Asheville conference

Since I can't get Notes to work on FB with my iPad, I'm back to my neglected blog. Maybe I'll keep up better from now on! I'll at least have a birth story to post soon!
This was Jeff's third year going to the Organic Grower's School, a weekend of educational sessions held in Hendersonville in the past and this year in Asheville. I signed up to attend classes Saturday and Jeff, both days. I need all the help with cooking I can get, so the class on Gourmet Cooking in a Flash was appealing, as well as one on French cooking. I also wanted a general overview of the how and why of Permaculture (sustainable living), so signed up for two classes on that.
Cooking classes first:
Gourmet in a Flash:
To be honest I and my family don't have the sophisticated palates for most of the recipes she made, but here is some of the valuable info I took away:
1. BEST idea: fold a regular-sized piece of printing paper lengthwise. Write your grocery list on one side and your meal names for the week on the other. Beside the meal names, write the recipe book and page where each is found. This way you can tell if an item can be substituted...if you find something on sale, or if you want to just try another side item with it or whatever. Also, you can file away a great recipe week and it'll save you planning when you're busy.
2. If you need quick lunches for yourself and a couple kids, make rice or another grain every weekend and add toppings to it throughout the week.
3. Look at what you have on hand and google those ingredients to figure out what you can whip up.

French Cooking:
1. BEST idea: think about how many movements it takes you to reach for things you use every day, like salt or pots and pans. It should take you one movement, two at most, to grab these things. Rearrange your kitchen so that you save yourself time. (I moved my knife block and put the salt and pepper a cabinet closer to the stove.)
2. Get a cutting board that is big enough that you don't feel cramped. (Did this today. I was wasting a lot of time trying to keep everything on my tiny el-cheapo plastic one. When our CSA is in season and I'm blanching tons of veggies, this purchase will be so worth it.)
3. Learn to sharpen your knives, and never use the blade side to scrape food off your cutting board. She gave us a quick demo.
4. Dont be afraid to improvise. Look at cookbooks or internet to see what kinds of ingredients go well together. The teacher actually did this right in class. She didn't have tomatoes for the tomato tart so used apples instead. Apples, herbs, garlic and mustard actually made a tasty dish.
5. Choreograph your meals. Which item takes the longest for prep and cook time? Start that first. Know what you're fixing the night before so you can prep. (Soak the beans, chop some veggies.) This is kind of a "duh" thing but if I don't think it through I inevitably get the timing wrong.
6. Don't be afraid to splurge on a few important ingredients...a good cheese, for example. If what you're making does not satisfy your taste buds, you'll eat more of it in an effort to really "taste" something. She cites "Why French Women Don't Get Fat."

Permaculture:
1. As seen in the current gas crisis and record prices for food, we need to become less dependent on transportation to get us our food. When we find local solutions, we not only have a more dependable food source but we build community.
2. First grow for yourself, then give away surplus to friends, then figure out a way to get rid of surplus. Don't sell to local stores as they'll buy it from you at wholesale prices and mark it up. Look at grocery store prices, undercut a little to give the consumer a deal, then sell at local stands or markets.
3. Plant berries. These are always the first to go at a market. Larger berries are less work to harvest and fill a container, for the same weight and price.
4. You need at least 4-6 hours of sunlight, preferably from 9-4 when light is the strongest, to have decent yields. Less than that, and you'll still get something, but not much.
5. You can cut down muscadines at waist-level and trellis them so you can reach the grapes. Muscadines are the most nutrient-rich and are the easiest to grow of all grapes. They make good jelly and go for high prices in grocery stores.
6. Use your rain barrel to raise a few tilapia! They are hardy and will eat up mosquito larvae.

Urban Permaculture:
The teacher was redesigning the agriculture department at Clemson. He's a master at placing things in the right spot to perform multiple functions. He showed us several back-yard projects he'd done that created food sources and minimized heating and cooling costs.
1. Close in your porch, and ideally have it a few inches lower than the rest of the house, facing the midday sun. Heat rises and will funnel back into the rest of the house.
2. Create curbs to channel roof run-off into a small fishpond. The initial run-off is dirty but can be caught in a downspout that then closes off and lets the clean water run through. His fishpond reflected light onto his sun porch as well, adding more heat.
3. Curbs (and the wet leaves around them) are great earthworm habitats. You can also "inoculate" some logs for shittake mushrooms. The logs need to stay wet, so place them next to the drain curbs.
4. Dig up some of your lawn and plant food. He actually dug up his ENTIRE lawn, which would not work if you have an HOA or picky neighbors. I would have liked to have seen a more aesthetic approach to this...he was big on practicality and not so much on looks. :)

So that's what I learned this past weekend! I'm glad Jeff talked me into going. He actually was out in the snow Sunday while learning to build a mud brick oven, but that's another story.
When you've been out of a classroom for awhile, it sure is nice to have some information tossed at you again, and for $50 a day it was eminently affordable. :)