I am an urban homesteader

February 21, 2011
House before

Before planting

The brou-ha-ha about the Dervaes family trademarking the phrase urban homestead/er/ing. I won’t repeat the various links. I’m sure you’re all capable of putting in a web search to find the details if you’re not already familiar.

I, like thousands of others, am shocked and dismayed about the situation. I have faith, however, in the huge swell of protest. This wouldn’t be the first time that righteous outrage has closed a web site or changed a situation for the better. The people who have received the cease & desist letters are working with the EFF to rectify things. The trademark is bunk. I’m sure that there will be petitions to the USPTO to get it rescinded.

Milly and I are proto-urban homesteaders as you can see from the picture. It takes years and tons of sweat equity to get to the level the misguided would-be trade-markers have achieved with their urban homestead. The great thing about the movement is that it’s not an all-or-nothing endeavor. You do what you can and little by little you get more self sufficient. We’re currently in the process of removing our lawn and growing an edible landscape. When we moved here there was nothing on the lawn except Bermuda grass. Nothing. No plants, no landscaping. Just grass and concrete. Milly has added 20 fruit trees already. And we’re looking forward to increasing the amount of home grown fresh produce in our lives.

Today is “Green Monday” where bloggers are discussing their urban homesteading to protest the selfish and short-sighted actions of the self-proclaimed founders of the movement (which, btw, began decades if not hundreds of years ago). I’m not very fond of the term “urban homestead.” Homesteading has lots of racist and genocidal connotations so I prefer not to use it myself. I’m still virulently opposed to anybody who tries to take common English language phrases and make them inaccessible to the community which brought the terms into common usage.

Shame on them. I believe that truth and goodness will prevail.

Blast from the past

February 20, 2011
Feasting on Raw Foods

Feasting on Raw Foods

I found this book while out walking with my lovely wife. We happened upon a neighborhood sidewalk sale and there is was, just waiting for me to pick it up for $3.00.

It was published in 1980.  Decades before the modern raw foods movement blossomed.  It has a few chapters about the health reasons for going raw.  It quotes the Viktoras Kulvinskas, the grandfather of raw foods (he worked with Ann Wigmore). Unfortunately it also contains recipes for raw meat and dairy.  Not really this vegetarian’s cup of tea.  Ok, maybe the dairy a little bit. I’m still working on that.

It’s a cool little curiosity piece. I doubt I’ll use it very much. It does show the long history of the raw foods movement and I got a kick out of it.

Magick menu love

February 6, 2011

I’ve been playing with the Magick Menu this weekend.   And loving it!

My background makes me predisposed to love this new service being rolled out by Natalie Lussier a.k.a. The Raw Foods Witch. I love raw food.  I love databases (part of my day job).   The Magick Menu marries a database of raw food recipes with an intuitive user interface for quickly selecting a week’s meals and generating a shopping list. It’s all my favorite things! How awesome is that?

I signed up for a free trial week.   And got too busy to test it.  I saw my card charged auto-renew when the trial ended.  Oops. I decided to keep it for a month and prioritize making time to use it.  The lovely wife is training for a 150 mile ride in Death Valley at the end of the month.  And she’s very interested in powering her training with green juices for her final weeks of training & tapering. I would like for us to do a 5 day green-drinks challenge.  Opportunity is knocking to see how the tool holds up to managing a 2-person 5 day green liquids diet challenge.

This afternoon I began planning.  I logged into my Magick Menu account, and started poking around.  The site is WordPress driven so it has robust open source software back-end.  Another bonus! I am ardent supporter of Open Source software and regularly make use of it as a matter professional principle.  My day-gig involves managing a team administering the Open Source ePrints repository for a major research university

I found it very easy to find recipes, drag and drop them onto a weekly schedule, save the menu to my account library (cool! save even more time by re-using), and print out a shopping list of ingredients .   The best part was saving to PDF.   The PDF is rendering in a simple, easily printable form which won’t drain my paper & toner reserves.  The layout is a plain menu grid at the top of the page, then a bullet-point shopping list, and, best of all, the full recipes for the week.  I made a menu of green juices & smoothies, plus some heavily green raw veggie soups.

I spoke to the wife, and she’s good to go with the juicing.  We need to do the grocery run, and make juices in the evening for the following day.  I don’t know if we’ll start tomorrow or Tuesday.  We have Superbowl social obligations today and time may not allow for shopping and juicing today.

You can contribute your own recipes to the Magick Menu data set and comment/review on recipes added by others.  There aren’t a lot of recipes in the library yet.  That’s not a totally bad thing.  Browsing is easier with less recipes to look at.  I can imaging spending a lot of time surfing recipes once a critical mass of recipes is available – they will look so yummy that  I’ll get happily lost in the food-porn.  The number of recipes will only get bigger once more people join the community and begin contributing.

I haven’t added any of my own recipes yet.  There is a form-based interface for typing in your information.  It accepts simple text and some HTML tags.  You use pull-down menus to do some basic social tagging.  The nerd in me ponders if the The Raw Food Witch has plans for optimizing tags.  I think about how social tags are combined with controlled vocabularies to optimize search engine results.  The search engine appears to be keyword full text indexing based.  I can’t tell if it includes any sort of ranking in the results set displayed.  There isn’t any advanced search available.   As the corpus increases, it would be rad to customize your recipe searches based on indexes of controlled fields.  Sorry…geeking out there….

What I would love is a batch ingest function so I could import all  of my MacGoumet recipes.  I’m a lazy data entry girl.

I’ve got my shopping list and menu in-hand.  Now what I need to test is my ability to apply the tool at hand.  It’s one thing to plan, it’s another to do.  If this menu helps me stick to a juice fast for 5 days I’ll be a total convert.  I’ll keep you posted.

Buckwheaties

February 5, 2011
Soaked buckwheat groats

Soaked buckwheat groats

Sprouted buckwheat cereal is a raw foodie standard.  It is soooooo easy.  And it is soooooo economical.  It’s usually called “buckwheaties” or raw granola (RAW-nola) by those in the know.  Usually they’re around $9.00-$10.00 per pound.  Outrageous! Raw hulled buckwheat costs a buck or so for a few pounds.  I’d estimate you can make it yourself for under $5.  And you can have whatever flavor you imagine.

There isn’t really a hard & fast recipe for this because it lends itself to improvisation & variation.  It’s fun to think of new ways to make it.

Step 1 – Soak & sprout hulled buckwheat groats

  • Put your buckwheat in 2-3x the amount of water.  This stuff expands a LOT.  Make sure all of the sprouts are under the water.   I usually use 1 cup of groats and 4 cups of H2O.
  • Soak 20-60 minutes. Don’t over soak! If you do, they will not sprout.  The water will become very thick, cloudy, and starchy.  This is normal. You’ll know they’re ready when they get to be 2-3 times their original size. You won’t have much extra water in your bowl.
  • Put groats in a colander and rinse them thoroughly.  You’ll need to do it 2 or 3 times until the water runs clear.  This is very important.  If you don’t rinse well, your spouts will have a bit of a bitter taste.   Drain the groats thoroughly when done.
  • Spread the groats out evenly in your colander
  • Set them out away from direct sunlight and let them sprout for 4-8 hours.  Room temperature should be around 70 degrees.  Amount of time you set them out will vary. If it’s hotter, leave them out for less time.  If it’s colder, leave them out for more.
  • Rinse and drain again.  Sprout them again for 4-8 hours.  Repeat 2-3 more times.
  • You will see tiny tails emerging from the groats.   For buckwheaties, a wee hint of a tail is sufficient.
  • You are done with step 1!!!  You will have roughly 3-4 times the volume of what you started with.  For 1 cup raw groats, I get a yield of 3-4 cups sprouted groats.

Step 2 - Flavor your cereal

This is the part where you can get creative.  Put in your flavorings and a sweetener.  Mix thoroughly.  Some combinations I like with my 3-4 cups sprouted groats are:

  • Chocolate!! Mix the groats with  1/4 to 1/2 cup of semi- raw chocolate syrup. Sometimes I sprinkle in shredded coconut and make a “Mounds” flavored cereal. You could probably use a nut butter to make a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup type of flavor.  I’ve been meaning to try that!   To make raw chocolate syrup:
    • Blend 1 cup maple syrup and 6 tablespoons raw cacao powder in a high speed blender.  Good on raw ice cream, as a fruit dip, etc.   If you want to make it all raw, use agave, runny honey, or, my personal favorite, soaked dates made into a watery paste/syrup works very well)
  • Apple cinnamon – mix groats with 1/4-1/2 cup of raw applesauce and sprinkle with cinnamon.  Add some sweetener if you desire.  Sometimes add diced apple for some more texture.  You can also add raisins, dried berries, cranberries.
  • Nuttin’ honey – 1/4 – 1/2 cup almond or other nut butter, 1/4 cup honey.
  • Granola – add nuts, fruit, whatever you’d use in granola, plus a sweetener to bind it all together.  I recommend date paste.
  • Leave them plain! They’re quite good simply left alone without flavorings.  If you do this, definitely go the Grape-Nuts route.  If I do this, I intend to use them as a textural element in other recipes such as cookies and pie crusts.

Step 3 – Dehydrate!!!

Your batter should be fairly sticky but still spreadable.

  • Spread the batter onto dehydrator trays using teflex sheets.
  • Decide if you want to make your buckwheaties structured or as a free-running Grape-Nuts type of cereal.   To make it structured, score a grid patter on the batter to make bite-sized squares.   If you want Grape-Nutty cereal, simple spread it out on they tray.
  • Flip the sheet of buckwheat over and dry the other side until the whole things is dried out.
  • For buckwheat squares, use your spatula to neatly break apart the bite-sized squares.  For Grape-Nutties, use your hands to crumble it all apart into tiny nuggets which will readily pour out of your storage container.  Or leave it kind of chunky like granola.

Step 4 – Store

Put the cereal in an airtight container.  It will keep a few months in a cool dark spot.  It will keep virtually forever if you put it in the fridge or freezer.  If it starts going stale it may get a bit soft/sticky.  You can revive it by throwing it back in the dehydrator to dry it out some more.

Step 5 – Enjoy!

Buckwheaties have so much versatility.  Eat it as is for a snack.  It packs well.   Use it as a breakfast cereal with your favorite nut or seed milk.   Let it soak with other ingredients for a muesli.  Sprinkle it on raw ice cream.  Add it to raw coconut yogurt.  Throw it into a raw cookie recipe.  Use it in a pie crust (grind to a flour or put it together like a graham cracker crust).

I usually have 2 or 3 varieties of buckwheaties on hand as a pantry staple.  I make a batch every 4-5 weeks as part of my monthly food prep.  Having them on-hand allows me to make “fix it fast” recipes.

Roll call!

February 5, 2011

Yay! I’ve noticed some people registering for accounts on RawHabit who don’t appear to be spam bots.  So I can get an idea who you are, would you please leave me a comment and let me get to know you?  I’d be pretty thrilled about it.

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