T-SHIRT INFO

I just got back from the Senate meeting and we got $450 to make our t-shirts! This is great news. Maybe we can vote on how much we'll charge for them (I'm thinking 8 or 10). Also, how cool is the logo that Ava drew??!


I'm the first to admit that I am technologically challenged so...sorry that it didn't scan too well (the bottom got kind of cut-off but you get the idea).

Garden Extravaganza this week

Hi Everyone.
We're having another party in the garden this Thursday evening at five as usual. We are also having people back to Giulia's house for dinner after so please try and leave room in your schedule for that!
Also, I am going to the Senate meeting tonight to get the funds for our t-shirts (I'll try and post the print we're doing later tonight) so fingers crossed that we'll get it!
I hope to see you all very very soon.

A recipe

Hi Everyone,

We have all become intimately aquainted with the patty-pan squash. We've made gratins, we've made ratatouilles, we've made ravioli, we've made lasagna, patty-pan egg scrambles...Here is one of the ways that I have most enjoyed patty-pan-- classic zucchini bread (the patty-pan is essentially a zucchini, as I think we all know!). I've been getting pretty creative with the ingredients (i.e. the other night I ran out of flour and substituted with ground almonds or adding dates and powdered ginger instead of raisins and nutmeg). All in all the loaves have been pretty good. So grab a giant squash from the garden, bake up a loaf and share your innovations with the rest of us PLEASE!

Zucchini Bread Recipe

Ingredients

2 eggs, beaten
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups grated fresh patty-pan squash
2/3 cup melted unsalted butter
2 teaspoons baking soda
Pinch salt
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
1 cup dried cranberries or raisins (optional)

Method

1 Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Mix in the grated patty-pan and then the melted butter. Sprinkle baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour, a third at a time. Sprinkle in the cinnamon and nutmeg and mix. Fold in the nuts and dried cranberries or raisins if using.

2 Divide the batter equally between 2 buttered 5 by 9 inch loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour (check for doneness at 50 minutes) or until a wooden pick inserted in to the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes. Turn out onto wire racks to cool thoroughly.

Makes 2 loaves.

Meeting Notes from Last Week

Hi All,

Here are some ideas we discussed last week--

What to do with all the veggies?
-a few different ideas came out but it became clear that most people in the club enjoy getting together for pot-luck dinners to eat the food together. So lets do it! I especially liked the idea of improve pot-luck dinners around what we have a surplus of (did someone say patty-pan squash?!). It could be kind of a giant recipe competition and cook-off. We could even compile all the recipes into a book!
- We talked about opening a booth at the Eagle Rock farmers' market which would be awesome except, first-year Jocelyn Coffin did some research and it turns out the Eagle Rock market is certified (not certified organic but certified farms). Maybe down the road we'll get there....
- Leaving some plots open for a local elementary school. I love this idea. For now we'll plant them all but maybe in the spring we can look into possible connections for this project.
- Farm to Preschool. The UEPI (which includes Giulia) just wrote a new curriculum for pre-schoolers that involves getting their hands dirty in the soil. We could partner with the pre-school on campus and help them implement the curriculum on our garden.

Art?
We are trying to set up some permanant art installations in the garden. There is an ASOC grant specifically for murals which we can apply for and possibly make some mosaic stepping stones for in between the raised beds. I think it would be AWESOME! I created a new email list for all the people who are interested in this project. I'll email you a little later :)

CHICKENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chickens are on the agenda. Annika made a beautiful drawing and detailed description of the materials we'll need to build the coop. I think a great place for it would be where all that dirt is piled up now. I was at a place that sells chicks and its best to buy them in the spring (it gets too cold in the winter for the little babies) which works really well for us because that is AT LEAST as long as it will take us to get the idea OK'd by the admin. Again, a great team of dedicated feasters signed up for this task-- there is an email group for you too so lets get jumping. For more info on chickens check the post on backyard flock biosecurity a little down the page. We're also in contact with Caitlyn Lacey from Pitzer (who heads their chicken program) and Robin Lewis at Whitman. Whitman raises birds for meat! We might not do that.

Giulia and I had out opening night of Well Fed lat night. It was pretty sweet. We used patty pan from the jardin! Look at our blog: oxywellfed.blogspot.com. ALSO if you are not yet a follower of this blog please become one (so I can at least feel like people are reading!). And become a follower of Well Fed too!

Where does all that soil come from?!

Organic Lawns on Campus?

Great day in the garden-- we leveled and staked two more beds, planted two beds, planted some flower beds, composted, moved soil, ate food and even had a YOGA class! Thanks for coming. I am going to send out a re-cap email about the sitdown meeting we had on Wednesday that also went really well.
Jocelyn Coffin (first-year) did some research the possibility of getting our produce in the Eagle Rock market. Unfortunately that won't be possible at the moment (all the stands are certified by the department of agriculture-- we're not quite there yet). She also sent this really neat article about a project that Harvard is doing-- converting all their grass to be organic. It doesn't sound that revolutionary but apparently its had huge impacts on the quality of the grass and REDUCED ITS WATER NEEDS BY 30%!!! How great would it be if we could do a similar conversion here...imagine how many gallons of water we could save. Here is a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/garden/24garden.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1

Some FUNNY pictures