Category archive for: Urban Agriculture
Back homeElderflower Kefir recipeFizzy Bubblig Kinder Champagne
My packaging shows a slightly more explosive recipe than the one listed below. Last year at this time I got into a bit of a kerfuffle with the local Pole Circle Police regarding the legality of foraging elderflower in the park. Turns out these ill-informed armed guards were under the impressio... Read more
Posted on June 13, 2012 15:37
Spontaneous salads neither sown nor stolen
The lettuces in the DemoGarden haven't even come up, yet this is the sort of salad that we've been eating for the past 3 weeks. All 18 of these vegetables grow spontaneously in our permaculture garden, most of them sown more than 3 years ago. This bouquet-eating abundance is a testament to why w... Read more
Posted on May 6, 2012 21:42
Phytoremediation at ARCAM
The shipwreck
contains the ship
The Shipwreck Contains the Ship, Urbaniahoeve installation at ARCAM in conjunction with Farming the City Saturday 7 May at 16.00h, is the closing event of the Farming the City exhibition at ARCAM. URBANIAHOEVE's phytoremediation installation on ARCAM island, titled 'The Shipwreck' will be dism... Read more
Posted on May 6, 2011 23:09
Do AND talk
Some folks are all talk and no do, but this last year, I've been all do and no talk. Apologies for my extended absence and may this post mark a movement towards striking a balance between the two. Foodscape Schilderswijk: kids initiating the planting of the Wellington Hof Plum Orchard In th... Read more
Posted on 21:32
DIY Mmmmuseum of
Oven Typologies
Our first tamped earth oven lacks some structural-integrity Hey there lovers... of food-system infrastructure, this weekend (June 26 & 27) from 13.00h we will pilot the DIY-Mmmmuseum of Oven Typologies (Dutch acronym is DHZMOT) at Art at the Pool during the Sloterplas Festival in Amsterdam. (Li... Read more
Posted on June 25, 2010 15:35
Late blooming
Pots made with paper from junk mail. Now that all the folks are gone I can start using my window sills again to get the kitchen garden started. Filled with potting compost and seeds. That crazy climate delivered us a bitter and lengthy winter, such that seasonally, we're 6 weeks behind ... Read more
Posted on March 28, 2010 17:49
Working your land
with a heavy hand
some things never change... Image used entirely without permission. Thank you Fourmilab. Image used entirely without permission. Thank you Fourmilab. Image used entirely without permission. Thank you Fourmilab. Image used entirely without permission. Thank you Fourmilab. ... Read more
Posted on February 9, 2010 22:24
Slim Pickins winter salad
Heq yeah, we’re hardy!
But not completely; like gardener, like garden. January demonstration of rocket hardiness. While I was back in Northern California complaining that no one heats their homes, here in the Polar Circle the canals had frozen thick. We'd had night frost since the end of November, and until last... Read more
Posted on January 21, 2010 21:28
The real dirt on
Farmer Wim’s clogs
Guess you could nail a shingle to any old shoe... On a recent trip to the border between rural and urban Amsterdam I got a look-see into the tamping-technique of Farmer Wim Bijma. He produces organic leafy greens that you can order online and pick up on site. Despite it's reputation, it's a bea... Read more
Posted on October 29, 2009 11:04
A time to meet,
a time to compost
your jack o’ lantern
Time to Meet jack o' lantern gifted to the UM dinner by Alowieke of Transition Town Utrecht. When Guus Beumer, artistic director of the Utrecht Manifest: Biennial for Social Design, asked me what I would like to contribute to the 2009 edition, I responded with a programme called Ultimate Meetin... Read more
Posted on October 14, 2009 16:31
Not piss poor,
fertilized with pee
Didn't go to the farmers' market this Saturday One of the reasons I gave my Amsterdam kitchen garden the name Slim Pickins was to show that even a postage stamp-sized garden with a relatively little crop could serve up a surprising amount of food. But the real reason was that it had piss poor s... Read more
Posted on September 13, 2009 21:16
Foodscape Schilderswijk,
Den Haag’s CPUF
A scenario for planting espallier-style fruit trees in the Schilderswijk. Illustration by Jacques Abelman. As part of STROOM Den Haag’s (Centre for Art and Architecture) multi-year programme FOODPRINT, I have been commissioned to design a foodscape. Actually I am designing a Continuous Producti... Read more
Posted on September 8, 2009 20:21
Amsterdam Osdorp,
land of milk and honey
Farmer and city slickers assemble in Osdorp On the very westernmost edge of Amsterdam is a living example of rural fantasy, a stone's throw from densely built, urban Osdorp and Geuzenveld/Slotermeer. In preparation for a series of events and future projects in the area, Young Designers & Indust... Read more
Posted on August 20, 2009 21:42
Luxuriating in August’s shaggy garden
I have become that lady who rides around town with bouquets of flowers in her panniers. There's nothing as fine as a soft landing, leaving one garden and falling into the bounty of the other one. Thanks to the generous watering skills of Gabrielle and the plucking skills of Han, the Slim Picki... Read more
Posted on August 13, 2009 16:29
Slim Pickins
restaurant review
Ground-elder ravioli & goutweed pesto with locally foraged kale flower, spinach and mint Within hours of the posting Slim Pickins was already fully booked. Plagued at its very inception with limited seating, the urban kitchen garden restaurant located on the edge of a raised bed was forced to d... Read more
Posted on May 5, 2009 14:03
Slim Pickins,
the occasional garden restaurant
Slim Pickins garden staff help with the weeding Studio Culiblog is proud to announce the opening this Sunday of it's new minimalist concept restaurant in Amsterdam Noord. Slim Pickins is an outdoor micro-eatery situated on the edge of a raised bed, in an urban kitchen garden, serving up the occ... Read more
Posted on April 21, 2009 23:49
And what will fuel the landscape of the future?
The answers are: the Edible City & Permaculture This week I attended a dinner at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi), smack dab in the exhibition called MAAK ONS LAND, which literally translated means, MAKE OUR LAND but which was translated by the NAi as the hopeful, SHAPE OUR COUNT... Read more
Posted on March 6, 2009 19:42
A happy new year
for the fruit trees
Woodcut for the Jewish arbor day Tu b'Shvat, from the Minhogimbukh Amsterdam 1722, recently adapted by Scott-Martin Kosofsky, image used entirely without permission. There's nothing like a religious calendar sporting multiple 'new years' to remind us that we were once deeply connected to our fo... Read more
Posted on February 10, 2009 15:58
Cheerfully sipping from the
petri dish of life
A symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast (aka SCOBY) fermenting a jar of sweetened tea into a healthy drink called kombucha. Recently my possee and I attended a party at the opening of an Amsterdam design event. Free drinks were flowing because the party was heavily sponsored by a distilled bev... Read more
Posted on February 4, 2009 19:10
Bumper sticker
My dear friend Carolyn Strauss from Slowlab gifted me up a family heirloom! Now I don't actually own a bumper, nor do I remember how to drive one, but I sure am going to hop on my bike and find a frame for this artifactual finger wag from the Old Country, a quote from American agrarian Wendell B... Read more
Posted on November 7, 2008 1:57
Communauté Choucroute, Community Pickle,
a proposal
Jangdok are onggi or earthen jars storing jang (condiments) such as gochujang (chili pepper condiment), doenjang (soybean paste), ganjang (Korean soy sauce) or kimchi. Image from Save the Dinosaur's photostream and used entirely without permission. The following is a statement about food storag... Read more
Posted on October 30, 2008 16:48
SALSA SALSA!
If you're in or near Los Angeles this Sunday, may I suggest that you spend your entire allotted carbon footprint for the weekend on visiting the Fallen Fruit art collective's summer harvest event SALSA SALSA. There you can make and taste tomato salsas while listening and dancing to salsa music. ... Read more
Posted on August 13, 2008 11:07
Butternut Brutalism
Upon returning to the new kitchen garden the next day, I felt that the parcel along the fence just wasn't speaking to me and I traded her in for the plot next door. Giddy with the even newer digs, I noticed what I had failed to see the day before, namely, useful in-situ building materials, in th... Read more
Posted on July 1, 2008 13:19
New digs in the polder circle
As of yesterday I became a multinational allotment holder. These are my new digs at Amsterdam Noord, a 7 minute bike ride from my flat, a 3 minute ferry ride from the mainland, and 4 steps off the ferry. Although the parcel seems to have some extreme shade, soil compaction and charm issues, th... Read more
Posted on June 26, 2008 14:44
Homegrown
Sprouted sunflower seeds in the dead of winter Read more
Posted on February 15, 2008 20:43
Urban landscape architecture as a source of new recipes
Saint-Étienne public landscape architecture featuring curly and red kales, fennel and bananas. Based upon this planter I can imagine a dessert Stephanoise: a bed of flash fried caramelised kales with banana fritters and sprinkled finally with powdered sugar and pulverised fennel seeds. I... Read more
Posted on October 12, 2007 16:22
Exhibition the Edible City
at the NAi-M closes
The Edible City exhibition at the NAi-M (the Netherlands Architecture Institute) has finally come to a close. Showing more than 40 architectural, design and urban planning projects, the exhibition was about food systems and the urban environment. There was a time when city-dwellers could more or... Read more
Posted on June 27, 2007 15:09
Tomato marmalade
ŕ la Tal who is
back in the Old Country
Tal taught me how to make this most delicious tomato marmalade. Actually, when Tal makes it, it's tomato jam. When I make it, it's tomato marmalade. He uses bay laurel, I was about to and then decided on rosemary. Tal's jam is wetter, better to serve with a chopped liver paté that will blow your... Read more
Posted on June 19, 2007 20:56
Butternut Update
week 24
What, you don't like my hand job? Some might call it karmic justice, but I think that I have homosexual butternut squash growing in my living room. Not that there's anything wrong with that and maybe we can chalk it up to to the fact that I can't tell the difference between the male and female ... Read more
Posted on June 18, 2007 13:04
Butternut Update
week 23
The first butternut squash flower in full bloom This week the butternut squash settled into their new mid-living room location and I started to wonder about their lack of contact with actual sunshine. I always thought of my house as light-filled, especially during the 8 month-long Dutch winter,... Read more
Posted on June 11, 2007 12:19
Edible Estates breaking ground in London
Butternut squash and nasturtiums about to go vertical Looking to get your hands dirty in London this weekend? Edible estate agent Fritz Haeg will be breaking ground on his 4th edible estate, this time in collaboration with the Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST) and commissioned by the Tate Moder... Read more
Posted on May 26, 2007 12:43
The Future of Food
A molecular gastronomic cocktail served at yet another 'future of food' event last week in Amsterdam The next two days I'll be venturing even farther into the Polar Circle to speak at the Poker Club and visit the Six Cities Design Festival. I'll be speaking with Dr. Peter Barham (who will hopef... Read more
Posted on May 21, 2007 9:16
Doors 9 JUICE reports:
Delhi’s Sabzi Mandi
That's vegetable market to me and you. At the crack of dawn, dodging raindrops the size of wild peaches, a small delegation from the Doors9:JUICE urban agriculture workshop heads out for a reconnoitre of Delhi's Sabzi Mandi, the wholesale vegetable market off Mehrauli-Gurgaon Rd. Through a haz... Read more
Posted on March 15, 2007 12:15
Psycho-gastronomy
and the
‘Honey, I’m home from Delhi’
breakfast
The kimchi chapati breakfast What could be a more obvious combination than the ubiquitous flatbread of India flavoured with a dash of pro-biotic pickle juice from the Heimatt? Rolling out a kimchi chapati breakfast seems just the ticket to remind me that I'm home from Delhi. It's been a whirlwi... Read more
Posted on March 9, 2007 10:49
The Edible City
For the past few months, together with colleagues Hans Ibelings and Anneke Moors, I have been curating an exhibtion for the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Maastricht titled the Edible City. The exhibition is about the urban environment and its food systems. There was a time when city-dwel... Read more
Posted on February 26, 2007 2:26
Industrial yet green
Sunflower roots make a stab at world take-over There's something about the Montessori School poster-child in me that loves a good self-diagnosed field trip. I can never be too busy or have too many double-booked days to find time for some on-topic hookie, leaving the warm and productive nest th... Read more
Posted on January 17, 2007 15:31
The amazing
Sprout (loves) Ikebana
contest
Choreographer Martin Butler's winning entry for the category, 'Fleugalité (bamboo leaf, sango sprouts, rock chives, pea shoots) The amazing Sprout (loves) Ikebana contest was carried out in honour of chef de cuisine Tal Amitai, who was not able to be with us this last week due to the loss of hi... Read more
Posted on January 10, 2007 13:02
Sprouts love ikebana
My neighbours won the 2007 Sprouts Love Ikebana competition for the categories: 6 and under, 5 and under From more than 300 images of the sprouts love ikebana competition this weekend at the Grow Yer Own Dang Food sprout restaurant, these are the first, last and middle ones. We had winners in m... Read more
Posted on January 9, 2007 1:55
Bone up on ikebana
The key to Ryusei-ha ikebana is the approach known as the 'faces of plants.' The arranger is not bound by set rules of composition but encounters the plant materials directly, approaching them with a new attitude. Image used entirely without permission. To celebrate the natural beauty of sprout... Read more
Posted on January 4, 2007 4:46
Terroir of the ‘burbs
Encountering a stand of claytonia perfoliata during the morning constitutional So it's not like my folks ever said, 'Find yer own dang food!' it's just that I've always really enjoyed foraging. In fact it's their own dang fault since identifying plants, particularly the native and poisonous was... Read more
Posted on December 19, 2006 7:22
Sprout Salon Tonight promises to be parfumistic
Culiblog covergirl Iva Supic loves her up some sprouts While in another part of the world a loved one mourns the loss of a loved one, pouring over every verse of the Quran en famille, here in the Polar Circle it rains, blows and pours and we narrowly avert a Sprout War. Now that the dust has... Read more
Posted on December 15, 2006 10:38
Compost heaps of the rich and famous
The Seyferth house sports a compost heap! Well, at least of the famous. This is a shot of a compost heap in the back of the in-process home being built by designer/architect Christoph Seyferth. Although the house isn't even finished, I was pleased to see that the happening kitchen infrastructur... Read more
Posted on December 14, 2006 14:45
A sprouting lesson:
you’ve already got
what it takes
Counter-top sprouting installation chez culiblog When I remind my guests at the Grow Yer Own Dang Food micro-green cuisine concept restaurant that eating seasonal, local food is one of the most revolutionary actions that you can take against petrol consumption, right fists usually fly straight ... Read more
Posted on November 18, 2006 23:47
Micro-green restaurant officially open
Jeanette likes sprouts because they're seed-related Roqn-ass opening btw. Merveilleuse! The dear friends showed up, the food was devoured, folks asked for seconds (and got them without a wince) we danced our tocheses off until 4ish and the whole thing ended sloppily with bottles of bubbles (cav... Read more
Posted on November 4, 2006 18:56
South Central Farmers
urban agriculture
North American style
Image courtesy of South Central Farmers Urban agriculture in North America is still only an occasional cultural novelty or, in the case of the recently bull-dozed South Central Farms, an inconvenience whose value goes unrecognized. Los Angeles once housed the largest concentration of vineyards ... Read more
Posted on October 17, 2006 16:22
Make yer own dang
weed butter
The fresher the better, but this ball of dried leaf, brought home from the friends' Friesche farm, will do just fine. Remerçi, Madame! Of course you can substitute any old weed in this weed butter recipe, but I'm old fashioned and just like to use weed. The culinary reasoning behind making but... Read more
Posted on October 13, 2006 2:51
Meat meeting tonight
Image of First Nations Sioux ladies drying meat used entirely without permission. That should read meat fight tonight! If you're interested in the meat industry and are currently in Amsterdam, you're not going to want to miss tonight's Cross-thinking about Sustainability - Rethinking the Global... Read more
Posted on October 5, 2006 13:37
Got confusion about the nature of natural food?
This block print from Masanobu Fukuoka's 'One Straw Revolution' is used entirely without permission. This is what I'm re-reading right now and I'd like to share it. Here is a short quote from Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution. It should definitely be on the reading list for anyone interes... Read more
Posted on October 1, 2006 3:33
Got a cutting-edge food-related project?
A Delhi street kitchen doing booming business The deadline for the DOORS OF PERCEPTION 9 conference on “JUICE” (FOOD, FUEL, DESIGN) has been extended until September 30, 2006. If you think your project should be included in this event, please put your nose to the grindstone forthwith. Any q... Read more
Posted on September 18, 2006 15:23
Food causes gas, and by gas, I mean greenhouse gas
Greenhouse gas emissions linked to the production of a kg (roughly 2 pounds) of food. Meat refers to the "carcass equivalent", with bones but without processing, packaging, or transportation. Source IFEN 2004 for France Jean-Marc Jancovici, whose website on climate change with readable, chartfu... Read more
Posted on September 7, 2006 6:53
Inside the secret gardens of our culinary elite
Photograph of photographs of Terrance Conran and his cabbages by Peter Dench at Telegraph Magazine Last Saturday's Telegraph Magazine reported on the kitchen gardens of twenty-three of England's most 'reknowned' 'cooks'. From several versions of elaborate kitchen gardens, to modest collectio... Read more
Posted on August 19, 2006 12:22
CPULs when bad acronyms happen to good people
It's pronounced 'SEE, PULSE' and stands for Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes. Architects Viljoen, Bohn and Howe's positively radical notion of combining productive urban landscapes with continuous landscapes, proposes a new urban design strategy that would change the appearance of contempo... Read more
Posted on June 9, 2006 13:51
Urban gardening lessons for Dutch children
On an island in Amsterdam's Westerpark, a horizontal grid of 1m2 garden plots are being prepared for the children. The sign says that around 500 children will receive weekly education about nature and the environment on these plots. Although this garden grid offers an extreme image of mini-allotme... Read more
Posted on April 21, 2006 7:13
Grow yer own dang food
(part 1)
Image of sprouting bread courtesy of Cygalle Shapiro Back in the eighties, as a student at the University California at Santa Cruz, I lived in a vegetarian commune with a bunch of hippies. As hippies, we produced our own sprouts, yoghurt and salsa fresca for the entire commune, approximately th... Read more
Posted on January 30, 2006 11:52
Sort of public gardens
The urban garden is thriving in Istanbul. Walking around the Biennale's parallel programme locations in Karaköy, I spied some ad hoc agriculture in 'public' planters. These images show vegetables being grown amidst 'ornamental' city landscaping. Chapeau to the hacker-farmers growing squ... Read more
Posted on October 21, 2005 16:04
Salad Song
By now we are all well aware of the profound relationship between the citizens of Bejing and Montpellier. Therefore it should come as no surprise when the Occitanian cultural powers that be deem it high time for an 'international biennial' of Chinese contemporary art in their fair city. And why th... Read more
Posted on August 26, 2005 13:06
City Food
wild and edible
image courtesy Marjolijn Dijkman It's not an urban myth, edible food is growing wild in the city. In the Basel street where the artist initiative Filiale is located there are a myriad of little green grocers, representing just as many nationalities of people that populate the neighbourhood. Dij... Read more
Posted on June 29, 2005 16:05
Fallen Fruit
Red apples on the left, yellow apples on the right. All of the apples were going to waste. As a fan of food foraging and fruit stealing, and as a woman who had never bought fruit except for bananas, mangos and the occasional avocado until she moved up North to the Polar Circle, I applaud the Fa... Read more
Posted on May 7, 2005 1:58
Avocado update
Safe and sound back in the Heimatt. Pity la geste Californienne. Compare the image above to the entry of hope before heading off to India and France. Looks like my sense of home in Amsterdam needs a bit of nurturing. My inner mother tells me to return the failed avocado sprouters to their original... Read more
Posted on April 21, 2005 8:01
No Drinks in the Lecture Hall
Nanjing University Students leave their thermos' of hot water outside the lecture hall and somehow remember which one is theirs when they leave the building after the lecture. Read more
Posted on April 11, 2004 11:21
