KRAUT FEST!!!!

Avatar photo
Events
2 Comments
Limited edition Kraut Fest poster–click to enlargulate

There’s been way too many Los Angeles based event announcements this week and not enough blogging! So sorry–one last announcement and we’ll be back to our regular programming:

Kraut Fest 2009! September 6, 2009
11am – 3pm

Taught by Mark Frauenfelder, Erik Knutzen, Kelly Coyne, Jean-Paul Monsche, and the winner of Critter’s 2009 Kimchi Competition, Oghee “Granny” Choe (www.GrannyChoe.com)

Come learn how to make your own sauerkraut, kimchi, and choucroute garni, the signature dish of Alsace (described to us as a ridiculous meat fiesta).

11am – Making Sauerkraut – click HERE for a list of ingredients to bring!

12pm – Making Kimchi – click HERE for a list of ingredients to bring!

1pm – Choucroute Garni presentation & sampling

Participants will need to bring their own ingredients (shopping lists are linked above).

You can register to make either kimchi or sauerkraut for $10, or both for $15. Registration gets you a “kraut kit” consisting of a bucket (for sauerkraut class) or a jar (for kimchi class), and a limited edition, hand-silkscreened poster (see here). You can also buy the poster separately through our online store, here. Funded in part by a grant from Slow Food LA. Thank you Slow Food LA!

Sauerkraut Workshop registration $10

Register at Machine Project

30 Years of Farmer’s Markets in Los Angeles

Avatar photo
Events
1 Comment


Join Homegrown Evolution and an amazing group of LA food pioneers as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of farmers’ markets in Los Angeles. We’ll be in Good Magazine’s booth at noon this Thursday September 3rd doing a free self irrigating pot (SIP) demo. Learn how to use a SIP to grow your own food even if you have no land to call your own. Best of all there will be a whole lot more to enjoy–see the amazing lineup here. The event will take place downtown at the Arts District/Little Tokyo Market at City Hall–1st and Spring Street. Chef demonstrations, a salsa contest and speeches kick off at 10:30 a.m. If you like food and live in Los Angeles don’t be anywhere else on Thursday!

Sourdough, Preserves, Barbeque Sauce and Chutney!

Avatar photo
Events
1 Comment

We’re teaming up with our friend and neighbor Jennie Cook, executive chef of Jennie Cooks A Catering Company to offer a special cooking class on Sunday September 13th at 2 p.m in Los Angeles. We’ll demonstrate how to make sourdough bread and Jennie will cook up a batch of her mouthwatering chutney, barbecue sauce and more. Here’s the 411:

“Hang out and cook with the Urban Pioneers who created an oasis in So Cal where they grow their own food, bake their own bread and brew their own Hooch. We’ll put up preserves, barbecue sauce and chutney of summer’s final fruits. We’ll dry some tomatoes and let the season add to our other endeavours. Erik will talk us through the how-to’s of Sourdough bread and even provide starter for you to keep on your own kitchen counter. Please allow three hours for class.

Class is limited to 10 students. Each student will receive a copy of the book, autographed of course, preserves etc. and sourdough starter. The suggested price for class is $95$69. per person

RSVP:
Jennie Cook
Owner Executive Chef
Jennie Cooks A Catering Company
3048 Fletcher Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90065
323.982.0052
[email protected]
www.jenniecooks.com
www.partytips.wordpress.com for Menus and Upcoming Events”

Thyrsus: the new hipster accessory

Avatar photo
Thoughtstylings
16 Comments
Ancient thyrsus on left, modern hipster version on right.

The traveling exhibition Pompeii and the Roman Villa, currently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has a few nice tchotchkes worth considering for those of us attempting to garden in Mediterranean places. One of the centerpieces of the show, a large fresco depicting a garden, includes many familiar plants: chamomile, oleander (who knew oleander existed before freeways!), strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) and date palms.

But what kept capturing my eye in multiple pieces, was a ceremonial stick carried in Bacchic processions called a thyrsus. Consisting of a stalk of giant fennel topped with a pine cone, occasionally accessorized with a grape or ivy vine, I realized that, here in Los Angeles thanks to our similar climate, I could step out the back door and make my own thyrsus, which I promptly did. For my modern thyrsus I drilled a hole in the pine cone and fennel stalk and inserted a metal pin to hold the pine cone to the stalk.

The combination of a pine cone and fennel stalk symbolizes the unity of farm and forest, of the cultivated and the wild. And you don’t need to be a Freudian to grasp, shall we say, the meaning of a long shaft topped by a bunch of seeds. Roman homes and gardens were, in fact, full of phallic fertility symbols that seem crass to our modern eyes. Exhibitions like Pompeii and the Roman Villa, sadly, censor this imagery. You’ve got to visit the secret cabinet in Naples to see this stuff (way not safe for work!).

Censorship of these ancient fertility symbols is related in my mind to modern fears of the fecundity of nature. It’s these fears that lead landlords to pour copious amounts of concrete and gravel to smother every living thing. It’s what causes neighbors to launch irrational tree and bush killing rampages over the property line lest any bit of foliage fall and mar their precious SUVs.

As rampaging forest fires send Vesuvian plumes of smoke over Los Angeles, it’s time to wave our freak thyrsi high to counter the naturefobic forces out there! As Euripides says, “To raise my Bacchic shout, and clothe all who respond/ In fawnskin habits, and put my thyrsus in their hands–/ The weapon wreathed with ivy-shoots.”

Urban Farm Magazine

Avatar photo
Events, Resources, Urban Farming
4 Comments

We have a article on urban farmers across America in the premiere issue of a magazine bound to appeal to readers of this blog, Urban Farm. Our article, Where Urban Meets Farm, profiles the efforts of our friends the Green Roof Growers of Chicago, Em Jacoby of Detroit and Kelly Yrarrazaval of Orange County. All of these fine folks have repurposed urban and suburban spaces to grow impressive amounts of food, a common sense trend popular enough to have spawned this new magazine.

Editor Karen Keb Acevedo says, “Urban Farm is here to shed a little light on the things we can all do to change our lifestyles, in ways we think are monumental as a whole, yet at the same time, barely noticeable on their own.” The first issue has practical articles on goats, bees and chickens as well as how to get rid of your lawn. There’s also a nice article by John Jeavons, who developed the Grow Biointensive method, and wrote the seminal book How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits.

Check your local newsstand for Urban Farm or pick up a copy of the premiere issue here.