Food

Stored Food

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Laura

I am still in the Big City and thus away from the Tiny House.  I thought I might as well put myself to good use while I am here and get some food squirrelled away for winter.  Put away a little over 2 bushels of tomatoes yesterday.  Some mine and some from a farmer down the road from here.  I used to can a lot of them but these days I freeze most of them whole.  I still like to condense and can them but I have not done these yet.  I want to use my own tomatoes for that.  I like them done with the mixed heirloom varieties about 10% of those lovely sharp black ones make for a tasty mix.

I picked up the additional tomatoes when I went to pick up farm fresh peaches.  I bought, sliced up and froze a half a bushel of them which I leave the skins on.  I chose not to can any this year.  They taste great but there is so much sugar in them and I am trying to get away from this.  Also put away three bags of grated zucchini for warm winter loaves and alternately chopped up some plums, bananas and peaches in small bits and froze these in one cup bags for smoothies.

The two longer jobs were the boiling down tomatoes for condensed herb and garlic starters.  I like to boil the salted tomatoes down until it is almost to a paste (I leave the skins and seeds in).  When it was the thickness I added  about 1 cup of fresh garlic, two cups of minced parsley, 2 cups of minced basil and take it off the heat.  Then I put about a third of a cup in silicon muffin cups and freeze them.  I made 24 portions of this (luck not planned).  I pulled them out of the cups today and froze them individually.  These are perfect for throwing together a quick pasta sauce meal for the two of us.  I do this with a few frozen tomatoes.  The skin rolls right off these frozen jewels if you run a bit of hot water on them.  I cook them only enough to be able to smash them up, then one of the starters, a quarter cup of grape seed oil and then you can add gnocchi right in the sauce when it is nearly cooked. Sometimes I add pine nuts, a few raisins, oregano, onions, other fresh veg – whatever I have on hand and feel like really.  These little guys make for some seriously fast/slow food!  Takes about 15 minutes from freezer to table.

Actually, after all the food prep during the day I did not want to get into something elaborate, so we had this for dinner last night!

All this said, I have a freezer here in the city.  At THO I do not.  When I am there, I will have to go back to canning everything.  Makes for a little more work on prep days but still when you get this all done, there is no reason that I can’t have fast/slow food ready for use in a root cellar.  I just have to build me a cellar!

Categories: Food, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living | Leave a comment

Stones, Slope and Fabulous Farmers

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Laura

We got a little rain this morning so the stone dust got packed in a little bit better.  This allowed us to add another layer of stone dust to it.  The neighbour kids stopped by and wanted to help so I suggested that they stamp the stones in.  They happily stomped away.  Thanks kids!

The stone is at about the height that want it now, so I think I need to add a little more to it still because it will compress more over the winter.  It is just about level so I am thinking that I have to add a small slope away from the building in order to keep the water away.  I am not sure how to do this as entire property slopes toward the other side of the house so the natural way is for it to go toward this side of the house.  I have to think about this, but I think that I will have to slope it to the East.  Also, I am accepting any advice you might have on the subject.

After working at this for a couple of hours I went with the kids over to a wonderful organic farm in Inverary, Ontario.  We were reminded that the drought is not just something that effects farmers, it effects eaters.  How true.

Her garden looks about a million times better than mine.  She is producing all sorts of food for a CSA as well as baking bread and producing eggs for these baskets.  Plus the animals… they all need care and attention at all times.  Then the crops and the … it really never ends on a bio-diverse organic farm.  The entire family seems only willing to stop for in order to have a short food break and then they are back to work.

Categories: Art, Drought, Environmentalism, Food, Nature, Ontario, Simple living, Sustainable living | Leave a comment

Empty Tummies and Arrogant Politicians

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Laura

It is not the aim of this blog to try and talk the world into becoming vegan, or even vegetarian but rather the goal is to discuss the object of living with less.  Since I started this blog on November 30, 2011 I have discussed a plethora of topics around being a woman/writer/artist who lives part time in a project called Tiny House Ontario and how this huge, but Tiny project is going and is effecting me.

But there is something going on here in Canada and the United States that is too huge to ignore and has me really worried.  Right now we in Ontario and a whole lot of the USA are living through an historic and dreadfully bad drought.  The Canadian government has been nearly silent on the issue but recently I read an article out of the United States which explains briefly the reasoning behind the USDA’s sensible recommendation that citizens give up eating meat on Mondays.  It carries some mind boggling statistics and information in it.  Even so, the article does not go far enough (in my opinion).  The most significant missed topic in the article is that  it does not discuss what the USDA and farmers already know.  Here it is!  Livestock are being and will continue to be “dumped” because farmers cannot afford to feed them.  This means (for those of you who did not come up on farms) that they sell mostly ALL of their animals as livestock for slaughter.  This might seem like good news if you are a meat eater (initially) but here is where you are wrong, this means that there will be a lack of breeding stock next year.  You will start to see huge price jumps at about Christmas for the cost of meat and the price will keep on raising.  Truth is, it will take a few years for the animals and the farmers to catch up.

The hostile and arrogant reaction of the politicians quoted in this article is totally off the mark*.  They flaunt their stupidity on the subject of meat.  Not just on how it is produced but the time of production as well as the costs of production are not noted at all.  These clowns absurdly suggest what they will do, which is to “eat more, put pounds of meat on display and call the USDA heretics”.   What they are saying in essence is we are going to eat it all up until it is gone and leave nothing for you.  It is greed and ignorance at best!

The sad fact is, I am commenting on this subject because a lot more people will go to bed hungry this winter in both the USA and Canada and for the next year or two as well, if there are not GREAT growing years coming our way.  I wish it was not going to be this way, but it is.  Quite simply, we have not had nearly enough rain.  Below is an image from NASA Earth Observatory.  There is more info from them here.

What I am asking, is to buy some food from your most local farmer and please eat less meat for the next couple of years.  I know it sounds cliche, but if we all do a little bit there will be a little bit left over for the poorest among us.

I can’t tell you how much that I hope I am wrong.

*I want to qualify that I am not partisan or even particularly interested in who is who.   These folks are way too far from me to make me even remotely interested in finding out anything about the particulars of the political affiliation.

Categories: Drought, Environmentalism, Food, Money, Nature, Open your eyes | 5 Comments

Emily Carr’s Supper

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Laura

It is my last day in Hamilton so I put it to good use.  I went to have a look at the Emily Carr Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton.  It is on until October and costs only $10 to go and see it this fee also allows you admission to the rest of the gallery.  If you don’t have $10, the gallery also has FREE nights on the first Friday of each month for those readers who have a very tight budget, but still want to see the show.

One of my personal favourites, Scorned as Timber, is there.  I always hoped to see this one day face to face instead of just in books or on line.  I did not know it was there, and when I walked in and saw it, I was stunned.  I sat in front of this one for a long while.  Truthfully, photos don’t do it justice because you don’t see the movement in it the same.  It is breathtakingly lovely!

I really liked the experience I had today.  I should add that  I also particularly enjoyed seeing Zunoqua of the Cat Village.  Oddly enough, I never caught the humour in this image until I saw it today.   I was also surprised to see that the gallery both rents and sells original contemporary works.  I do not know if this is new or if I just failed to notice this before.

After seeing the show, I walked over to the Jackson Square Farmer’s Market and purchased some fresh produce to make dinner.  I have a few things in my own garden here but not enough to hit all the colour groups.  I bought some white eggplant because I thought they might be interesting.  Pretty isn’t it?  I think Emily Carr would have liked this for dinner even though she was a meat eater.  Probably more so if someone else cooked it.  She got so sick of people eating up her time on chores when she ran the boarding house “House of All Sorts”.  Anyway, as for my dinner, it is in the oven, and I bet you that it looks even better when I finally get it plated.

Along with these veggies, I also purchased some fresh whole wheat pasta, grape seed oil, kohlrabi, freshly made pesto and some pine nuts too because I like to have a few whole ones.  I am cooking all of it and will mix it all (except the kohlrabi) together as one huge roasted vegetable salad.

As for the Kholrabi… I boiled it and then burn it a little and reboil to carry the smoke through – add grape-seed oil, good quality wine vinegar, fresh ground pepper and salt.  Yum.

Don’t worry, I won’t eat this all alone!  My husband is still in Kentucky but will return late tonight so we will have a late dinner of nice fresh food.  It will be cooled by then too so nice on a long and hot day.  Yum, me thinks!  Some for dinner  – and left overs for the road.

Categories: Art, Emily Carr, Family, Food, Magical, Ontario, Simple living | Leave a comment

Going Batty!

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Laura

NEWS: it is raining at Tiny House Ontario and has been for some number of hours according to those who are living nearby.  WOOT WOOT!  I will worry less now!  Sadly, I think even a solid week of rain will not make a lot of difference to farmers at this time; the rain will still save a lot of trees, I hope!

When I was last there a few days ago sitting out on the cloth porch we watched through the cloth on the other side.  There were praying mantis insects under the solar LED porch light and they were collecting the night light bugs.  We have a lot of night bugs.

As a matter of fact, when I lay down at night, with my head in the window, the sound of hopeful mosquitos who are trying to get through the screen and vampire me to death is astonishingly loud.  Hundreds of them, I would guess, smell me.  Apparently, they think I am quite the tasty treat…

In discussion about the large number of mosquitos I came to the conclusion that I might just be able to do something natural to impact this a little bit. I am not sure if it is as simple as build it and they will come, but even so a young friend of a friend suggested building and bat house in order to help with decreasing the mosquito population.  This looks totally simple!

I don’t have any 4×4 boards at THO at the moment but they are not too hard to come by.  Another problem is digging that deep in the forest because of roots and also because of the limestone.   Still, I think that it might be fun to have some of the little winged mice nearby and it will be great if this works and it decreases the mosquitos!

A bonus too is that I also have lots of small bits of steel so I can give them a very posh roof that matches THO!  😛

Thank you, Cameleon, for the idea!

Categories: Cloth Porch, Environmentalism, Food, Forest, Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Tiny House Ontario | 2 Comments