Permaculture active
March 4, 2008
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Leafy greens foraged from under the brush
This year the Occitanian kitchen garden is very different than it was last year at the same time. The winter’s thorough frost followed by a long wet spell has killed all 5 of my chokes and most of what I had been treating as perennial loose-leaf brassica. But if you count the hours actually spent working in the garden in relation to the amount of food produced, kilo for kilo there is no question that I have the most productive garden here. It may look dead and empty, but in the middle of the Hungry Gap, this hot mess of permaculture produced 2 days worth of salad!
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The Occitanian kitchen garden, upper bit, quite brown post-frost, but it’s all according to plan
Mind you, I’m not above eating a weed, or feeding a big bunch of weeds to my friends and telling them they’re exotic leafy greens. Last night we ate surprisingly unbitter chicory (thank you, frost), something dandelion-ish, the first mint of the season and some red chard sprouts that I cut off a bulbous root I’d thrown out. JT and KvR were utterly impressed with my haul, but the conclusion is that I prefer foraging to harvesting.
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Horseradish appearing out of the recently thawed ground
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A weekend from sugar rushes
February 20, 2008
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Sugar graffiti from Shane Waltener’s Cooking and Constructing workshop last Sunday at Amsterdam’s Platform21.
Growing up, my family referred to sugar as White Death. Consequently I don’t have much of a sweet tooth and I really prefer pickles or anything fermented to sweets. But in a period of my life when I was doing a lot of cycling I discovered that sugar could also be a drug, and therefore something to play with. You eat some sugar, get totally high on a fabulous rush of energy, come crashing down and want to take a nap, eat some more sugar and get high again. Crash. Repeat. In the past weeks dating was starting to take on some of the characteristics of recreational sugar use, offering highs and hyperactivity, exhaustion looming behind every rush.
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Sugar, the writing is on the wall. Waltener’s edible graffiti, Cooking and Constructing at Platform21
Barely a few weeks into it and the Mediamatic Gastarbeider Dating site had to create new data structures to accommodate the flow of my datemail. My Gayfriends, having inspired me to date in the first place, were perpetually rolling their eyes complaining how much they suffered from my generalizing questions about male psychology and my rudimentary knowledge of courtship. (Sorry Gays, I’m not worthy.) Worst of all, I was becoming crazy from the breathless intensity of my own communication, the high level of attention from the heteros, (to which I am truly not accustomed) and all the excitement and fuss. My work was suffering, my yoga teacher was getting annoyed, it was time to stop dating.
After Saturday.
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Pictured below and not above is the grand dessert produced by Saturday’s Date (not his real name), a man who understands the benefit of the slow and steady burn, someone who naturally sort of gets me. I don’t know what will come of it, but this guy… he smells like posse and he can actually compose a meal.
To be continued…
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Grand dessert: espresso, artisanal goat milk dulce de leche with (not pictured) baklava array and home made hash cookie.
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Homegrown
February 15, 2008
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Sprouted sunflower seeds in the dead of winter
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