As you may remember, we built a root cellar here at the Ecology Action Centre and five lovely women shared the space to store their vegetables over the winter. Additionally, I fixed up my home root cellar and stored my … Continue reading
… Or a short you-tube video. 
My colleague and I collaborated with really wonderful local filmmaker to put together a 4 minute video about our work at the Ecology Action Centre.
The Our Food Project combines the food skills work that you see here on this blog, with the urban garden work (which you can read all about at the Halifax Garden Network blog) to build positive food environments. What’s a positive food environment, you ask? Well, we want to encourage the growing and eating of local, healthy food in our community and we want to create spaces in which people are excited about doing that.
Garity (of the urban garden project) and I (Marla, of the Food Connections Project) have been doing this work for over 5 years and in the past year we’ve been able to bring this work together under the Our Food Project. We have had an amazing year, working with so many great organizations and communities and learning so much along the way.
We are, unfortunately, facing a funding shortage at this time. If you’re excited about this work and have the means to make a financial donation, please visit the Ecology Action Centre website for more information. Regardless of whether you are interested or able to donate, we truly appreciate the feedback, comments, emails and photos that we receive from our wonderful readers.
And don’t worry, a funding shortage won’t stop the blogging. We have some fabulous summer students and volunteers who will be keeping the blog posts coming all summer long.
Yours in food,
Marla
Back on March 23, we launched a pilot project to raise money for a family to receive a CSA share this season. We are about $150 dollars away from making this happen! We’re so close! Because CSA sign ups are well underway, we’d like to pass along the donation soon. As such, donations to this season’s pilot project will close on Friday, May 11. (Donations made after this date, will go towards next season’s program.) If we raise more than $150 before May 11, then the money will go toward an additional share.
Want to donate? Visit the Ecology Action Centre Website
Want more information?
This season we are piloting a program to make Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares more available to families with limited incomes.
Monetary donations will be used to assist families in purchasing CSA shares for the season. Through our partnerships with family resource centres, families will have the opportunity to identify their interest in being involved.
For this pilot season, we will be working with The Kids Action Program in Canning and Bayers Westwood Family Resource Centre in Halifax. The family resource centres will choose which CSA farm to purchase from based on delivery routes, schedules, and fit.
The Ecology Action Centre is a registered charity and you will be issued a tax receipt for your donation.
Thank you!
Remember those community root cellar grants were we talking about several months ago? Curious about what’s going on? Well, the Deanery Project in Ship Harbour, our first grant recipient, is hosting a root cellar work party on May 18-19 and you’re invited to attend.
Kick it Root Down: Work Party @ The Deanery Project
When: May 18th-19th (Friday-Saturday). 10 am-5 pm.
Where: The Deanery Project
37 Deanery Road, Lower West Ship Harbour
What to bring: lunch/food for potluck supper(s), good work clothes and songs, as we’ll be rolling down each night with a jam session/potluck supper. If you’d like to stay over night, please bring sleeping bag/pillow/mat etc.
Why: After receiving a Community Root Cellar Grant through the Ecology Action Centre, the Deanery Project building team has unearthed many natural designs for our basement Root Cellar space.
The Plan is to construct wattle and daub walls, insulated with locally sourced wool. Most of the materials (i.e. sand, clay, small dimensional round wood) will be harvested in the immediate area in and about the Deanery grounds.
Directions
From Dartmouth take Main Street/Highway 107 out of Dartmouth (direction Eastern Shore).
Follow the #107 for about 25 minutes.
At the “T” intersection – turn right into Musquodoboit Harbour – follow the old #7 highway east for about another 20 minutes, passing through Lake Charlotte – the next community is Ship Harbour
Just past Family Fries restaurant on the right, turn right down the Lower Ship Harbour Rd. Follow for 5 km. (past the Church) is Deanery Rd. on your left.
For more information or to RSVP: Email Gregory at thenumskull@hotmail.com
I’ve been wanting to make mozzarella for years. There’s something about learning a mysterious process that takes one familiar thing (milk) and transforms it into another familiar thing (cheese) that I find irresistible! After I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book, where she tells the story of her family’s pledge to buy food grown or produced in their own community or learn to live without it, I was particularly inspired. Kingsolver blithely speaks of whipping up a batch of fresh mozzarella in a 1/2 hour for her weekly pizza night and makes it sound easy. If there’s any book more likely to fan the flames of latent cheesemaking desire, I haven’t seen it. I needed to try this! But where do you find rennet? And unhomogenized millk? And someone who’s done it before?
The milk was easy – Foxhill has been selling their lovely unhomogenized (pasteurized) milk from their storefront at the Seaport market for about a year now. Rennet was a bit trickier to source, but we managed to find a supplier online that specializes in the home-cheesemaker here. As for someone who’s done it before, it turned out that Libby, our researcher with the Our Food project had worked in a deli years ago that made their own mozza. After a few practice batches at home that turned out great, we put on a class, which filled up quickly. It turns out that I hadn’t been the only person with a burning desire to learn how to make cheese! (Check out the links at the bottom for the full recipe and sources.)
Curds being cut to release whey.
First, you add some citric acid to your milk and heat it to 88 degrees. At this point, you can add your rennet and gently stir it in. Let it sit undisturbed for about 5-10 minutes until the milk starts coagulating and begins to separate from the whey. Once the curds are quite firm you can cut them into chunks and scoop them into a colander to drain.
Once your curds have drained, you can begin the heating process. If you want a firmer cheese you can squeeze out the whey through cheesecloth. This makes the final cheese a little tougher, but it’s easier to work with, especially for your first time!
Now the fun part begins.
In order to transform this lump of curds into cheese, it needs to be gently heated until the point that it gets stretchy. You can do this with a microwave if you truly do want to make it in half an hour – or you can gently dip your cheese ball into very hot whey for a few seconds at a time, and kneading it while it’s very hot. Either way, your goal is to get the curds hot enough that they start to stretch like taffy.
And stretch it will! Right before it gets to this point, it will stretch and then break apart. Keep heating it and the texture will eventually change to a smooth, glossy, stretchy texture. Shape it into a ball (or lots of small balls for bocconcini) while hot, and drop it in some ice water to cool.
That’s it! Cheesemaking 101!
Click here for a quick mozzarella recipe similar to the one we used.
Click here for some more great tips and troubleshooting your own mozzarella.
I’m determined to eat up the very last of my winter stores, and so the great freezer clean-out continues. One way to use up small amounts of fruit is to throw them into a batch of muffins. I like the following oatmeal muffin recipe, because I can make it almost exclusively from local ingredients, I generally have all of the ingredients on hand, and it’s very flexible. Blueberry-apple, strawberry-rhubarb, blackberry-peach or the most recent combo – zucchini-cranberry.
I had a cup of frozen cranberries in the freezer and a 2-cup bag of grated zucchini. I defrosted the zucchini, and after I had strained off a lot of the liquid, I had a little less than a cup. So I threw both the cranberries and zucchini into the following batch of muffins.
Oatmeal Muffins (adapted from Quick Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin)
1 1/4 cup rolled oats
1 1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1-2 cups of your favourite fruit
(you can also throw in a small amount of nuts or seeds)
1. Preheat oven to 400 F. Mix together oats and yogurt and let sit for 15 minutes.
2. Butter the insides of a muffin pan.
3. In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.
4. Beat egg, brown sugar and butter into the oat-yogurt mixture. Stir in dry ingredients until just mixed. Gently stir in fruit and nuts. Spoon batter into muffin tin.
5. Bake 15-17 minutes or until knife inserted into the center of muffins comes out clean.
Makes 12 muffins.
Yours in Food,
Marla
Here’s an interesting fun fact about this blog: according to WordPress statistics, one of the most popular blog posts we’ve ever had is ‘Pining For Parsnips‘. It’s a little bewildering, but week after week, this post continues to be viewed by folks all over the world. Obviously the hungry public out there has an appetite for parsnip info!
I recently dug up my parsnips that I planted last summer, and they’re so sweet after being in the ground all winter. If you didn’t plant any last summer, the farmer’s markets are full of them right now, so do yourself a favour – pick up a bunch and make this soup! It’s very rich and elegant – all you need is a simple green salad (with local greenhouse spinach!) and you’ve got a fancy supper.
Maple Parsnip Soup
Melt 2 Tablespoons butter (can use part vegetable oil) in a heavy-bottomed soup pot.
Add and sauté until onions are translucent but not brown:
1 pound (500 g) chopped parsnip
2 medium onions (chopped)
2-4 cloves garlic (minced)
Add and bring to simmer:
6 cups vegetable broth (substitute or add in a ¼ cup of white wine, cooking sherry, or a cup of apple juice if you like)
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
Cook till parsnips are soft (40 minutes or so)
Add and remove from heat:
1/2 cup homogenized milk (options – cream tastes AMAZING in this soup if you want to splurge, and I’m sure almond milk would taste great if you wanted a non-dairy option)
Transfer to a blender or food processor and blend until velvety smooth.
Stir in:
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 Tablespoon Dijon mustard (or more for spicier taste)
salt to taste
Sprinkle a little fresh thyme on top, or some shaved toasted almonds. Eat and enjoy.
Happy eating!
~Alison
We’ve been holding seasonal cooking classes for awhile now, and we’ve loved sharing knowledge about the bounty of Nova Scotia. Spring can be a tough time to eat local though – a lot of farmers are almost at the end of their winter root vegetables, but it’s still too soon for springtime favourites like asparagus, fiddleheads or strawberries.This last Monday, we decided to embrace the season head-on by building a menu around a CSA (or Community Shared Agriculture) produce box from Taproot Farms.
A lot of folks who get a CSA share for the first time are occasionally at a loss as to how to work with the veggies you GET, rather than the veggies you FEEL like buying. We thought we could try to promote truly creative meal planning by building a cooking class around using the veggies in a typical CSA produce share. This was out of necessity as much as it was an exciting plan… it can be hard to plan a menu in March for a class in April when you don’t know what produce is going to be available to you!
Our intrepid volunteer instructor, Lori Cadelli, came up with a few basic vegan, gluten-free recipes that would be easy to adapt to whatever deliciousness we’d find in our veggie share. The menu would feature a lentil stew with seasonal veggies, a shredded salad, and some gluten-free scones. We figured that whatever we’d end up getting in the box would be easy to incorporate into our menu.
When we picked up our box last Saturday, here’s what we got:
2 cabbages, a bag of small beets, two cucumbers, about a dozen apples, about 3.5 pounds of potatoes, about 2 pounds of carrots, and a bag of spinach.
After we saw that we’d have exotic things like greenhouse cukes and spinach, and a whole bunch of lovely apples, we decided to switch things up a bit so we could highlight these things a bit.
Cucumber-Apple Salad:
Grating beets with a food processor keeps your hands stain-free!
We had planned on making a shredded slaw-type salad, but those cucumbers were too good to pass up. We ended up making a Cucumber-Apple Salad with a honey vinaigrette, on a bed of shredded raw beets for colour and contrast.
Dressing:
¼ cup Olive Oil
¼ cup Apple cider Vinegar
2 tbsp honey
Salt & Pepper to taste
Salad:
6 or 7 Apples
2 seedless cucumbers
10 little beets
Directions
Whisk together dressing ingredients up to 2 days ahead of time.
Scrub beets well, and grate with the peel on. Toss with ½ the salad dressing. Finely chop apples and cucumber. Toss with the rest of the dressing up to 2 hours prior to serving. Lay the grated beets on a serving platter and scoop salad on top.
Main Course:
Our lentil stew recipe was ready to incorporate our carrots, spinach and cabbage, and we decided that making some garlicky mashed potatoes to accompany it would be divine.
Lentil Stew
- 2 cup lentils
- 2 diced onion
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 5 carrots
- 1 small cabbage, coarsely chopped, core removed
- 4 bay leaves
- 1 cup rice
- 4 tablespoons miso
-1 bag spinach, chopped and stems removed
- salt and pepper
Prepare lentils according to package instructions.
Saute onion and garlic together for 2 minutes in a large skillet. Add remaining vegetables and bay leaves and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.
Add rice and 1 cup of water and continue to cook for 30 minutes. Add more water if required.
Add lentils and miso to the stew. Cover and simmer another 15 minutes.
Add chopped spinach 5 minutes before stirring, and let wilt.
Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve over garlic mashed potatoes.
Mashing potatoes is vigorous work!
8 big potatoes, peeled and halved
4 cloves garlic
Almond milk
Boil potatoes in plenty of salty water with garlic. Process cooked potatoes and garlic with potato ricer. Add a splash or two of almond milk and a few more cloves of minced raw garlic. Add freshly ground pepper and minced herbs.
Finally, for dessert we made some gluten free scones made with brown rice flour with raisins and pumpkin seeds. The recipe for the scones needed applesauce, and luckily we had lots of fresh apples to make some up! The leftover applesauce was delicious on the warm scones for dessert!
Pumpkin Seed and Raisin Scones
- 4 ½ cups any gluten-free flour (we used brown rice flour)
- 1 ½ cup soy, almond, or rice milk
- ¾ cup applesauce (two small apples, diced, with ¼ cup water. Simmer until soft, then mash. Eat any leftover sauce with baked scones!)
- 1.5 teaspoon salt
- 6 teaspoons baking soda
- 6 tablespoons sugar
- 1 cup raisins
- ½ cup pumpkin seeds
Preheat oven 350 degrees Fahrenheit /180 Celsius.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, sugar and salt and mix well.
Add milk, applesauce, and raisins and pumpkin seeds. Knead until dough forms.
Drop spoonfuls of dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. (Scones will not expand too much during baking, so the size of your spoonfuls will determine the size of your baked scone.)
Bake for 15-18 minutes or until scones are golden brown on top.
~~~~~
If you’re interested in joining a CSA for summer, now’s the time to sign up! Check out this blog post for a list of Nova Scotia CSAs:
For some more tips on how to plan menus around your CSA box, check out these blog posts from our archives:
This Saturday we had a great workshop on how to grow sprouts at home. Shelley Skedden from the East Coast Family Market, AKA Blois Family Farms, was on hand to teach us the ins and outs of growing your own greens throughout the cool months when fresh veggies are hard to come by.
Here are the steps to successful (and safe) sprout growing:
1. Start with certified sprouting seed. This is an important step.
Theoretically, any seeds or legumes can be sprouted, but you don`t know where those seeds have been! One of the participants familiar with the industrial food chain reminded us that commercial seed is often scooped up from the ground in warehouses with front end loaders. For example – just because some lentils are safe to cook and eat, doesn`t mean that they`ll be safe to consume raw in a sprouted form. Organically certified sprouting seed will have been tested to ensure it`s free from salmonella and other toxins that are very harmful to your health. Shelley couldn`t stress this point enough: Buy Certified Seed!
2. Keep things CLEAN
The basic tools you need for sprouting is some mesh fabric, and a jar or a sprouting tray. Make sure everything is really clean by washing them in a mild bleach solution. You also want to make sure you`re using clean water: those of us living in the city don`t need to worry about municipal water, but if you live in a rural area with well water, you will need to use bottled water if you don`t have a purification system that will kill any stray bacteria.
3. Get Started!
Soak your seeds for 2-6 hours. If you`re using a glass jar, soak your seeds in the jar and place your mesh fabric over the top and keep it in place with a rubber band. Shelley suggests using bridal veil fabric which is pretty cheap at fabric stores, and comes in different mesh widths which is handy for large and smaller seeds. After the soak time, you can dump the jar over to drain in a bowl or in the sink at a 45 degree angle.
4. Add water, swish, rinse, repeat.
Twice a day for the next 4-7 days, you`ll want to pour a bit of water into your jar, swish it around to make sure your seeds are all nice and wet, and then dump the jar and drain it at a 45 degree angle. Keep the jar out of direct sunlight, and keep it at an upside down angle in the hours between rinsing. After a day or two you`ll notice the seeds starting to grow.
Fuzzy roots are ok to eat!
Some people get discouraged about sprouting because they think their sprouts have gone moldy, but Shelley reminded us that some sprouts just have really fuzzy roots. The daikon sprouts in the picture to the right looked like they were full of white fuzzy mold, but they were just the thirsty roots spreading out. As long as you leave your sprouts draining at an angle so air can come into the jar, it will be unlikely that you`ll grow mold, especially in winter and spring when your house is still quite cool.
5. When they look tasty enough to eat, eat em!
There`s no strict rule on when sprouts are ready to eat. Some people like them when they`re still small and crunchy, and other people like them to grow a little longer. Try shaking some out of the jar at different stages of growth to see how you like them best.
Lots of people like eating sprouts on top of their salads, but we shared our favourite ways to eat them: sprouts and hummus sandwiches, sprinkled on scrambled eggs, and even mixed in with mashed potatoes or spaghetti sauce. At the end of the workshop, we enjoyed them in a lovely mixed sprout salad with a sweet vinaigrette, which was an absolutely lovely way to enjoy the different flavours of the mung bean, fenugreek, lentil, and broccoli sprouts.
Get Sprouting!
I know that a lot of us are pretty tired of eating root vegetables – but honestly? I don’t think I can get sick of potatoes.
I’ve written about my love of potatoes before… I think my favourite thing with these starchy tubers is that so many cultures around the world have figured out how to incorporate them into tasty food. While they’re not exactly transformed in these dishes, they remain an excellent vehicle to transport flavour.
Case in point? Veggie Samosas.
We all love ‘em, but did you know how easy they are to make? And how impressed your friends will be when you take them to your next potluck?
Spicy Potato Samosas (Aloo Samosas) by Julie Sahni
For the filling:
2 to 3 Tbs. ghee or vegetable shortening
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1/4 cup minced shallots
1 tsp. freshly grated ginger
1-1/4 lb. baking potatoes, boiled until just beginning to fall apart; cooled, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup frozen green peas, thawed
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1-1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. garam masala
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. cayenne
For the dough:
5-1/2 oz. (1-1/4 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour; more for dusting
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
2 Tbs. plain yogurt, mixed with 1/4 cup water
2 Tbs. unbleached all-purpose flour dissolved in 3 Tbs. water
Peanut oil or corn oil, for deep-frying
Make the filling:
Heat the ghee or vegetable shortening in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the coriander seeds and cook until they darken slightly. Add the shallots and ginger, and cook until soft, about 2 minutes.
Add the diced cooked potatoes to the skillet and sauté until slightly golden, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the peas, lemon juice, salt, garam masala, and cayenne, tossing gently to combine. Let the filling cool completely.
Make the dough:
In a wide, shallow bowl, mix the flour with the salt and baking soda. Make a well in the center and drop the shortening into the well. Pick up some flour and fat in one hand. Rub the other hand lightly over this mixture, moving from heel to fingertips, letting the fat-coated flour fall back into the bowl. Pick up more fat and flour and continue this rubbing action until the flour is evenly coated; it should have a fine texture with no lumps.
Add the yogurt-water mixture a little at a time. Add just enough liquid until the dough comes together in a mass. Depending on the the flour and humidity, you may not need all the liquid; if you need more, add plain water a tablespoon at a time. Knead the dough until it’s smooth and elastic. The dough is ready when it’s no longer sticky and feels as soft as an earlobe, after about 5 minutes of kneading.
Roll the dough into an 8-inch log, wrap it in plastic, and let it rest for about 15 minutes. (The dough can also be wrapped tightly and chilled for a day. Bring it to room temperature before continuing.)
Assemble the samosas:
Cut the dough into eight even pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and flatten slightly. Keep the pieces you’re not working with covered with plastic wrap. Roll one flattened piece of dough into a thin 6-inch round, rolling from the center of the round and turning the dough frequently to achieve a uniform thickness. Cut the rolled circle in half.
Pick up one semicircular piece of dough and moisten half of the straight edge with a little flour-water mixture. Create a cone by bringing the dry half of the straight edge over the moistened half. Press the seam together to close. Be sure to pinch closed the point of the cone as well; a good seam will keep the stuffing in during frying.
Fill the cone with two heaping tablespoons of the spicy potato mixture. Hold the cone about a third of the way up to keep it from collapsing as you fill. Brush one open side with the flour-water mixture and pinch the opening closed. To give the samosa its characteristic flared ruffle, continue to pinch the straight edge to slightly thin and extend it. Use remaining dough and filling to make 15 more samosas.
Fill the cone with two heaping tablespoons of the spicy potato mixture.
Fry the samosas:
Fill a heavy, deep pan with 4 inches of oil and heat it to 350° F (use a deep-frying thermometer to monitor the temperature). Add the samosas in batches of four or five, being careful not to crowd the pan. Cook the samosas, turning often, until they’re golden brown, at least five minutes. Transfer samosas to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Serve immediately or let them cool to room temperature.
Serve with bought tamarind sauce or homemade chutney.
