The Urban Orchardist

In celebration of the Tour de France, and the French foodways, I ate me a rabbit last night. I picked the fattest boy bunny from the last litter and used a very humane method I learned on the internet. You just break the rabbit’s neck then bled it out. I thanked the bunny for feeding me, but I forgot to save the blood (sorry Benji, my French brother-in-law). Killing and dressing a rabbit is much easier than its poultry counterparts. I put the pelt in the freezer for when I have time to learn how to tan the thing.
How did I cook it? Just like my sister–I dredged the pieces in flour and spices (in my case, fennel pollen), fried it in duck fat and some red wine, then baked it in the oven. When William tried it, he said, “Damn, that’s better than pork!” Must’ve been the duck fat. Plus, we feed the rabbits very well–only the freshest greens from dumpsters in Chinatown and organic greens from Berkeley’s dumpsters. I supplement that with rabbit pellets from Templeton Farms. I served the rabbit on a bed of home-made (of course!) sauerkraut that was spiked with wild carrot seeds (I gathered these in Wyoming last summer). Wonderful flavor combination!
In other news, I’m out of flour. I used the last of it to make a loaf of sourdough/onion/coriander bread. The loaf is very solid. I wouldn’t call it good, but it’s filling. This morning I ate my dream meal: two fried eggs, two pieces of toast and tea. Yes, tea. I’ve been fermenting some tea leaves (along with the duck proscuitto) in an old refrigerator. After five days, the leaves were so shruken, I only had enough for one cup of tea–but it was a good one. It tastes and smells like oolong. Yum.
Score of the week at the dumpster last night: A full-sized wheel of Roquefort. France is in the air!

Uh oh. People are starting to tell me I look very…gaunt. One friend made a sucking sound and concaved her chest to illustrate the point. I’m too muscular to be mistaken for an anorexic, but I guess my farm diet is taking a toll on my chub.
I think everyone has a special chub depository, for me it’s always been right above my hips. Yesterday I went to grab it and found most of it gone. I stood on a scale at Long’s drugstore and it told me I weighed the same as when I started, more than three weeks ago. Maybe I gained muscle?

One thing I hadn’t thought about when I started this 31-day project was finances.
I just graduated from Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism–so you can imagine, I have some debt to pay off (mostly to beloved family members). As a free-lance writer and a part-time biodiesel shop-owner, I usually have more time than money. Therein lies the genius of this project. I have spent almost no money on food (I did buy vodka for a long-term alcohol steeping recipe), and that has made it possible to pay bills and rent. I knew food was my main spending item, so to have it erased has been quite a relief. Enough so that I may stick with the diet even after July is up. Except for the following items:
-coffee
-tea
-butter (when I don’t have a cache of duck fat anymore)
-milk
-flour
-corn meal
-dry beans
-rice
-hardtack (ha ha!)
-a few small loaves from Brioche Bakery
-one cheese a week
The ideal is to gradually find substitutes for all of these things. Not only is it a fun challenge, it really saves the dough. I mean, I’m poor, ok?
On the milk and cheese front, I’m brainstorming a way to have a goat collective. That is, I need a site to host a herd of goats. A group of friends will own them collectively, take turns milking them, feeding them, walking them, etc. Then we share the milk! I know a guy named Jim who does this very thing in Berkeley. My ideal is to find a place in Oakland. Holler if you have any ideas or know someone with land.

Yesterday was hands-down the best eating day of the experiment.
For breakfast I had some Full Belly Farm wheat berries, soaked overnight, then cooked with diced apples (the Anna apples, an early ripening, mild weather apple are delicious) and stewed plums. Drizzled with honey.
Lunch was green tomatoes dredged in some flour and fried in duck fat (!) with a fried egg. Followed by a jar of stewed apricots.
Yes, I have a very regular BM these days.
For beverages, my new thing is lemonade with honey and mint.
In the afternoon, I biked over to my friend Jennifer’s house and grazed a bit in her garden. She has physalis, or Cape gooseberries (which are a great source of Vitamin C) and green beans and grapes. Then we walked around Berkeley and picked blackberries. In a two block radius of her house is a peach tree (with peaches on the GROUND), an asian pear, an enormous plum and pear tree, walnut trees, and tons of blackberry brambles.
We picked a bucket of berries and talked about how we grew up eating. Jennifer’s dad took them strawberry picking and canned or froze tons of their food. William came by and we used the car as a ladder to access a whole bag of Elephant heart plums. They’re green with red centers.
THEN we picked green walnuts to make nocino, or vin de noix, a walnut liquer. You know how green walnuts smell really good? This captures their essence, with the help of some 95 proof alcohol like vodka or everclear. I’ve only had it once, when this fella named Adam brought some to a party. It’s a digestive. We picked them a little late, in Italy, most people get the little green guys on June 24.
Finally, for dinner I made zucchini pancakes (shredded and drained then mixed with cilantro and mint and coriander and a wisp of flour) with a large green salad (which included a new ingredient: armenian cucumbers). For dessert? I got totally Little House on the Prarie and made a blackberry pie, with a crust made of duck fat mixed and chilled with Full Belly Farm wheat. Who knew? I won’t say the crust was light and flaky, but it sure was tasty.

When I got the pigs I was all, “Yeah, I’ll be making proscuitto and salami.” But do I know how to make those items? Er, no.
Thank the dumpster gods, then, when William and I were knee deep in the Eccolo restaurant’s dumpster (the best d-ster in the East Bay because it’s such high quality) and one of the cooks came out to talk to us.
“Yeah, I got these two hungry pigs,” I told him, stuffing plate scraps into a bucket.
“You should really talk to Chris Lee,” he said.
“Is he the main chef?” I asked.
“Yeah, and the owner.”
A few weeks later I had to go to Sur la Table (meat grinder), and I stopped in at Eccolo and asked to talk to Chris.
A tall man with big eyes and a lovely soft-spoken manner came out to chat with me, the Insane Lady.
I told him about the pig project and confessed to dumpster diving, and could he help me learn about making salami?
Incredibly, his answer was yes.
This past week I began my salami tutorial with Chris. So far I’ve observed how to make a variety of pork-cured products: coppa, pancetta, salami, sausage, and proscuitto. Chris is a great teacher, he studied with Italian salami-makers and butchers. He’s one of the only chefs in the area who makes his own cured meat products.
Yesterday I stopped by to watch the salami get painted with penicillin and then Chris “opened up” a proscuitto. The big legs have been hanging in the breezeway for nearly two years! After Chris cut away the fat rind layer, underneath was a lovely deep red meat with streaks of fat. On a meat cutter, Chris shaved the meat into some fine ribbons. I had a momentary dilemma: I’m on the 100-yard diet. Can I really eat some of this meat?
In the end, the fact that this was just a taste, and Chris had worked on it for two years! Two years! I couldn’t refuse. It tasted nutty and rich on the top of the mouth, hearty and earthy.
Next time you’re at Eccolo, order the salumi plate. Ok?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go eat some fried vegetables or some crap.

Jeez, time’s flying. Only 12 days before I can have a proper cup of tea. And some toast with butter….
Update on the huge blow-out $8 spending spree:
Headed to the Berkeley Farmer’s market on Tuesday. I don’t usually love the farmers market so much–too many people, shopping in general is lame–but as soon as I got off my bike, I felt delirious. So many options! So many well-fed people! My friend Jon! After my first pass, it was clear what I would be buying: wheat products. From Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, I purchased two, 2-pound bags of flour (they mill it on the farm!), 1 pound bag of wheat groats. That took out $6. Which seems ridiculously cheap. I only had $2 left, so I bartered with the cheese lady (can’t remember their name, it’s not very good cheese) and she sold me a tub of cheese curds for two smackers. Suddenly I felt very rich. My eating future seemed brighter. On the ride home, I went limp when I realized I COULD MAKE BREAD! At home I started the process to make my own wild yeast starter. Should be ready in a few more days.