La Casa Grande Colectiva

Category: food

  • Hive Tour 7/12/09

    smoking the beesMy good friends Kannan, and Mac helped me get a closer look inside out hives yesterday.  Four weeks ago I put the second deep supers on each hive.  The supers were full of bare frames, meaning the bees needed to build the comb before they could use them.  Well, after checking out the hives I can say they are doing excellently.  Lots of brood and some full frames of honey.  There were even empty brood chambers where baby bees had already emerged.  This means we probably need to add more space to allow the hive to continue to grow.

    The diagram on the left is similar to our hives, (different lid and different number of frames) but it gives you an idea of how the hives are constructed.  Its a fairly simple design.  Wooden frames are suspended inside a box, and the boxes are stacked up.  The bees then build honeycomb on both sides of each frame.  I had some handy helpers, so we were able to take clean photos of each frame.  I cropped all the photos in a similar way so you can flip through each cross section of the hive.  As you get towards the middle you’ll notice that there is less honey and more brood.  The queen lays eggs in a somewhat predictable pattern, and experienced beekeepers use that to judge the quality of the hive.

    Vodpod videos no longer available.

    full screen slide show of hive 1

    Vodpod videos no longer available.

    full screen slideshow of hive 2

  • long time no post

    Sorry for the long delay in posts.

    Here’s some quick photos from our garden shot with my cell phone: hibiscus bloom, bell peppers, eggplants, tomatoes.
    Hibiscus in bloom
    Some cute peppers
    Eggplants are happy in the experimental bed
    Lots of tomatOes coming in

  • Black Raspberry and Currant Jams

    Black Raspberry and Currant Jams
    Carly whipped up some delicious jams with the abundant berries from our garden. I helped a little.

  • Jajka Faszerowane

    There was a potluck here at the house last week. I made Polish style deviled eggs.
    deviled_eggs1

    1. Hardboil a bunch of eggs. Make sure you cool them down a lot before proceeding. (run them under cold water, then let them sit for a while)
    2. Using a clean sharp serrated knife, cut the eggs in half. This takes practice, so boil some extra eggs to practice on. I’ve found that going in one direction once you’ve cut through the top surface helps.
    3. Gently scoop out the innards of the eggs. Put in a bowl and mash it up.
    4. Add dill (or parsley if you would like), salt, pepper, mayonnaise, butter and stir it all together.
    5. Spoon the mixture into the empty egg shells.
    6. Top with bread crumbs and place down onto a hot skillet. (add butter to skillet)
    7. Use a spoon to eat. Don’t eat the shells! Unless you need extra calcium.

    deviled_eggs2

    Our chicken eggs are perfect for this because they have hard shells, especially the darker ones. Hard shells are easier to cut through and don’t completely fall apart. However, I’ve noticed that the shells aren’t as hard as they were in the winter time when the hens were laying less.

  • neighborhood pancake breakfast

    Block By Block, a group of neighbors, organized a potluck style pancake breakfast this morning.  Before our house meeting, a few of us made it over for some delicious food, complete with maple syrup that was tapped from maple trees in the area.  I forgot to bring my nice camera, but I brought my phoneCAM.

    Community pancake breakfast

    It was great to meet and chat with so many neighbors at once.  I had some really great conversations, and we went home with a cucumber plant!
    Local syrup

    Block By Block Cooperation is a group of neighbors in unhistoric east urbana (the historic part starts north of Washington).  They are organizing people and raising awareness of local food issues.  Its really exciting to see such things happening only 2 blocks from La Casa.  There are so many projects that we can work together on.

    neighbor Sam tapped the local maple trees to make syrup for the pancake breakfast, thanks Sam!
    neighbor Sam tapped the local maple trees to make syrup for the pancake breakfast, how f-ing cool! It came out really delicious. what a treat, thanks Sam!

  • A Feast for the Ages

    Last Monday, Jacob and I toiled away in the kitchen for many many hours. He made bread while I prepared things for open-faced sandwiches.
    Homemade Bread
    Here is the dough being made.
    Kneading
    Being Jacob’s protégé, I helped with kneading. It’s fun. And gets tiring. But you can build some guns in the process.
    At one point, the chickens escaped from the coop, making a mad dash for the compost pile. With the help of Ronna, we wrangled them in and went back to our toiling.
    Homemade Bread
    Here it is! The bread was toasted in the oven. You can also see some curried eggs in the back that Jacob made.
    My Sandwiches
    Top: sauteed leeks, chard, shallots and swiss cheese. Bottom: fresh arugula, tomato, avocado, goat cheese. Right: sauteed mushrooms, shallots, swiss cheese. And then a curried egg. It was quite the feast.

  • Walking Onions from the Garden

    Walking Onions from the Garden

    On Monday, Jacob and I cooked a ridiculous meal (post coming soon!). We ran out of onions. Jacob went out in the garden and pulled out these beautiful walking onions. There was even snow on the ground.

  • Mama Marrrrria’s Salsa

    salsa2
    Ronna got the house on a salsa kick after she made it a couple times. Here is how I make my salsa:

    1. Throw the following into a food processor: 1 can diced tomatoes, an onion, green pepper, some bunches of cilantro, garlic, chives, hot pepper (or substitute with chili powder), cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, fresh black pepper.
    2. Press the button on the food processor several times.
    3. Dump into serving bowl and watch it disappear before your eyes.

    salsa1

  • Beer Dig

    Yo! La Casa hosted a BEER DIG yesterday, which means we bribed our friends with alcohol to help get our pit ponded!  Something like 40 people showed up, some of them with shovels, for a muddy-fine time digging, grunting, drinking, heaving, hoeing, and drinking.

    Some La Casans went out round about 10AM to imagine a desirable curvy shape for our pit-pond to take, wiggling our garden hose and some electrical cords around until everyone ok-ed it.  Maria threw down some white spray paint to make it official.  “Dig here.”  We made a design with two shallow, wiggly fingers and a mound in between.

    Pond shaping up

    In the picture above, Liya (purple shirt and fabulous overalls) stands in front of the mound and between the two fingers. You can see how high the water table had gotten from the night before!  We bailed out the pit more than once, and it quickly filled back in with fresh water from the ground.

    Towards the end of the day

    Above: Towards the end of the dig, you can see even the new fingers filled with a bit of water.  The north finger is the close one, and on the other side of that soggy mound, you can see a bit of the south finger.  We made a lot of progress, and we have more digging to do yet!

    Bonnie in the low contrast of the sunshine

    Anna, Brett, & Bonnie in a dramatic pic!

    Many beds were prepared as well

    Above: Meanwhile, some of us worked on digging new garden beds and raising them up with soil from the pit-pond.  We carried sod to the front yard to replant it in a strange patchwork under a tree, hence Vinnie with a wheelbarrow of sod.

    The hungry laborers

    Post-dig din: whole wheat macaroni with tomato sauce, quinoa, (leftover) delicious chili, and home-made bread-machineless bread.  The sun going down, and the crowd dwindling a bit.  The alcohol finally catching up with me….

    Post dig bonfire

    And finally, as we digested our elbows and beer, we enjoyed a big-ol’ bonfire, the first of the season.

    Post dig bonfire 4

    Thanks for digging with us, those of you who did!  I, for one, thought it went swimmingly, pit-ponds, garden beds, soddy jigsaw puzzles, bowls of quinoa, and raging fires considered.

  • Jacob, white bread

    Jacob told me yesterday that he was going to bake bread everyday this week.  Pictured below is day 2.
    Jacob baked bread

    Tired of so many a bread machine failure loaf this year, I decided to take failure into my own hands.  Bread, like mayonnaise and kombucha, is something La Casa knows is way way waaaay better when you make it yourself, unquestionably worth the extra effort. This half-whole-wheat loaf was hand-formed with my trademark ineptitude™ and includes sunflower seeds and rosemary.  Maria (my protégé) has assisted greatly with kneading and baking.

  • Grafted Golden Delicious

    My friend and band-mate Sam generously gifted me this piece of M-7 rootstock with three golden delicious apple buds grafted onto it.  Sam’s horticulture class at Parkland College was doing a unit on grafting and he wanted to share what he was learning with me and La Casa.  We grafted on two dormant buds in Sam’s kitchen Friday afternoon and I biked home with it all smiles.  I’m keeping it in the sunny room with the seed starts until its ready to move outside.

    The golden delicious graft with the seedlings in the background. Three buds were grafted onto the rootstock. I did the top bud and Sam the middle. After the buds grow the green on top will be cut off.
    The golden delicious graft with the seedlings in the background. Three buds were grafted onto the rootstock. I did the top bud and Sam the middle. After the buds grow the green on top will be cut off.

  • Dinner recipe: Gruel Salad

    When a house our size has bulk amounts of at least six kinds of bean, I’ve got two hours to make dinner, it is sometimes difficult to justify making food that requires buying fresh ingredients:  “Cauliflower? Plantains? But the lentils and black-eyed peas are right here!”

    (Of course, the tables will turn come harvest season!)

    If a house goes on like this, without taking care to coordinate what is cooked, weeks’ worth of dinners may lack the expected textural and stylistic range as we spoon gruel from a bowl for the umpteenth time.

    Now, I’m mostly a recipe person. I delight in following directions down to the letter for the promise of surprisingly perfect food (provided no one gets hurt).  I think I got this from my mother (Hi Mom!).  Nevertheless, occasionally I indulge in improvisation.  This one began with an oath to make “gruel salad”, a joke that became reality.  It was “one of those evenings.”

    gruel with a twist
    gruel with a twist

    Cut celery, scallions, and asparagus into 3-inch chunks.  Braise in medium saucepan with a little oil and a little more water.  Add sliced mushrooms and broccoli.  Pepper half-heartedly. Add half a cup of wheat flour and enough water to keep everything from sticking to the bottom.  Overcook until gooey.  Serve atop whole leaves of lettuce, carrots, and pear, with a vinaigrette dressing.