Category Archives: random thoughts

No time to blog. But here’s some shameless self-promotion (as if that’s not what a blog is anyway…)
Read my story in Edible San Francisco magazine about a weekly biodynamic farm ritual.

You know it’s a serious storm when the turkeys go inside the chicken house. They usually hang out in the rain, but this morning I found Archie and Edith huddled up with the 7 hens. The wind is literally howling. Luckily, I have a book to write.
And olives to pack up! They’ve been hanging in bags with salt for almost a month, and now they’re ready.

My process is to take them out of the bags and put them in a colander. Then I rinse them with water, and pat dry with a towel.

In quart jars, I pack as many olives as I can (pressing, pressing) and pour olive oil over the olives until they’re covered. This year’s batch is delicious, especially these little nicoises. I’m also brine curing a batch, but they’re not done yet.
Happy storm day, stay in the house if you can!

Happy New Year!
You know, 2007 wasn’t too bad. It was probably the best year on the farm, in terms of animals. We raised and butchered two pigs. We bred, raised, and harvested about 10 rabbits. We put a few roosters in the freezer, and raised some great Bourbon Red heritage turkeys. I subsisted entirely off the farm for the month of July! I also met some amazing people who were very encouraging about the farm and the farm animals: Amy S and Chris C, Max and Nina, Sasha, Julio, Chris L and Samin, Christine, Laura K, Jim M, and Marg. In terms of bloggers, thank you Riana for inspiring me to set up my own blog. And yay to bloggers like Nat, Rebecca, Duane, Derek, and Gordy. Thanks to all of you and let’s inspire each other to do even more in ’08.
The photo is of Ruby Kessler Seiwerath pulling popcorn off the cob. Thank god for child labor….

Our friend Max gave us a lot of persimmons. The hachiya type. The type I don’t like! But with a whole brown grocery bag full of them, what’s a girl to do? I peeled them, strung them up, and watched them rot. This wasn’t a random act of persimmon hatred, but of love. The plan was to make hoshigaki, whole dried persimmons. I heard about how to do it from a blog called bunnyfoot, but she never said how they turned out. Here’s the deal.
This should be done in November (oops).
Peel the not quite soft fruit.
Tie them with a string (in my case dental floss and baling string)
Hang them somewhere where they get sun and a breeze (oops).
They should develop a white coating. This happened to mine and even fruit flies stayed away because of the astrigency.
After a few days, massage them. I just prodded mine, but in Japan, people really get into it and massage for about 5 minutes every day for weeks. You can feel stuff breaking down inside.
After a week or two, mine started to drip a bit. Sweet fluid. Must have been the lame massaging….
The fruit–which looks very festive, by the way, starts to turn a dark orange color.
After a month, they were ready–I stuck them in a food dehydrator to make sure to get all the water out.
How do they taste? Chewy, sweet, like candy. Really good sliced thin and served with goat cheese (preferably ones that were smuggled from France!)

A subscription to Meatpaper!
It’s the perfect gift for anyone obsessed with food, specifically meat. They also throw elaborate parties featuring both salumi and fake meat in the same room. In the latest issue (number 2) My friend Heather wrote about Taiwan’s brisk wheat gluten and soy business; I wrote about Jesus, blood and Christian hang-ups.
Check it out–the New York Times even gave them a rave write-up.

Hi everyone. No I’m not caught up in the holi-daze, just really busy trying to get my book done, and visiting with good friends from out of town. Yesterday Leilani and I butchered two roosters who were terrorizing our eardrums (Moses was busy with the muslim holiday called Eid). Actually every liquor store was closed for Eid–it is one of the ghetto’s most delicious ironies. The roosters look beautiful, and they might be young enough to have a mellow game-y flavor. Will find out tonight when I pop one in the oven–full report this weekend.