Preserve In-Season Foods by Freezing!

I've written recently about how blueberries are in season right now. Blueberries are one of those amazing foods that are truly emblematic of summer. Blueberries are of course available year round from places like Chile, but the flavor is by far inferior and the environmental impacts of transporting food on airplanes is just shocking. So stocking up on in-season produce that is cheap and delicious really is the way to go.

A great way to preserve summer fruits is by freezing. If you have extra space in your freezer, try buying a bunch of in-season fruit and saving it for the winter. I bought 16 dry pints of New Jersey blueberries for $30. I washed them and put them in a plastic bag for freezing. After thinking about it, washing the fruit is not only a way to remove dirt and other residues, but will also protect the fruit during the freezing process. Hopefully this will prevent freezer burn during months in the freezer by covering the berries in a thin layer of ice, preventing the harmful effects of water moving from the vapor to frozen states without going through the liquid state.

And for those worried about the environmental tradeoffs of using electricity to keep food frozen for months rather than buying it in the winter from Chile, note that as long as you're not blocking the freezer vents, keeping your fridge full is actually more efficient than keeping it empty. This is because cold food retains cold temperatures better than cold air. Therefore, the fridge does not need to work as hard when it's full of cold food compared to when it's full of cold air.

As summer continues, I'm going to write about jams, canning and pickling too!

Tuning up a Triathlon Bike

The New York City Triathlon is next weekend. It will be my 4th straight year of swimming in the Hudson, biking on the West Side Highway and running through the streets of Manhattan to the finish line in central park. With seven days to go, I've begun tapering which allows the body to recover from weeks and weeks of back to back hard training. By next weekend I should be in perfect condition to tackle the race.

So with the clock ticking down to the start of the race, its time to go over the equipment to make sure everything is in tip top shape so there wont be any surprises on race day. One such issue that needed attention was replacing some worn out tires. These tires have seen me through many miles and quite a few races since last summer but the tread was worn out, cut in many places and was separating from the base of the tire.
As the rubber gets more and more degraded, tires get more and more proned to getting flats. There's always a trade off in tires; you can get heavy tough ones that stand up to punctures and last forever but are not high performance tires. The tires I favor on my race bike are the Vittoria Open Corvo Evo CX. These are expensive ($55 a tires), tend to get flats as they get older and only last about 1,000 to 1,500 miles. But they are tremendous performers: fast, light and amazing traction in every condition. Here's a post about how to replace tires and give a bike a basic tune up.

The next issue that needed some attention was my wheels. I have a set of Zipp deep dish aero wheels. These wheels have small dimples in them, like golf balls, which actually help them cut through the air faster than a smaller, smoother rim. Unfortunately, the Zipp logo stickers were beginning to peel off which was seriously hurting the wheels' aerodynamics. I'm beginning to think that keeping stickers on the wheels (especially covering the dimples) interferes with the aerodynamic efficiency of the wheels. When the stickers start to peel, forget about it. Peel them off!


The result are some lean, mean blacked out wheels. I used some degreaser on the glue residue and the braking surface as well as the rest of the bike. I should be in good shape for the race next weekend.

New Pictures from the New York City Urban Garden

July is here and I'm finally enjoying some of the first vegetables from my New York City garden. It's been great picking varieties, preparing the soil with my homemade compost, watching these plants grow and pulling weeds, but now its time for the best part of having a garden- eating what you've grown yourself!

People think you need to give up a lot to live in New York City but thats not really true. Even if you dont have a backyard, you might have access to your builidng's roof (and better sun than i get!) or at least a window sill or fire escape for some herbs and a tomato plant. Growing your own food is a rewarding experience and a fun project. It gives you a connection to your food that you just cant get when you buy it. Plus, it's a slice of nature right here in the city.

My beans are doing well. Should be able to eat these in a week or two! My Cabernet vines are growing very quickly. I even have some tiny wine grapes growing. Don't know if I'll have enough to make wine however.
The first tomatoes of the season! The varity is called Early Girl and they sure produced early. They were delicious!
These lilies (I think) have been growing at my apartment since I moved in but never flowered until this year. I must be doing something right!
My hop vines are getting really tall- almost 15 feet so far!

Growing Grass in New York City

When people hear that I have a lawn in New York City, the typical reaction is suspicion and disbelief. But it’s true! I have a bucolic backyard with a verdant lawn… sort of. When I moved into my apartment, the backyard was in sorry shape. Filled with garbage, broken furniture, plastic bags and rotting wood, it took a lot of work to clean up the place. I removed a lot of poor soil that was full of rocks, sand and probably other nasties. Then we brought in about sixty big bags of top soil and compost for a lawn and a garden. The lawn died the first year but in subsequent years it has started to look better and better. Now I need to mow the lawn (with my reel lawn mower) on a weekly basis!

Even with all this improvement, a large birch tree pulls moisture out of the ground and shades half the backyard making it difficult to grow grass. Plus I’m always doing projects in the backyard so the lawn is constantly getting walked on, crushed with tools and burned with beer brewing boilers. So with all this, half the lawn was starting to look a little sorry. So when I was out of town for the 4th, I picked up some shade specific grass seed. Interestingly enough, I cannot seem to find a store in New York City that sells grass seed. Sigh.
I prepared the soil by taking a shovel to the dead and grass-less sections of my yard. I turned over the soil and then spread some compost from my compost bin for added soil nutrients. Black gold!
I spread the grass seed and then raked it over to bury the seed and even out the soil. I'll water it every day for the first week or so (unless it rains). Stay tuned for my new and improved New York City lawn.

What makes a Blueberry Local?

Does local mean it's purchased at a farmer's market? Or simply that it’s grown close to where it’s purchased? For the past two weeks and for about the next three weeks, just about every blueberry available on the east coast comes from Hammonton, New Jersey, the self proclaimed "Blueberry Capital of the World". Blueberry season is the perfect opportunity to buy fresh, local and inexpensive produce (and freeze it for later in the year!). This supports local communities and farmers, minimizes the environmental impact of transportation and they're about the most delicious blueberries imaginable!

With fresh, local blueberries available cheaply at every grocery store and corner market for $2 a pint, it makes you scratch your head why blueberries at the New York City Greenmarket are selling for $5 or $6 a pint. To put this in perspective, the wholesale price of blueberries grown in New Jersey in 2007 was $1.67 a pound.

Whether they sell at the Greenmarket or not, the farms that grow New Jersey blueberries are local and the produce is fresh and in-season. I've been to Hammonton, New Jersey and these are family farms, not mega-farms. I've been to farm stands, farm markets and orchard stands all over the area (including Hammonton, NJ) and the price and quality of in-season produce is fantastic (especially if you pick your own). They're not going to get organic certification, just as most farmer's market farmers refuse to, as it’s a cumbersome administrative process (and the word organic has largely been co-opted as a marketing tool for agribusiness), but they're still growing fruit in a responsible and sustainable manner. It’s true that buying at the farmer's markets puts the money directly into the farmer's pockets rather than through a fruit distribution middleman, but this is a reason why they should be cheaper at the farmers market rather than significantly more expensive.

So why is the Greenmarket so much more expensive for the same stuff? The reason has to do with monopolistic practices and the cachet that has been built around food from the Greenmarket.

The Greenmarket's public perception of quality, naturalism and environmental sustainability is a powerful marketing tool. It takes all the guesswork out of what is the "right" kind of food to buy. This marketing cachet is certainly implicit in the high prices at the farmers market. The price differential can be attributed at least in part to the fact that everything comes at a premium in New York City. However this is belied by the fact that street stands and grocery stores are selling the same local berries as the Greenmarket for about 1/3rd the price. The problem stems more specifically from people relying on buying from the Greenmarket as a way to ensure that their food is local, fresh and in season (this cost of reliance is implicit in the price) rather than thinking critically about what they consume and where it comes from.

The Greenmarket has developed such a cult following that they have identified themselves as the only authentic source of local food in New York City. This has gotten to the point that they have established a monopoly on local food in New York City, with the high prices to match. Fortunately, the informed consumer knows that you don’t need to buy from the Greenmarket and pay those exorbitant prices when food is in season.

News of the Week!

Here's a great article about old fashion American festivals that celebrate local foods that define a geographic region. Unfortunately, as the article points out, a lot of orchards and farms have been lost to sprawl and don't grow as much of the celebrated fruits and vegitables.

Support local and small production booze! The world is full of unique flavors and tastes that leave mainstream brands seeming insipid and bland. That’s why I started Manhattan Meadery. And why I wrote a comment on this review of a book detailing the history of alcohol.

A great article on Community Supported Agriculture. This is a great way to bypass the dysfunctional New York City Greenmarket system and get direct access to local farmers. There is already a CSA here in New York that is certainly worth checking out!

A good article on what to grow "right now". There are some good ideas in this un-Times-like rambling article.

Talk about some self sufficient Greenwich kids! They found some unused land (in Greenwich no less) and scrimped and salvaged for materials and built a baseball field! There is hope for youth in America.

Apparently there is a big wild turkey population in Staten Island. Did they miss the fact that Central Park also has a few wild gobblers?

Make your own Ice Tea!

A while back I wrote an article about how making your own coffee (rather than buying Starbucks or some other overpriced coffee) can save you thousands of dollars a year which can add up to millions of dollars over a lifetime. Well apparently America has responded and sales of overpriced coffee are down precipitously over the past several months and Starbucks has even announced that they are closing hundreds of stores. Whether it’s born of conviction, environmental principle or economic circumstances, it looks like many people are becoming interested in a frugal lifestyle rather than a wasteful and consumptive one.

Making your own ice tea may seam like a small way to save money, but doing it consistently will save a lot of money over the long term. In addition, you'll enjoy ice tea that is far healthier and more delicious than the stuff you buy at stores and has a much smaller environmental impact. Plus, there’s the nostalgic imagery of a kitchen on a hot day with a huge jug of homemade ice tea sitting on the kitchen counter. Just like mom used to make!

One tea bag costs about 15 cents and will make about 32 ounces of ice tea. Most bottled tea you buy is sixteen to twenty ounces and costs between $1.50 and $2.00. One of those a day could set you back $730 a year! On the other hand, sixteen ounces of homemade tea a day will set you back $27.35 a year.

Next consider that most teas like Arizona, Snapple and Lipton are low quality instant tea mixed with corn syrup. It tastes terrible and is bad for you. You can buy high quality tea bags very cheaply, especially in bulk, and will get a far greater variety and quality of ice tea than you'd ever find buying it pre-made, even with the high end bottled teas which are even more pricy.

Also keep in mind the environmental impacts of consuming bottled beverages. Tea is imported from around the world including India and China, but it’s also extremely light, non-perishable and a little bit goes a very long way. It’s about as environmentally responsible as shipping food from around the globe could possibly be. On the other hand, bottled teas all rely on aluminum, plastic or glass containers that are used once and then thrown away/recycled. Plus they are heavy and require transportation and refrigeration from bottling plant to the store which significantly increases the carbon footprint of drinking bottled tea.
So here's a basic overview of how I make my own iced tea. You can of course make it in pitchers, large jars or whatever you like. Add lemon or different kinds of tea bags for different flavors. Have fun!

I use a tall glass tomato sauce glass jar with a 1.5 inch lid and a capacity of 16 ounces. I start with a new tea bag and fill the jar with cold water, securing the tea bag string when I screw on the lid. Throw it in the fridge until cold and then drink! Save the tea bag and next time fill up the jar with hot water and put it on your kitchen counter until it cools to room temperature and then put in the fridge until cold. Put the tea bag in the compost bin and enjoy tea just as tasty as the first batch!

You can of course just make tea in a bigger container and make one batch, but for smaller containers use cold water for the first steep and then hot water for the second. This will release less of the tea's essence on the first round and all of the remaining essence on the second round. I put the hot steeping tea on a counter to cool before putting it in the fridge because there's no sense in making the fridge work harder to cool down a hot beverage when ambient air can do the same job without wasting energy. And yes, tea bags are totally biodegradable in your compost pile. You can remove the staple in the tea bag if you're worried about metal but other than that it'll turn to dirt quite quickly.

Cheers!