TBECC Round-Up: Recipes, Crafts, and Books, Oh My!
Posted: April 28, 2011 Filed under: Art & Craft, Farm Women Fancy, Recipes | Tags: coffee, craft, domesticity, farmers market, feminism, food culture, industrial food system, local food, NYC, self-sufficiency, tea, women, women farmers Leave a comment »
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” This is hands down my favorite quote from a novel ever. I’m a huge Virginia Woolf fan; there’s something about female, high-society writers that I can’t get enough of. (Edith Wharton, anyone?) I’m definitely no literary buff, not even by a long-shot, but I’ve always identified that simple sentence with my own notions of feminism and femininity (beyond the larger context of the book of course, I’m not married to a politician, nor do I have servants). So in preparation for TBECC, a celebration of domesticity and feminism of sorts, I just had to buy flowers…myself.
TBECC was more than just flowers and aesthetics, of course, and it lived up to its name: friends, women, eating, talking about food issues, sharing knowledge and just enjoying each other’s company. We had SO MUCH food. Meg baked a banana cake with chocolate sea salt caramel ganache (which she baked in a toaster oven!); Marlie brought salad (thankfully, some lighter fare) and bread from Hawthorne Valley Farm where she’s a market worker; Julia brought buttermilk pie and honey and jam; and I baked some honey whole wheat pound cake and mini cinnamon rolls. (More recipes to follow!) To drink, I sorted my out-of-control collection of Harney and Sons tea, and pulled out my bag of Counter Culture Jagong coffee (arguably my new favorite, although Crop To Cup’s Burundi is still up there).
Dani Walsh, the wonderful woman behind www.WomenEatNYC.com (and Grub Street intern!!), a bee-yoo-ti-ful blog that includes recipes and pictures of women enjoying food, stopped by and helped out with some necessary lighting in my living room (no natural light, boo!). She also shared some really cute recipe cards (Dani, let me know where you found those little guys!). We discussed our favorite baking books including, The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum (who also wrote the Cake Bible!) and The Bread Bakers Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.
Eventually (it was inevitable) the knitting needles came out and Meg, knitter extraordinaire, shared her go-to book for knitting: The Complete Guide to Needlework edited by Readers Digest. Meg’s copy is ancient, but it’s a gem of a reference book. The pictures are painfully 80s, but the instruction is invaluable, with pictures and clear descriptions of a bajillion patterns and stitches for all kinds of stitching crafts from knitting to quilting to needlepoint to embroidery.
We’re hoping to host another TBECC before the school-year lets out. My hope is that TBECC will encourage more women (men too!) to get together, share domestic knowledge and take back our food system!
TBECC: Reclaiming the Domestic, in Action!
Posted: April 15, 2011 Filed under: Art & Craft, Farm Women Fancy, Finger Foods, Recipes | Tags: craft, domesticity, feminism, NYC, women, women farmers 2 Comments »
I couldn’t be more excited for the weekend coming up! On Saturday, Slow Food NYC is having their first volunteer workday. They’re gearing up for their summer program at Ujima Community Garden in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and they need volunteers to help plant and build in the garden, and to prep the classroom. This year they’re adding chickens to their repertoire of urban farming, so naturally we have to build a chicken coop. The coop building is scheduled for the second workday, April 30th. I’m most excited to help build the coop as Noah and I are beginning to think about the potential of our own Brooklyn chicken coop! But more on that some other time…
This Sunday, I’m hosting a wee-little event called TBECC: talk, bake, eat, cook, and craft (not the best acronym, but whatever, it serves its purpose for now). What is TBECC? Well, this semester, I’ve made great connections with some amazing girls at NYU. We’ve exchanged recipes, cooking/baking tips, crafting tips, and in general just had really empowering conversations. I found myself making promises to hang out with everybody in getting together to cook, bake, eat, talk, drink tea/coffee/mircrobrews, knit, craft, etc. all on different occasions. But then I realized, in these different conversations with different girls, that we all had the same ideas in mind: eating locally, sustainability, feminism, crafting, enjoying food, baking/cooking, and all that jazz.
Obviously it would be wonderful to hang out with everyone individually, but I figured, in light of some recent ideas I’ve had about communality and the sharing of domestic knowledge, why don’t I get all these great, intellectual, feminine minds together in one place and just talk, bake, eat, craft and cook? So, we have TBECC this Sunday at my humble apartment! My yarn has been collecting dust under a folding table in my bedroom so I’m especially excited to dust-off my knitting needles and put them to work. And, since we will be cooking, eating, and baking, I have two recipes in mind: Cinnamon Swirl Buns and Grapefruit Honey Yogurt Scones. Reclaiming the domestic, in action!
{image courtesy of Boston Public Library flickr}
Our Food System: Sustainability and Taste
Posted: March 31, 2011 Filed under: Farm Women Fancy | Tags: agriculture, ethical eats, fast food, feminism, food culture, food justice, globalization, GM foods, industrial food system, local food, NYU, vegetarianism, women farmers 2 Comments »
And now for something completely different…academics!
My internet presence has been stunted as of late, but I have a good excuse. I didn’t want to talk about it until it was over and I officially secured my spot in the graduation march, but now that I have, I’m extremely proud to say that I’ve passed my colloquium as of yesterday at 12:30PM! The past week has been fraught with books, notes, more books and admittedly a few tears in preparation for the big day.
In order to graduate, Gallatin seniors must complete a colloquium, which is a 2-hour oral exam of sorts but officially dubbed a ‘conversation’ between the student and a panel of three professors. The semester prior to the colloquium, students have to submit a 3-5 page rationale that outlines their concentration along with a booklist of 20-25 books that inspire their concentrations. For most Gallatin folk, this is an exciting time where you can nerd-out over your passion without the threat of your friends rolling their eyes over your polemical remarks (that happens to you too, right?).
My concentration is “Our Food System: Sustainability and Taste.” For any other food system nerds, you can check out my rationale and booklist.
Leave It Better’s Sydney Brownstone Stops By to Cook and Ask Us Questions
Posted: March 9, 2011 Filed under: Finger Foods | Tags: domesticity, ethical eats, feminism, industrial food system, local food, NYC, NYU, recipe, women 1 Comment »
I once took a journalism class with an amazing fellow eco-feminist-ag nerd (and an equally great professor). We connected over fracking, music, farming, hipster-farming*, and eco-feminism. Sydney Brownstone now works quadruple duty as an intern for the L Magazine (also my former stomping grounds), blogger on her own blog, musician (listen to it, it’ll be stuck in your head for days), and content producer for the video-based eco-minded social media company Leave it Better. OH, and did I mention she’s also a full time student? Yeah, she does all of that.
Last month Sydney stopped by to film Noah and I in the kitchen for a video segment on Leave It Better. We made a Moroccan Squash Tagine, which wasn’t as good as it could have been, but Syd was a good sport about tasting it (thanks to Syd for posting the full recipe on the Leave It Better blog!) Sydney did an amazing job making us look coherent, well-kept, and probably more interesting than we are in reality. Someone, please hire her because she’s that good! Jokes aside, watch the video here, check out Sydney’s blog, and don’t forget to check out Leave It Better.
*more on hipster farming soon…
“Women are Crucial for Agricultural Security” – Happy International Women’s Day!
Posted: March 8, 2011 Filed under: Farm Women Fancy, Finger Foods | Tags: agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, carbon footprint, community supported agriculture, domesticity, feminism, food culture, food justice, food policy, hunger and nutrition, industrial food system, news, women, women farmers Leave a comment »
{photo cred: http://www.homesweethomefront.co.uk/}
Today is International Women’s Day, but really every day should be international women’s day. Anyone familiar with me or this blog knows how much I value women farmers and feminism/femininity through agriculture. I usually feel like a black sheep among my peers, haranguing-on long after everybody has stopped listening to my pro-feminist, pro-food polemic. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating just a bit, but considering all that’s been going-on as of late here in the U.S., it’s hard NOT to feel argumentative.
Recent articles and attention to women farmers have made me feel less absurd. In light of International Women’s Day, the focus on women in agriculture moves into a broader, more global context. An article today on FastCompany.com highlights the newest addition of The State of Food and Agriculture, 2010-2011 (SOFA) from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The 160-page report, subtitled “WOMEN IN AGRICULTURE: Closing the gender gap for development” emphasizes the role of women farmers worldwide in reducing poverty and hunger. You can read a 4-page summary/flier of the report OR, for you tried-and-true women-in-ag nerds like myself, you can read the entire report here.
The most important take-away message from the report from the FAO media center page:
If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, agricultural production could be increased and the number of hungry people reduced by 100-150 million.
And:
“The report shows the hard economic numbers behind a message we’ve known for a long time, which is that women are crucial for agricultural security.” - SOFA editor Terri Raney, via FastCompany.com.
So there you have it: invest in women farmers, solve world hunger (well, sorta). Happy International Women’s Day!
