skills over the next couple of months using the shiny new recipe book that I also got as a part of the class.

Saturday night J. and I invited our friends over for a Breads and Spreads extravaganza. We asked everyone to bring a favorite bread topper and we provided the bread we'd baked that day. The spreads and cheeses were AMAZING. The stars of the evening were an artichoke-lemon spread that my neighbors made and a horseradish ale cheese spread that my dear friends Jason and Jacy brought. MMMMMMMM horseradish!! My favorite bread was probably the Ciabata because it was delicious, had amazing texture, and I know how easy it was to make. The Cinnamon-Raisin bread was a close second with a smooth soft texture and a really lovely cinnamon flavor.

This adventure has inspired me to think about bread as a potential part of my future cottage industry. Has anybody out there used or built a mud or brick outdoor bread oven? How did it go?

Greetings from the Austin, Texas outpost of the Urban Dacha! It's been a whirlwind couple of days reconnecting with friends and family, eating piles of delicious tex-mex and remembering the great things about this city. Speaking of great things about Austin, yesterday we went on the 2nd annual Funky Chicken Coop Tour http://fccooptour.blogspot.com/ with our friends Len and Trenn (these pseudonyms may or may not rhyme with the actual names of said friends).

17 chicken keepers from all around the city volunteered to open their backyards and farmyards to the public for the day so that we could see the incredibly variety of coops and chickens that already exist around town.

Some participants are in suburban neighborhoods and keep a few chickens for home egg use and for the joy of keeping chickens.

Others, like Green Gate Farms, keep chickens as well as pigs and goats as livestock and use their eggs as well as their meat as a source of farm income.

Also on our tour, though not on the official route, was Boggy Creek Farm - an gorgeous urban farm that I had never visited before, despite having grown up in Austin.

It was a beautiful, if hot(!) April day in central Texas and it was a joy to be outside, driving around town, soaking in the sun, and talking about agriculture with dear, like-minded friends. It was motivating to see how much can be grown and raised on just a few acres of land inside the city limits of one of my very favorite cities on the planet!