We’ve talked about food waste.
Photo by Foerster via Wikimedia Commons
How to avoid it,
how entire cities are composting it,
and how some folks eat it.
But I recently discovered another use for food that has passed its prime.
Curious?
While you may not want to replicate this at home, I know you’ll appreciate the aesthetic. Lauren Purnell, a Canadian photography student living in London, has achieved social-media star status by crafting uniquely beautiful works of art from pitched produce.
Watch this video clip from CBS This Morning:
Visit Lauren’s Culinary Canvas website to see more.
In the last two pages of our children’s book, Moo-n Over Main Street Metropolis, we created a project for kids so they can have their very own Jersey cow. All they have to do is make a color copy of the cow, Sally O’Mally, in the book onto cardstock, write their cow’s name on her pinafore, cut her out, take a photo of the two of them together, and mail or e-mail it to us. We’ve posted some of the photos on our HeritageJersey.org website.
Here’s a glimpse of Dolly Anna and Gladys Pippi on their first trip with us.
Since we’re in between moving out of our old home and moving into our new home, we’re bunking up at the farm with NannyJane. We’re calling it our “farmcation,” and you might see a few more farm pics in the coming weeks.
We just got back from an East Coast trip, so we’re waking up with the sun and the rooster, and this morning, we decided we’d wander out our back door at the farm …
A beautiful morning with my favorite hikers.
The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,571 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,327 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ
Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life …
For this week’s Farm Kitchen/Know Your Food Intermediate Level Merit Badge, I cultivated a few of my favorite recipes, revamped them so they’d be completely organic, and then packed all the ingredients up in my charming (if I do say so myself) reusable and homemade shopping bags. Why, you may ask? To take to my friend’s home and to make them dinner with, of course.
We farmgirls are a gregarious and generous bunch.
I was a bit nervous, to tell the truth. These particular friends were dyed-in-the-wool processed-food eaters. In fact, I am loath to call what they eat food. It’s more like … well, more like a deadly concoction of preservatives, MSG, food colorings, additives, and high-fructose corn syrup.
Speaking of HFCS, my little chickadees, part of earning my Intermediate Level Merit Badge was to completely and utterly eliminate that particular substance. I thought it’d be simple. Easy peasy, lemon squeasy.
Water tower in Rochester, Minnesota. Photo by Jonathunder via Wikimedia Commons.
I was wrong.
Talk about insidious. That ingredient creeps and crawls its way into our foods in areas you’d never imagine. If HFCS was a spy, we’d be in trouble. It can slip into your house undetected. It can wriggle its way into your coffee-stand mocha, slip into your salad dressing, find new life in a bag of snack-time potato chips, and even be in the children’s neighborhood lemonade stand. Seriously, this stuff is the Jason Bourne of syrups. (Although Matt Damon is much more attractive).
Anyway, once I started paying uber-attention, I was shocked and alarmed. I realized my days of buying nearly anything pre-made had come to a sudden halt.
Unless my cookie craving could be satiated with something homemade, I was concerned I would never be able to enter a bakery again. I mourned.
Unless my local and favorite lunch buffet could revamp their menu, I was going to have to fulfill my cravings for enchiladas and lobster bake all by myself. I weeped.
Unless I could figure out the magical list of ingredients for my weekly Hazelnut White Chocolate Pecan Caramel Mocha with Whip and Sprinkles, I was gonna have to quit cold turkey. I gnashed my teeth.
But enough about me. Back to my friends and my bags o’ groceries.
I had to bring every single ingredient: we’re talking salt and pepper and olive oil and everything. I just couldn’t trust their pantry with my beloved and high-quality food items, and besides, I wanted to show them just how good organic and local and homemade could be without the slightest bit of cheating.
First, I had to remove about five billion dishes out of their oven. Turns out, they don’t use their oven.
Like, ever.
It’s for storage.
I found this odd, strange, and somewhat distressing, but I soldiered on. Next, I had them taste-test my homegrown tomatoes, which they were somewhat loathe to do. I didn’t blame them: I used to hate tomatoes. Those pink, mealy, gross things I found on my hamburgers or thrown haphazardly into my salad? Nasty. But my bright red (or sometimes purple or orange) ‘maters from my garden? A treat that would transform any skeptic.
All my friends agreed they had never tasted anything like my heirloom variety, and in moments, I had none left for my garnish. No matter, it was mission accomplished already!
Stay tuned for how the rest of my experiment and badge earning went next time …
This post is for Winnie, who asked recently for an update on the status of our little store that moved home to my farm.
As it turns out, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work we’re doing before we get to the store. The store will eventually have a new roof that includes two cute little carports on each end (farm truck in one, Shasta trailer parked in the other, fully hooked up to power/water/electric) and a rocking-chair front porch. Inside will be a community bathroom, retro kitchen, and washer/dryer for farmstay guests.
But first, what’s that peeking out from behind?
Why, it’s my Airstream! She’s found a permanent home beneath her own carport, complete with concrete pad and water/sewer/electric hookups. When I took these photos, I’d just planted a “dryland pasture grass mix,” and since then, her new yard is green and lush. Winnie, she has a very old homestead apple tree right outside her door, as well as lots of indigenous plum trees in her new yard.
The next few pics show all the work being done to essentially take apart and naturalize what we’ve always called our “upper garden,” which is located beside the little store. We’re taking out the deer fence and removing all the black felt and netting we had throughout for weed control in our large strawberry bed and raspberry patch.
Our strawberry patch has been dramatically downsized to these two new raised beds in our “lower garden.” (The large strawberry patch was destroyed this spring when we had to reroute our sewer, water, and electrical lines.) In the distance, you can see a wall of tomatoes. We’re growing a market-garden patch of heirloom black cherry tomatoes to sell in town, and they’re just starting to come on. This whole patch was grown from seeds I saved from one little tomato I bought two summers ago. The first year, I grew a number of plants from the seeds of that one tomato, then I saved lots of seeds and offered them to my readers. I sent out around 80 envelopes full of seed.
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
