La Casa Grande Colectiva

Category: food

  • Black Bean Burgers

    We had a potluck dinner at La Casa tonight, which turned into a little fire in the garden firepit with guitar, conversation, & digestion.  The food theme?  “Americana!”  I tried out a new recipe, which came out very well, so I think I’ll share it.

    It comes from this website & goes like this:

    INGREDIENTS

    • 1 (16 ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
    • 1/2 green bell pepper, cut into 2 inch pieces
    • 1/2 onion, cut into wedges
    • 3 cloves garlic, peeled
    • 1 egg
    • 1 tablespoon chili powder
    • 1 tablespoon cumin
    • 1 teaspoon Thai chili sauce or hot sauce
    • 1/2 cup bread crumbs

    DIRECTIONS

    1. If grilling, preheat an outdoor grill for high heat, and lightly oil a sheet of aluminum foil. If baking, preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C), and lightly oil a baking sheet.
    2. In a medium bowl, mash black beans with a fork until thick and pasty.
    3. In a food processor, finely chop bell pepper, onion, and garlic. Then stir into mashed beans.
    4. In a small bowl, stir together egg, chili powder, cumin, and chili sauce.
    5. Stir the egg mixture into the mashed beans. Mix in bread crumbs until the mixture is sticky and holds together. Divide mixture into four patties.
    6. If grilling, place patties on foil, and grill about 8 minutes on each side. If baking, place patties on baking sheet, and bake about 10 minutes on each side.

    I tripled the recipe, cooked black beans instead of messing around with cans, & (of course) used eggs from our chickens. I didn’t like how the burgers came out baking them, so I decided to fry them in sunflower oil. Yum!

    Maria, JP, & Gretchen also cooked amazing food, so maybe they’ll share their recipes, too.  & of course, our guests brought great dishes, so maybe some of them can share in the comments.

    potluck at la casa potluck at la casa

  • A gift in the mail – fire salt

    I received a letter this morning from a longtime friend, Chris Juby.
    Gift from Juby
    I was hungry…
    EggsCooking eggsCkicken and the eggs
    In general we are a low-sodium house, but I always put a bit of salt on my personal meals. Of course he was correct: the fire salt goes great with fresh eggs. Made of: chiles, habanero, citrus, garlic, shallots, cumin, salt, allspice, and vinegar, good on popcorn, potatoes, and eggs. Someone’s getting eggs for easter, thanks jubes!

  • Urbana Chicken Effort – 5 Year Update

    extreme-chicken1Lately we’ve had several revelations about chicken keeping in Urbana, IL.  It started when Ronna dug up this 2004 article from the New York Times while doing research on Urbana city ordinances.  The article begins, “A movement is underfoot in Urbana.”  Well, this is an update on Urbana chickens 5 years later.

    The article titled “From City-Reared Chickens, Farm-Fresh Eggs” (10/4/2004) quotes city attorney Steve Holz (*arrested development chuckle) “There is no restriction on livestock or poultry in the city [of Urbana].”  It goes on to say that “the city can take action against owners if they keep the animals in a way that hurts the health or safety of the neighborhood.”  So thats it. Keeping chickens in town is %100 legit, until they become a problem.

    I joined the yahoo group Urbana Chicken Effort awhile back, which I presume was the original communication tool for the “movement” that the article mentions.  With 32 members signed up, the list is still used to coordinate feed and chick buying.

    The other revelation occured when Heather ran into Danielle Chynoweth at the IMC.  According to Danielle, our oldest chicken, Ginger, was originally owned by Molly Stentz and is estimated to be 8 years old!  The 2004 NYTimes article quotes Stentz as saying, “There are so many people in my neighborhood who are doing it.  It’s low-maintenance and fun.”  This means that our elderly Ginger is one of the original Urbana Chicken Effort chickens, and she’s still ticking!

    So, La Casa is curious to know more about the history of Urbana Chickens.  How many people are keeping chickens in town these days?  Do they take as many photos as us?  How can we help each other and encourage more chicken cooperation?  Please comment and let us know how your ladies are doing.

  • Bee Hives Arrive

    Harvest House resident Robby Nagel brought his beehives over today.  Robby inherited the hives from his grandpa who retired from beekeeping a few years ago.
    Robby shows how the smoker works
    Robby has been going to beekeeping classes offered by the Central Eastern Illinois Beekeepers Association and approached us a few months ago about keeping bees in our big yard.  We’re not only glad to share in the honey but the bees will function as excellent pollinators to our trees and crops.  In the photo above, Robby is showing me how the different pieces of equipment work.

  • weekend update, permaculturist, beds, holes, lots of talk, and eggplant parmesan

    There’s a lot going around the house these days. Here’s a quick recap of the weekend.
    Transplanting sod to the front yard
    Andrew and Ronna transplanted some of the sod that was leftover from new garden beds to a bare spot in the front yard. Sophie supervised.
    Rob and Peter chat in the garden
    Rob brought over a friend and longtime permaculture expert, Peter Bane, for a chat in the garden. It turns out the Peter grew up in Urbana and had lots of stories about home-scale food production in the area.
    Gretchen and eggplant parmesian
    Gretchen brought over some eggplants and whipped up a two stellar pans of eggplant parmesan, one vegan. It was incredibly delicious.

    There were many hours spent outside, digging, thinking, and moving.  Plans for the pond that we’re digging have taken off.  Now we’re thinking about ducks, fish, and waterfalls, although lots of research needs to be done still.  Garden excavations have continued, and Mac, Kannan, and JohnE have improved their beds with compost and more topsoil.  Ronna has been ‘potting-up’ some of the seedlings as its not yet time to move them outside.  All in all a good weekend.

  • plantingplantingwateringwatering

    go superfood!
    go superfood!

    More beds are being dug for our lightly ambitious garden. As of today actual seeds that have been placed in the soil of the garden itself are: sugar pod peas (yummm!), about 5 different lettuces, carrots (scarlet nantes, danvers), chard (5 color silverbeet, ruby red), purple radishes, yarrow, moonflowers, persian cress, yellow mangel beets AND chia. yes, chia of chia pet fame. But talk about an underutilization of a plant. The seeds of this good old indigenous plant are what could be considered a superfood. Here are a couple of links so that if you want to know more you can:

    Chia For Health

    Chia Seed – The Ancient Food of the Future

    p.s. Someone mentioned that Seeds of Change is now owned by the Mars candy company, which is too bad, but at least we got our seed packets via the time-honored art of dumpster diving.

  • seedling update

    Our seedlings are going on five weeks old now, so it’s about time for an update.  They all looked the same at first, but now they’re each developing their own characteristics.

    update on the seed starts, march 16
    garden sage

    cuke, squash, and squash

    The biggest bummer so far is our tray of hot peppers.  We planted jalapeno, habanero, cayenne and several other varieties, but so far there is little action from the seeds.  I’ve been told that peppers take awhile to sprout.
    not much action with the hot peppers yet

  • House Meeting, march 16, 2009

    I wouldn’t normally blog about a house meeting, but our meeting today was really enjoyable and I wanted to explain how we organize ourselves and stay informed.  We set aside an hour each week to discuss things of importance related to the house.  An agenda is made up on the spot as we begin by proposing what things need to be addressed.  We depend on whiteboard and dry erase technology to keep track of the meeting, and notes are taken with someone’s computer.  All notes get posted to our internal house wiki that contains a variety of things no one will ever see but us.

    House meeting, march 16, 2009

    Today’s meeting was beautiful.  Food was prepared and we ate outside on the pic-nic table.  Fresh eggs served from cast-iron, mmm, mmm, mmm.  We were short one housemate, Jacob, who was at a cybernetics conference in Washington.  We had a lot to talk about but the meeting went quickly and we were soon done and working in the garden.  With the warm weather and time-change I can sense that we no longer need to worry about seasonal depression.  I have a bit of a sunburn to prove it, too.

  • Moona…luna…tuna… Heather and Maria’s cooking night!

    I am smiling because cooking is one of my favorite things to do at La Casa, and tonight was my night to cook! Potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, wheat flour, soy butter, bouillon, curry, and nutritional yeast in a pot equals… moon soup! Over dinner, we decided that the soup resembled the surface of our lovely luna (which is one more word that rhymes with tuna and Unah, woohoo!) Although it’s not the most photogenic pot of soup I’ve ever made, it hit the spot on this cold night along with Maria’s mother’s recipes for egg tuna and tuna salad on fresh bread. Between these two entrees, and some delicious leftovers from Ronna and Andrew’s feast last night, we accommodated the vegans, vegetarians, and fish eaters of the house in one meal.

    heather stirs soup
    soup
    red lentil kofte
    egg salad sandwiches

    photos by JP