The Tilsons

I’m gearing up to start year two of three of my MBA in Sustainable Development at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. I love the BGI experience for a couple of reasons. One, it quickly opened my eyes to the reality of what our economic system has done to the health of the planet while at the same time bringing together multiple cohorts of people determined to set a new course. Two, unlike the vast majority of MBA programs around the world that produce business graduates whose only goals is to perpetuate the destructive paradigm that has been established, BGI has given me enough wisdom, insight and the integrity to develop businesses that can profit without degrading the environment and exploiting people. Taking a quick look at the state of the world, business graduates will not be able to continue on the path to success without these invaluable qualities. Earn an traditional MBA - get the skills to externalize your waste into the environment and manipulate people for personal gain! (Needless to say I had little interest in pursuing a traditional MBA.) There’s my plug for BGI, now check out this video:

Fortunately not all MBA grads from other schools are quite as myopically focused on profits and growth as I have alluded to above. Mark Albion is one such graduate and prof from Harvard’s MBA program who has seen the light. He has teamed up with the good folks who produced The Story of Stuff to create a 3 minute movie called The Good Life (above). The movie gracefully illustrates typical MBA thinking and delivers a gentle wake up call. The wake up call is for all folks on the money treadmill, not just MBAs. It’s time to reconsider what you are doing, how and why you are doing it and if what you are doing makes sense considering what you genuinely want (hint: meaning) and what your community and the world needs. Enjoy!

Finally I have done it folks!  I have completed the Laminaria Star Chart. See the little stars in my knitting in the photo?  I didn’t have those the first two times…  The first two times it was like lines with bunches.  I’ve got it now though.  I am the MASTER OF THE STAR CHART!  Woa.

I realize just why knitting lace is so addictive.  It appeals to the strong inner perfectionist I harbour - when I knit lace, and I end on the right stitch on the right line of a chart, I know that my knitting thus far is actually perfect. PERFECT.  There can be no mistakes if I end on the right stitch.  I feel when I have accomplished this, as I have with the finishing of the star chart, that I have cheated someone out of making me skrew up. That sounds terrible, but I make mistakes so often, that it feels like there are little knitting pixies out there making my attention stray, or that stitch slip off my needle. Let’s add “satisfying” to lace knitting qualities.  Nothing like sticking it to the knitting pixies.

And now that I have jinxed my knitting forever - permanently etched my name on the pixies Knitter’s Blacklist, I’m going to go and try my hand at felting.  Hah!  Wreck my felting!  I dare you!

Last night we made one of our creative, do it yourself, try something new suppers. This time, we invited our friend Matt, who is about to make himself our new roomy, to share in the experience and get a taste of doing it like a Tilson! On the menu was fresh, homemade pasta with pesto and cherry tomatoes from the garden, a beautiful salad, made by my beloved with kale, lettuce, radishes and beans from the garden, a homemade Italian salad dressing and a homemade blackberry pie with blackberries picked fresh the day before! We were all pretty excited.

My brother gave us an uber Marcato Pasta Maker for our wedding (that we received about a month ago - Thanks Lar!) Who knew it would be so difficult to find a pasta maker that doesn’t use electricity? (In case you are looking, we give this one five stars for quality and usability!) Justin found a great video that shows you how to make perfect pasta, step by step, alongside a little Italian man. I can’t believe how easy it is (mind you I had my hands in the pie shell dough). Matt and Justin had a great time getting it just right. Tip from Matt: keep flouring the dough and rolling it through the pasta maker until it doesn’t stick at all. We have also decided that thinner is better because it does expand when you cook it.

I made a blackberry pie for the first time, with a traditional crisscross lid. (I tried the crisscross pie shell on an apple pie once, and the filling became too dry. It works perfectly for soupy filling like blackberries. I forgot one important point - always place a pan under the pie to catch the drippings. The pie crust recipe is a simple standard pie crust (just like my grammas!)

• 3 C flour
• 1 1/4 C Shortening (I used buttery sticks)
• pinch ‘o’ salt
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp of vinegar
• 6 tbsp of water

Cut the shortening into the flour. Wisk the wet ingredients together in a measuring cup. Gradually add wet ingredients to dry while stirring with a fork. When the dough is reasonably consistant, ball up and roll into pie shell shapes. In the case of criss cross top - cut thin strips and weave together over the pie, folding the strips backwards and forwards to make the weaving easier.

the filling is as follows:

• 1/2 cup of flour
• 1/2 a cup of sugar
• Enough blackberries to fill a pie

Mix the above ingredients together and place in the bottom of a raw pie shell. Place in the oven at 425F for 25 mins, lower the temp to 375F and bake another 25mins (watch for burning crust)

As always, it was exciting to try something new, and use a tool that we hadn’t used before. Doing it ourselves always makes the food taste even better than the best fresh store bought food, especially when it turns out as well as it did last night!
Justin and I are super excited about the new addition to our home, great company makes great meals! Thank you Matt!

Suzanne and Dominique of Rocky Mountain Flatbread threw a media event today to promote Feast of Fields. Feast of Fields brings farmers and chefs together at three different events each summer including Vancouver, Whistler and Vancouver Island.

The morning event included some delicious dessert like pizza featuring toppings from our garden and two other urban farmers: Ward of City Farm Boy and Craig of Kitsilano Farms. Fresh fig with blackberry or fig with apple and a bit of cinnamon are incredible! The figs were so good I plan to go buy a Desert King fig tree tomorrow. It was a great event with many passionate and committed folks in the room. I was able to connect with some allies who may be able to help get Vancouver’s bylaw (9150) changed that prohibits keeping chickens in the city.

Numerous media folks attended the pizza tasting including the daily newspaper 24 Hours. 24 Hours wanted to snap a few shots in the garden for a short story so I gladly jumped on the opportunity to give the urban farming movement a little exposure. I got page 3, right across from from Kate Moss and some other celebs. Sadly, no calls from Oprah or Martha yet. The article, like the attention span of the intended audience of urban commuters, is short but carries a positive tone. Maybe a few more people will make the connection and realize just how nourishing urban gardening can be.

I have officially got the canning bug! Today I felt inspired to try a couple of new recipe ideas - thanks to the mint, lavender and rose jelly I bought my mom for christmas (and porked out on after stockings were opened). Here are the recipes:

I used the Certo box recipe for the apple jelly - note that two cheesecloth layers are enough if making a bag. Somehow the jelly clears up as you cook it. I don’t get it.
First, make a bunch of apple juice by:

1. cutting up apples in quarters, removing the stem and blossom end, and then cooking them (with water to cover).
2. Let ‘em simma for about 30 mins and then mash ‘em up with a potato masher.
3. Stick the mush in a jelly bag (or make one from cheesecloth) Then hang it precariously from a stick going across the gap between the counters. I left it all day.(This is pretty sketchy. My mom’s cherry bag broke once and they went everywhere - that stains.) I enjoy risk. (not botulism risk though…)
4. Then, the stuff you have at the end - strain it through a clean dish towel, and you’ve got juice!

For Basic Apple Jelly:

1. For Bring 7 cups of juice, 2 TBSP lemon and 1 pack certo crystals to a boil.
2. When boiling, add 9 C sugar and bring to a rolling boil for one minute ( make sure your pot is way bigger than your liquid, because the bubbles WILL boil over. They will expand like an alien species on a new planet and over take whatever pot they are in. Heck - don’t even bother trying to prevent it, just be ready with a spoon to eat it up cloth to clean it up.)
3. As it is doing this, try and get the fine white frost off as fast as you can. After a minute, turn off the heat and scrape the rest of the foam off. Should be a clear brown colour.
4. At this point, proceed with all botulism prevention methods of canning jelly (hot jars, hot lids, hot screw tops - pour in to 1/4″, wipe rim, screw top, place on towel to set)

If you want to add some flavour, try lavender or mint. For lavender I used between a 1/4 and a 1/2 C of fresh lavender flowers, crammed them in my big tea ball and put it in with step 2. Keep it in until after the 1 minute boil-overflow-thing.

For mint take 2 C of fresh mint leaves (from your garden!), wash them and put them in a bowl. Then pour 1 C of boiling water on them, cover with a plate and leave it for an hour or more. When ready, squeeze the leaves out and put 2 tbsp per cup of juice (that would be 14 tbsp in this recipe) in with the ingredients of step 2.

ENJOY~!

Like Dilly Beans, but with a T.

1. Pack 7 jars of beans, any colour, washed, ends trimmed. This will ad up to 6 when cooked.
2. Bring to a boil

   3 C Water

   3 C Vinegar (5% acid)

   3 T Canning Salt

1. Wash pint size canning jars and put in each jar

   1 clove garlic

   3-4 pepper corns

   pinch red pepper flakes

   heaping 1/4 tsp dill

1. Put the beans in the vinegar mix (brine) and bring back to a boil.
2. Pull the beans out, pack into jars and top with brine (to 1/2 inch from top), releasing any bubbles.
3. Wipe the jar, place lid on and screw top.
4. Process for 10 minutes in boiling canner bath.
5. Remove from canner, allow to cool and remove screw tops.
6. Serve after refrigerated. (best after 4 weeks of sitting)

Wow. I am a jackass.

So the charts all have this red line boxing in certain stitches. I have a b & w printer, and don’t read instructions well at the best of times, so missed them completely. Therefore, I would knit the row over and over and over again until the knitted row was done, and then start again on the next row. The funny thing is - it worked out. HOWEVER - the stitch count by the end of my second star chart was… well, double. (The pattern does look a little crazy…)

Is this because it’s my first time reading a chart and didn’t know what that little outline meant? I am using the fact that I found the answer to my question on Ravelry from Liz herself, which is evidence that, yes, it is beginners luck.

Are you repeating the stitches within the red lines?

The set up chart includes all the stitches, but by the time you get to the rest of the charts, the shawl is too large to include all the stitches on the chart. You knit the stitches on the right of the first red line, then repeat the stitches between the red lines till you have just enough stitches left on that side to finish by knitting the stitches to the left of the red lines.

In chart 1, every pattern row is essentially the same. You knit the selvage stitches, make a 1-into-3 star, the alternate k1 and 3-into-3 stars across the first half, finishing the half with a k1 and a 1-into-1 star, knit the center stitch thru the back loop, then repeat for the second side. Each 3-into-3 star should be made from one stitch from the star below and right, the plain stitch dirrectly below and one stitch from the star below and left.

The only reason there are 8 rows given in the star chart, is so that the stitch count is correct when you move into the transition chart.

Hope this helps,

liz

I can’t believe I have to frog again. Cocky ‘lil me didn’t use a lifeline. siiiiighhhh… on the bright side - it will knit up faster now that I am not making so many xtra stitches. zoooooom!

I finished a fairly simple lace piece out of some handspun a couple of weeks ago and immediately became enamoured with the idea of knitting a real lace shawl with real lace weight. I wanted to make something that gave me the feeling that Athena would have had wrapped in her spinning. So, I went to the store looking for lace weight, but didn’t find any that quite suited my purposes. I wanted some variation in colour so that my shawl would have a hand spun / hand died look to it. Then, as if answering the call of my whining and complaining about not being able to find laceweight I liked consciousness, my great friend Beth gave me some Knit Picks Alpaca Alpaca Cloud for free. FREE.

It is one of the weest skeins I have ever seen (473 yrds) but was enough to make a shoulderette. Good idea, start small… make the mistakes when I’m young and then fly from the nest with a completed shawl under my belt. This led me searching on Ravelry, and then to Knitty to find - Laminaria by Elizabeth Freeman. Totally tantalizing pattern.

Now. The thing about knitting patterns that I always forget, is that they are written by a person who is different than me, thus allowing me to interpret their creation. This last part sometimes creates less than desirable effects. Given that this was my first real shawl, my first real lace weight and my first ever chart reading, the fact that I spent over 1.5 hours on the first three rows was okay with me. But you might learn from my experiences. (Being that after completing two and a half charts I realized that I was making mistakes and had to rip it all back to restart) It always takes that rip back for me to learn how to read the pattern from the knitting.

Here are my beginners hints:

1. Here is a great crochet cast-on (provisional cast-on) video.
2. The two beginning stitches that you created with the cast-on will be knit over and over again to make the actual cast on row which is in the centre of the top of the shawl (hence the markers).
3. Basically, for the whole shawl you are making progressively larger “c” shapes around these first stitches, with a very defined centre line (hence the markers)
4. All ws (wrong side) rows are pearled (yes, this means the one after “Next Row (ws)”
5. Set Up Chart: this is where it is good to figure out what a 1-3 and a 3-3 look like so that if you forget where you are at, you can read your knitting.
6. K1 tbl yo k1 tbl: You knit into the back of the loop, without dropping the stitch of the left needle, yarn over and then knit into the back of the loop again, then drop the stitch of the left needle.
7. There is always a k stitch in between the “1-3″’s etc (this is even true if you repeat a couple of patterns during the first half of a row - ie before the markers) The marked stitch in the middle counts as the “k” stitch.
8. You will be repeating rows of the chart over and over again along the row of the knitting until you reach the end. You will knit the stitches in between the red lines over and over again to the end of the knitted row. (update) I cannot tell you how important it is to remember to put that k st. in between the repeats (and for that matter remember to repeat the whole pattern - I was occasionally confused and thus skipping the first 1-3 of the pattern once I got started for some reason, this led me to rip everything back)
9. The chart rows always finish before the marked centre of the shawl. The chart row 3-3 star never spans the marked centre of the shawl.
10. Since there are no stitch counts for every row, you have to make sure that you end your knitting with the end of your chart row (plus those two k st.) I was just k2ing when I had some extras. EEP.

The pattern has a definite look to it (to see it up close check out Emmaclitur’s flickr photo) Laceweight will be a little different, but you get the idea. Now back to knitting!

Granville Magazine has spread the urban farming gospel in their latest issue. The online story doesn’t have any of the great pictures that we’re displayed in their print version. I’ve attached it as a pdf for those who don’t have access to a print copy.

The more I dig into the unreported details of peak oil and how dependent our current agriculture system is on petrol the more I see the necessity of vastly expanding urban agriculture to put every sunny piece of ground, grass, balcony and rooftop to use. With our food system 100% dependent on oil for farming, fertilizers, transportation, cooling, processing and disposal we can expect to see food prices inflate as oil prices do. Perhaps it won’t be 1:1 but it will be a significant amount, significant enough to make it prohibitively expensive to maintain the system we have built. The system is already failing and the media is just starting to report on it. If you haven’t started your “victory garden” yet, I think it’s time to dig in.

It was our first anniversary last night so we decided to celebrate with the first dinner I ever cooked for Lisa. This was by far the best batch of Phai Thai we have ever made so I thought I would post the recipe. It’s not from any particular book. Numerous years of practice and experimentation have finally paid off! All ingredients are approximate values. Buy organic! Sorry locavores, this recipe relies on ingredients from farther away than we usually indulge in.

Ingredients

• 1 package medium rice noodles
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• 1/2 block medium or firm tofu cut into small cubes or your favourite shape
• dash or two of Braggs
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 - 1/2 lb small shrimp
• handful of match-stick carrots
• 1/2 - 2/3 cup thinly sliced celery
• 1 - 2 shallots
• 1 - 2 handfuls of green onion stems
• fresh cilantro
• dry roasted, unsalted, ground (not too fine) peanuts

Sauce Ingredients

• 2 cups water
• 3 - 4 tbsp tamarind paste (or a sizable chunk)
• 2 - 3 tbsp canola or other cooking oil
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp sambal olek (red chilli sauce)
• juice from 1/2 lime
• salt and pepper

Directions

Preparation

1. Soak egg noodles in cold water prior to cooking (30+ minutes).
2. Place tamarind paste in a pot with water (2 cups) and simmer. Mash with a fork over time break up the super viscous paste.
3. Scramble eggs in a dish and set aside
4. Brown up tofu in a frying pan with a bit of oil, crushed garlic, Braggs, salt and pepper & set aside
5. If peanuts are raw, dry roast them in a toaster oven at 300F for 20 minutes (ish). Watch them so they don’t burn. Once cooled, either chop up or run through a mini prep blender/chopper. Set aside for garnish.
6. Chop up enough cilantro and set aside for garnish

Sauce

1. In a 2 cup measuring glass mix:
2. Oil, fish sauce, lime, paprika, sugar, crushed garlic, sambal olek, salt & pepper
3. Add approx 1 3/4 tamarind water with mashed up tamarind

Cooking

1. In a medium-high heat pan with a bit of oil, add egg noodles. Because, they will be dripping with water and will make a lot of noise as the cold water drips into the hot oil. Do this part quickly.
2. Turn heat down to medium.
3. Add carrots, celery, shallots, tofu, shrimp.
4. Pour scrambled eggs over everything.
5. Add approximately 1/3 sauce and gently mix sauce, noodles and other ingredients.
6. Cover. The noodles will absorb moisture quickly and much will evaporate.
7. Let cook for a couple minutes making sure it’s not sticking or burning to the bottom of the pan.
8. Add another 1/3 sauce and stir.
9. Cover for a couple more minutes.
10. At this point you are getting close. It’s done when the noodles are el dante (cooked through but not mushy) and the veggies are the same. You want to take it off the heat when the noodles look a little too saucy because they will continue to absorb moisture and can actually be dry by the time you get to eating them in a few minutes.
11. Add green onion stems and stir once more.
12. Use the last 1/3 of the sauce if you need to. The noodles may dry out a bit in the pan while juggling everything.
13. Add Phad Thai to large plates and cover with a thin layer of cilantro and crushed peanuts
14. Enjoy!

This recipe is a bit of work and takes a little practice to get the coordination and timing right but is well worth the effort. When it turns out perfect, its unforgettable.