Hounds In The Kitchen » oeffa

News and Notes from OEFFA

Rachel Tayse — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:58:25 +0000

I presented and attended the 33rd annual conference of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA) conference last Saturday and Sunday.

The conference was inspiring, educational, and fun. I loved learning from experienced growers, meeting new and old foodie friends, and strolling the exhibit hall to learn what’s happening.

In the coming weeks I hope to summarize the workshops I attended in more detail. Some news from the weekend is too timely not to share first:

I work on a committee that sources as many ingredients as possible locally for amazing organic conference meals. I will probably write a whole post about what goes into making the OEFFA conference meals. In the meantime, I owe appreciation to the food donors I helped recruit: Luna Burgers, Swainway Urban Farm mushrooms and sprouts, and Glad Annie’s Baklava. Thank you very much!
Earthineer, a social site for sustainable living, is a growing community of farmers and homesteaders. Join thousands of other farmers and homesteaders to find support for your earth-conscious lifestyle. Signup before June 3rd for a chance to win a Model No. 99 Grainmaker grain mill.
I chatted with Annie and Jay Warmke from Blue Rock Station in the exhibitor hall one afternoon. Jay showed me their straw bale plans for this year; an intern designed the most sustainable awesome restroom in the world. Registration is now open for the Straw Bale Building Workshops that will construct the restroom. Blue Rock offers workshops throughout the year on everything from Green technology to cheese making.
Michigan State University offers an Organic Farmer Training Program. If I were considering organic farming as a career, this 9 month course sounds ideal. Applications for the 2013 cohort are reviewed in July.
Woody Tasch gave the keynote address on Saturday afternoon. He is an investment executive turned Slow Money guru. Though his talk was unrehearsed and a bit chaotic, Tasch charmed me and the rest of the crowd. I imagine I am not the only OEFFA attendee who signed the Slow Money Alliance pledge and am considering the goal for one million people to invest 1% of their money in local food systems, within a decade.
I was drawn into the Women Farm table in the exhibit hall by the bright colors. Sharon Sachs, co-owner, kept me there as she excitedly talked about the women-to-women educational mission of her organization. In addition to individual consultations and inspiring stories on the web, Women Farm offers Direct Experience Instruction events where small groups of women can gather and learn from a woman farmer. If you are a lady wanting to learn by doing, check out Women Farm.
This year, I can’t wait to attend my first Chesterhill Produce Auction. At lunch one day, I met Bob Fedyski, Local/Institutional Foods Specialist of Rural Action, the managing agency. He encouraged me to come for the cultural experience and the varied produce lots. The auction season starts May 5th with an open house and continues on most Mondays and Thursdays through October 25. Field trip anyone?

If you attended, what were your impressions and takeaways? If you didn’t, what do you want to hear more about?

NB: On Monday, I shared notes from one of my talks, Food is Social: How to use New Media to Promote Your Food Business.

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News and Notes from OEFFA is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

How to Blow Out Eggs with Photo Kitchen

Rachel Tayse — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:05:59 +0000

The lovely Catherine of Photo Kitchen came over last week to take photographs. We ended up doing so many fun things with eggs, including decorating and eating them, that will be sharing them for the next five days during Hounds in the Kitchen Egg Week.

Inspired by Vanessa Prentice‘s workshop at the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association annual conference, I wanted to try my hand at making natural egg dyes this year. I suspected they might be really cool and wanted to create eggs that would last for years. A boiled egg in shell wasn’t going to cut it and, besides, there are only so many boiled eggs our family wants to eat.

So I blew out some eggs. Removing the raw yolk and white from the shell to preserve the shell is relatively simple and allows the eggshell to be decorated and displayed for years to come. Here’s how I do it:

First, create a small hole in each end of the egg. I find that a sharp short nail (this one came from a picture hanging kit) works well. I grasp it and the egg firmly and tap gently until a hole is started. I try to punch through the hole so that it takes the round shape of the nail.

Gently shake the egg to break the yolk. Then, place your lips over one hole and blow with pressure over a bowl. To be sure you aren’t going to contract salmonella, use a fresh egg from a known source and try not to ingest the raw contents. The white and yolk will slowly drip into the reservoir.

When the white and yolk have totally escaped, rinse the egg. Put it somewhere safe to dry thoroughly before decorating. You can use the egg contents for cooking. They keep in the refrigerator for a few days.

Come back tomorrow to see how we made and used natural dyes from edible materials.

All photos with the Photo Kitchen watermark were taken by Catherine and generously shared here. You may purchase copies and view the whole set of photographs in the online gallery with password lileaster. Use the coupon code houndscrossover to receive 25% off prices until May 15.

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How to Blow Out Eggs with Photo Kitchen is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

A Conversation with Joan Dye Gussow

Rachel Tayse — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:45:40 +0000

On Monday I had the pleasure of interviewing Joan Dye Gussow, keynote speaker for this weekend’s Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association annual conference. A matriarch of the local food and organic movements, our discussion largely related to her most recent book, Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables.

Rachel Tayse Baillieul: What does your garden look like now?

Joan Dye Gussow: I’m home and it’s under snow. It’s been under snow, pretty steadily, it feels like forever, but only about two months.

RTB: Have you seen the river with excess snow melt? Are you concerned about flooding? (Garden floods were a major character in the book Growing, Older.)

JDW: No, not now. Not since I changed. I rebuilt my garden up two feet when it was destroyed last year. I haven’t had any flooding since then. I’m higher than the land around me now so it will make a huge difference. I don’t expect to get flooded anymore.

RTB: What are your personal favorite things to grow?

JDW: People ask me that question and it depends on how things are doing at the moment. Right at the moment, I have a love affair with sweet potatoes because they are so productive and so reliable. They don’t seem to be subject to insects and diseases, at least that now how to get here. And because last year when I grew then I put them in a bed totally devoid of topsoil. It was literally this silt that baked into rocks when you aren’t looking.

I got 26 pounds of sweet potatoes and also the sweet potatoes managed to totally transform the soil. I’d never seen anything like it.

I’ve now been investigating to find out what it was. It turns out the root hairs recruit and collect organisms around them. They’re in a genus that secretes glue substances that hold the little soil particles together.

So here’s this crop that’s utterly reliable, beautiful when it’s growing, you can eat the leaves if you want, and it improves the soil!

RTB: About Growing Older, why did you decide to write this book at this time?

JDW: My husband of forty years died in 1997 and I always thought I had a very happy marriage. And two weeks after he died, I found myself skipping down the street. I was stunned that I didn’t miss him. That was totally unacceptable to people around me. It was very difficult to face and confront. When I began able to say things to people who were close to me, they said I had to write about it. No one says it, and I’m sure other people feel it, but nobody says it.

It took me a long time to sort it out. When I finally realized what it was, in a profound sense, I only had four chapters. I put the rest of it together from other things I had been writing.

One of the things my editor helped me realize that I wasn’t lonely when living alone was because I had so many relationships in the garden. She was definitely right. I had this on-going thing with the livestock that would invade my space and the bees and the butterflies, all of whom I sort of dealt with on a personal level.

The last section is called Growing Older, without a comma, because it’s about getting older. I felt that I really wanted to write about it. I am very healthy which I realize is a gift but I also believe that I am so healthy because I am happy as a person and I also am very active. I worked really really hard last year building the garden.

RTB: In the winter, I, and presumable you, are not doing as much of that outside work. How do you exercise when there is snow on the ground for what feels like forever?

JDW: That’s when I begin to say “I’m going to take up yoga or something else”. I have scolioses and didn’t want to go to an ordinary studio, but I did bring in someone for a few private lessons at home.

The truth is I do lose strength in my arms. I do have a two story house, and because I do forget things, you run up and you run down. I don’t think anything of running up and down stairs. It’s only my upper body that gets a little un-exercised in the winter.

The other secret of survival and age is to fight gravity because gravity really is the enemy. I discovered that last summer when I was working so hard and it was sometimes so hot. I would get up and work for four hours and eat breakfast and then lie flat for an hour. No pillows and I wasn’t sleeping, but like a yoga pose with hands turned up. Then I’d go out for another four hours, then come in and eat, and lie flat on my back again. It was amazing and made a huge difference to keep going.

RTB: You talk in the book about the despair that you and your students feel about environmental destruction and yet there’s some hopefulness too. How does that manifest itself in the face of news?

JDW: For me, at my age, I accepted the reality a long time ago. I write in the book about experiencing the moment that I believed what I was teaching and that was very shattering. I went through it, it was very difficult. And once you do it, there’s almost nothing more.

You can get down that the government releases genetically engineered alfalfa or Obama isn’t turning out to be what you hoped. It’s so careless with the planet that it astonishes me.

This all circles back to my sweet potatoes. I just learned from this farmer in the county that this collection of organisms that improve the soil was discovered in the nineties. You say ‘ oh my’, they’ve been doing this work down there all along, and we only discovered it twenty years ago? We’ve been pouring pesticides and herbicides on the soil and contaminating these things without any idea what we were doing to them? How dare we act as if they don’t matter?!

All you can do, in my view, is your best. What you have to do is live, try to live, as if the way you life makes a difference. Try to promote the ideas that you think, if they were followed, would make it possible for us to survive on earth. That’s the best you can do.

Phone interview condensed and edited.

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A Conversation with Joan Dye Gussow is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

Meal Plan Sunday February 13, 2010

Rachel Tayse — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 15:46:22 +0000

I am teaching a private cooking class, preparing to present at the OEFFA and Beyond Social conferences, celebrating Valentine’s day, and hosting three giveaways on the blog this week. We’re planning quick and simple meals to complement all the special events.

Sunday – dinner with family, bringing vegetables and cranberry applesauce compote

Monday – Afternoon tea of crackers, cheeses, cornichons, special dessert; later, Alex and I will share carryout taco truck treats for a Valentine’s dinner in.

Tuesday – mushroom strogannof over homemade egg noodlees

Wednesday – dinner at a restaurant with Dad

Thursday -baked macaroni and cheese with friends

Friday – grilled fish, vegetables, and rice

Saturday – OEFFA conference

Sunday – OEFFA conference

Don’t forget about the Beyond Social 101 Ticket giveaway! It ends tomorrow (Monday) night at 8 pm.

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Meal Plan Sunday February 13, 2010 is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

Friday Five: Great Events on the Horizon

Rachel Tayse — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:51:54 +0000

It’s time for another Friday Five! Here are five handpicked events that are sure to feed your soul in chronological order:

1. Field & Screen at the Wexner Center for the Arts – From February 4 – 24, the Wexner Center is featuring films about food and the environment. On the 24th, they will host a market and CSA preview with Wayward Seed farm and friends. Check the link for showtimes and prices.

2. Pecha Kucha at Columbus Museum of Art – Twenty notable persons will share twenty slides for twenty seconds each at the 16th Columbus Pecha Kucha event on February 10. Beginning at 6 pm with a performance, presentations will start at 6:30. Pattycake Bakery and the Museum’s Palete Cafe will have refreshments and drinks available. I’ll finally get to attend my first Pecha Kucha!

3. OEFFA Annual Conference Inspiring Farms, Sustaining Communities – On February 19-20, the farmers and home cooks on the front lines of sustainable food growing in Ohio. Workshops, locally sourced food, and keynotes by Joan Dye Gussow and Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens will fill the weekend with inspiration and foodie fellowship. Tickets are nearly sold out so get yours right away. Alex and I are speaking about Home Charcuterie on Sunday morning.

4. Wellness Forum Cooking Class at Hills Market – On Wednesday, February 23rd, Del Sroufe and Wendy Gabriel of Wellness Forum Foods will lead a two hour cooking class featuring three vegetable-based courses at the Hills. A kitchen demonstration will be followed by a three course dinner (with three wines!) in the Hills wine department.

5. First day at Clintonville Farmer’s Market!! – In a mere 92 days, on April 30, the summer farmer’s markets will open. I can almost feel the warmth of the crowd and taste the fresh bites of spring.

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Friday Five: Great Events on the Horizon is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

Buy Tickets Today for the OEFFA Winter Warmer

Rachel Tayse — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:54:32 +0000

Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association is one of my favorite local foods groups in the state. They enable small farms to be certified organic, provide a great resource guide for consumers, hold informative farm tours, and run a great annual conference.

On Saturday January 22, OEFFA is hosting a casual conference benefit evening. Held at Wild Goose Creative from 7 – 9:30 pm, the Winter Warmer will give local food enthusiasts a chance to mingle, bid on locavore-friendly silent auction items, and nosh on hors d’oeuvres prepared by top Columbus chefs Kevin Caskey of Skillet; Rick Lopez of Knead; Kevin Malhame of Third and Hollywood; Jeffrey Potter of Fusion Café; Matt Prokopchek of Trattoria Roma, and John Skaggs of Two Caterers. Drinks will feature The Brothers Drake mead, Columbus Brewing Company beer, and hot chocolate prepared by the Global Gallery.

Tickets are just $30 each available online through the OEFFA website. Unfortunately I will be out of town for the event but I hope some of you attend and enjoy!

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Buy Tickets Today for the OEFFA Winter Warmer is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

Tips for Gardening from the OEFFA conference

Rachel Tayse — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:30:41 +0000

I recently spoke at the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association (OEFFA) on the topic of Urban Gardening. Approximately fifty attendees discussed their urban gardening challenges and together we brainstormed solutions.

I transformed my handout for the workshop into a guest post for Kimberly Hartke, writer of Hartke is Online and publicist for the Weston A. Price Foundation. My Tips for Gardening in Small Spaces with lots of pictures is over at her site.

I am actively searching out a location to give hold the discussion again in Columbus and of course I’ll publish here as soon as I know when and where that might be.

For more OEFFA goodness, you can read my summary of Joel Salatin’s keynote talk.

Finally, local readers can experience inspiration and networking reminiscent of the conference at a screening of the movie King Corn sponsored by OEFFA among other local whole foods organizations. On March 22, Studio 35 will host a discussion among local food advocates and show the film for an admission price of $7.50 starting at 6 pm. Visit the Facebook event listing for all the details.

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Tips for Gardening from the OEFFA conference is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

Joel Salatin: Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal

Rachel Tayse — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:18:18 +0000

“We live in an amazing country where it’s perfectly legal to feed your kids twinkies, hoho cakes, and mountain dew, but raw milk, that’s dangerous.” So began Joel Salatin’s Saturday keynote address to the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association annual conference on February 13, 2010. I attended the talk. The writing below is my best effort to impartially summarize Salatin’s opinions as he shared them.

Joel Salatin is the farmer behind Polyface Farms, a revolutionary pasture based meat producing business. Polyface Farms was featured in Michael Pollan’s recent Omnivore’s Dilemma and the movie Food Inc.

Mr. Salatin shared a litany of things he wants to do that are illegal (in his home state of Virginia, rules are not necessarily the same in every state):

Hire local kids to do farm work – power tools are legally too dangerous, yet they can be licensed to drive cars
Make lard and can stews – legally must be made in a commercial kitchen which can’t be in an agricultural zone
Cure meats – laws require these must be done in a separate outbuilding, one not in an agricultural zone
Give tours or build a cabin for visitors – charging for these services would be entertainment, and entertainment is not allowed in an agricultural zone (Mr. Salatin joked, “This is farmland and it’s not to be for entertainment. Nothing is funny on a farm.”)

Salatin was serious when he called on the audience to be realistic about the fight for real food production. He offered anecdotal evidence that the average citizen hasn’t heard of Food Inc. and regularly eats fast food without thought to the ingredient quality. He declared, “if our position succeeds, it will completely invert the power, prestige, and position of food lords.”

Mr. Salatin explained which current paradigms must shift to have a real food system.

First, the current paradigm is that the government is more trustworthy than individuals. Salatin, with much experience advocating for sustainable farming at the local and national level, believes the “very notion that a bureaucrat is more honest than a farmer is repugnant.”

Secondly, current decision makers and food laws imply that food safety is objective. Salatin believes it is not. He pointed out that hunting is a proud time honored tradition that exists outside of food safety codes and is deemed ‘safe’ by thousands of citizens who eat venison every year. Food safety regulations mostly come into play when food is exchanged for commerce. He questioned, “You can give away raw milk or cheese. What is it about exchanging money that makes it a hazardous substance?”

Next, the current paradigm is that bugs are bad. Americans, especially, have an obsession with sterility that destroys the good bugs who could eat the bad bugs. It is creating immune system dysfunction on an epidemic scale. In real food circles, kefir, kim chee, kombucha and other ‘good bug’ fermented foods are making a come back.

In general, people are ignorant and trained to feel that freedom of choice is scary. Salatin reminded the audience of the origin of the USDA meat stamp of approval. In 1906 after the Jungle was published, meat purchased dropped by 50%. Farmers lobbied congress and Roosevelt created the stamp of approval to increase credibility among consumers. So is the way with many labels; the average consumers’ fear leads to certifications that are little more than hoop-jumping red tape for small producers.

Finally, the processed food system is so pervasive that people now believe it is normal. In reality, Salatin believes, it is not normal for most societies past to present to eat food you can’t pronounce. It is not normal to eat food you can’t make in your kitchen. As a measure of real food, Salatin proposes don’t “eat any food that wasn’t available before 1900.”

Joel Salatin at his Polyface Farms

Salatin’s speech ended with several empowering alternatives for those looking to produce and consume traditional whole foods.

1) Don’t comply. Salatin suggested opting out of the industrial food system. Find your own kitchen. Buy directly from the farmer and talk to them about where and how their goods were raised. “Take your TV up to a high hill with a deer riffle,” he said, advocating that people avoid the traditional media focus on the quick, easy, and cheap.

2) Create a non-commerce system. Community Supported Agriculture arrangements have passed the regulations test and allow farmers to offer a variety of products. Creating private clubs and herd share programs are other non commerce alternatives. Some farmers have even had success giving their product away and make their money through donation bucket collections.

3) Look for loopholes and renaming opportunities. Read regulations carefully and follow them literally. Salatin gave the example of a farmer who needed to follow a regulation that required a wall with a window in one of his buildings. Size was not mentioned, so he built a dog house sized wall and window in the shelter. A raw milk producer relabeled her milk as ‘pet food’ and is able to sell it without concern about anti-raw regulations. Another sells her artisanal cheese as ‘fish bait’ because there are no regulations regarding fish bait in her area.

Salatin concluded his talk demanding “we need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing every American the freedom of food choice. This heritage, sacred, noble food production system will not be wiped from our culture.”

You can read more about Salatin in his many books including Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front

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Joel Salatin: Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

Meal Plan – February 8, 2010

Rachel Tayse — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:00:04 +0000

We’re gearing up for another busy week here.

I am preparing for my OEFFA conference session on Urban Edible Gardening. I was told they expect it to be popular and well attended. Eek! Because I am working so hard, I plan to offer it as a stand alone workshop for those who couldn’t come to the conference. I’m thinking sometime in early March? If you are interested and want to suggest a good day and time, please do.

Alex and I both have appointments to finish our tattoos this week. We’re madly painting the front room and deep cleaning the house in preparation for hosting an Olympics opening ceremony party too.

On to the meals!

Monday – general tso’s chicken and tofu, miso soup, rice

Tuesday – TVP tacos, grapefruit

Wednesday – spaghetti and home canned sauce, salad

Thursday – leftovers

Friday – international potluck at our Olympics party!

Saturday – Alex and Lil – baked fish, rice, veggies, Rachel – OEFFA conference

Sunday – family dinner

As always, hop over to Mindful Menus to share your meal plan for the week if you wish. Jenna just wrote a great article about what to do if your meals are feeling uninspired.

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Meal Plan – February 8, 2010 is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!

Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association Annual Conference

Rachel Tayse — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:15:17 +0000

The Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association conference will be February 13 – 14, 2009 in Granville Ohio. I am presenting a workshop about urban edible gardening from 10:35 – 11:30 AM Saturday.

The conference website is rich with details including online registration. Full registration is $90/130 (member/nonmember); a single day is $65/90. A limited number of volunteer scholarships reduce the rate to $50.

Keynote speakers are Joel Salatin on Saturday and Ann Cooper on Sunday. Mr. Salatin is also offering a full day pre-conference workshop event on Friday.

I am honored to be among the food and farming educators presenting at this event. Please consider joining me and introduce yourself as a reader if you come to my workshop. If you cannot attend, I will offer my materials at Hounds in the Kitchen as well.

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Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association Annual Conference is a post from Hounds In The Kitchen.
If you like what you read, please consider supporting us with a donation or visit the Hounds in the Kitchen shop for ebooks and favorite tools. Thanks!