Cold Outside, Warm Inside

We woke to snow on Saturday. Vancouver hasn't seen snow in two years, so it was exciting. As the winter solstice is one month away and there is still snow on the ground, I was inspired to warm the inside of my house. Spices are my favourite to warm the senses, I always cook with copious amounts of ginger and cumin in the cold months, and we just automatically started drinking chai instead of orange pekoe as soon as the temperature dropped outside. I decided to follow the trend and make a part edible, part aromatic, part illuminating centerpiece for our table.

It worked out really nicely, I had two older mandarin's that I wasn't inspired to eat and a bag full of cloves from lasts years apple cider experiment. I pierced the oranges with the cloves in pretty designs, the juice from the orange reinvigorated the cloves, causing a gentle waft of aroma. I laid them on a bed of leftover U-pick Hazelnuts, and Walnuts I bought from this weeks Farmers Market, then I put them with some very old star anise, and some new pink pepper and cardamom pods, and voila! It smells amazing.

Hopefully it will inspire us to snack on the nuts in the coming days too.

Have a Peaceful, Warm and Spicy Full Moon!

World Urbanism Day!

Guanajuato, Mexico

Today is World Urbanism Day, and a chance to reflect upon how we are planning and building our cities. With over half of humanity currently living in cities, there is a huge potential to positively impact their ability to live well, sustainably, just by consciously planning the communities these citizens live in.

Our built environment plays a huge role in how our lifestyles develop. It is also one thing that is so easy to take for granted, because its almost too close to see. But these cityscapes were and are still being planned. And we are living with the consequences. 

I was interested to learn what a Food Desert (wikiFoodDesert) was, and then amazed by how many times I have been travelling through suburban Canada, gotten hungry and only found junk food to eat. City planners can increase the health and food security of their residents by planning for food co-ops, farmers markets, community gardens and urban farms.

Vancouver

 I'm also always a little in awe when I travel back to my hometown (Calgary) and see just how unbelievably inconvenient it is to live in that city without a car. Calgary is a new city and it was literally built for the automobile, the distances between places there are unimaginable to residents in larger, more cramped up places, as is the abundance of free street parking.

New York

New York has been a world leader of urban development for many generations, and lately they have been taking drastic measures to reduce vehicular traffic into the downtown core, by implementing bike lanes, improving transit and taking previous streets away and turning them into pedestrian boulevards, streets like the high profile Broadway stretch through Time Square, visit http://www.streetfilms.org/ to watch videos on other exciting projects world wide.

Vancouver City Hall

It must be an exciting time o be a city planner,  I know that Vancouver's city hall was up until midnight one night debating whether to implement a separated bike lanes downtown or not. They voted to do it!

I am so thrilled and grateful for the extra support this gives to us residents to live a simpler, healthier more sustainable lifestyle, by getting more people out of the loud, expensive, anonymous, poluting, speed machines and into the face to face community of pedestrian and cyclist traffic.

I should note, cars are great for intercity travel, its the within city travel that I feel annoys everyone, drivers included.

The First Winter Market

The Vancouver Farmers Markets have been steadily increasing in popularity over the last few years, not just in the summer months but over the Winter as well. In fact the winter market, which used to be held only twice a month in a small community hall, has grown this year into a weekly fair in the parking lot for Nat Bailey Stadium, which conveniently is in my neighbourhood.

My sister and I walked the baby over yesterday and found an abundance of farm fresh local food to tempt us. There were walnuts and hazelnuts, greens like dandelion and chicory, parsley, kale, broccoli sprouts, beats, carrots, spuds, apples, pears, mushrooms, squashes and so much more. I was surprised to even buy some of the last field ripened heirloom tomatoes of the season. I will be keeping an eye on what they continue to offer throughout the winter, and challenging myself to make a few meals out of whats in season. Go see them yourself at www.eatlocal.org

This is what we bought, it is $30 worth of veg, which may seem pricey but I look at it as 1 stir fry. 1 salsa, 2 salads and 1.5 dips, all made from ingredients so fresh that they can sit in my fridge for two weeks and still be fresher than what I buy a the supermarket. Doesn't strike me as overpriced.

First Winter Market Salad
Serves 6 Big Eaters

1 Large bunch Red Russian Kale
2 medium sized bulbs Florence Fennel sliced into matchsticks
2 small sized Beets sliced into thin halfmoons
1 lrg carrot sliced into thin disks
2 Shallots sliced into thin circles
1 Asian Pear, cored and cut into thin slices

Toss with
Apple Honey Mustard Dressing
Mix Well:
1 part Apple Cider Vinegar
1 part Olive Oil
Generous dallop of liquid Honey
Generous Squirt Dijon Mustard
Black Sesame Seeds for looks

The Farmhouse, finding space for foodcapes

City Gardens have City Neighbours, as I've mentioned before.
Check out the story of The Farmhouse, they are a group of roommates motivated to turn their rented garden into a foodscape paradise. Unfortunately one of their neighbours did not appreciate the aesthetic of their permaculture garden and called in the city to  make use of an archaic by-law Untidy Premises By-law no. 4548 which helps to restrict the type of landscaping residents of Vancouver can have in their lawns. I wonder if anyone has ever called in this by-law in regards to the plastic grass going in lawns around North Van?
Two Ends of the Spectrum.
 Vive el Jardin Libre!

Storing Seed until the Sping

The Harvest is now, mostly over. The seeds that I've intended to save have been taken in and dried for a week or two, and are now hard enough to chance surviving through to spring. How I store them will increase the chance of the seeds remaining alive through the winter.

They must be kept dry, because water activates them to come alive, and grow, not something that you want them to do this time of year. I collect packs of silica to keep them dry. Silica comes in boxes of almost anything manufactured in the tropics, so feel free to politely harass retail stores to keep some for you, I get mine from my partners Bike Shop, but electronic stores are also a good bet, or I've noticed they come with packs of Nori. Silica is also reusable, empty it out of the paper packages unto a baking sheet and dry it in the oven at a super low heat.

Most Seed you buy comes in paper envelopes, and you could make your own envelopes really inexpensively, but I prefer using clean small glass jars, like the type that used to house jam, or artichoke hearts. These keep my seed really protected and look so pretty.

Besides protecting your seeds from water you also want to consider protecting them from extreme heat, extreme cold and light. Some of the experts recommend keeping your seed in the fridge, but with three grocery shoppers in my house this is not possible. Instead, they will be stored in a box on a self in a cool indoor storage closet.

City Gardens, City Neighbours

I believe Urban Gardening offers a future to agriculture and civilization. But it doesn't come without its problems, most of which derive from the BIG problem we are all facing, WASTE (aka pollution, litter, garbage.)
Most people have heard of The Broken Window Theory, I feel that it very much applies to Urban Gardening.
Flower gardens and Food gardens are different in their function, but also in their appearance, and in the wintertime, a food garden can look a little disheveled. I have found it important to keep my food gardens looking clean and neat, just to keep the neighbours respecting them. Somehow, sometimes, it happens that I get a little behind on cleaning up a bed and making it look neat and maintained, it never seems to take long until the garbage begins to accumulate. This fall one of my neighbours seems to have mistook my dead stand of quinoa as an inviting dumping ground for their excess bamboo clippings, I guess their Yard Trimmings Bin was full.
Its a piss off when stuff like this happens, but a nice reminder to keep everything looking spruced up. Because it can get much worse, digging up and around broken beer bottles is common in city gardens, finding doggy bags (not from restaurants) and cigarette butts is expected. But this spring, we cleaned up a "hobo" nest that was across the alley from my garden, and we found needles in it. Not what you want to see near to where so many children play. We will clean up any extra garbage around because we want to show people we respect this space, and hope that they will too.