Brooklyn Feed

One of the enormous benefits of living in New York City is the ability to find almost anything. I needed upholstery fabric, foam and dacron. I got the fabric at Mood fabrics (famous for supplying the show Project Runway) and I got the foam and dacron at Canal Rubber. Dacron is a stretchy, web-like material that covers over the foam. If you are at all like me and are not on top of *everything*, you might have chairs that go neglected. What happens under the fabric is that the foam turns a gross shade of orange and becomes brittle and powdery. The dacron stretches over the foam and keeps this powder from dusting the floor under the chair. Have I shared too much??

Anyhow, the internet is rich with videos on how to re-upholster a chair. Each version is slightly different. Glueing the foam to the seat didn’t seem right to us, so we stretched the dacron over it and stapled it down. It’s mostly just common sense.

Neil unscrewed the seat of the chair from the wooden frame. There were 4 screws on the bottom of the seat. He then took a flat head screwdriver and removed all of the staples holding the fabric and foam onto the seat. The seat is just a sheet of plywood.

I traced the plywood shape onto the foam, giving an extra 1/2″ of space all around. I cut the foam with an electric turkey carver. Now I feel I have to explain something…we don’t use this carver to cut turkey. We bought it when we made a foam turtle shell for our daughter’s Halloween costume years ago. The man at Canal Rubber suggested using a box cutter to cut the foam, but if you can get your hands on one of these electric carvers, your life will be much easier.

I cut the dacron with a pair of sharp scissors to a size about an inch or 2 larger than the foam. We placed the foam on the plywood base and stretched the dacron over it. Then we used short staples and a staple gun to attach it to the wood.

I traced the shape of the old fabric onto the new fabric. The foam we used was slightly puffier than the old foam, so I needed to add about an inch and a half all around. You can use scissors. I used a rotary cutter. Then you stretch the fabric over the dacron and staple it down. I found this much easier with two people, but you could do it solo. We also did the canvas stretching technique, which is when you start stapling the fabric in the middle of one side, then flip it around and staple the middle of the opposite side. You do this on all sides and work your way to the corners.

I should have taken more photos, but I think it is really common sense. When you get to the corners, fiddle with how you fold the fabric so it looks nice.

This is a recipe that my father used to make for cocktail parties and was usually one of the first things to disappear. My sister and I seem to often be on the same wavelength and just as I was deciding on making these for Neil’s birthday party, she emailed me to ask for the recipe. She confirmed that hers disappeared immediately, so I thought I would post the recipe with directions on how to make them.

The first batch I rolled out to about 1/4″ thickness, which was *way* too thick. You can see from the photos below that they kind of shrink up sideways and puff upwards. The first batch were freakishly high, so I rolled the subsequent batches thinner (and poked them with fork tines).

Pogacsa (sometimes seen as Pogatcha)

Equal weights of:

flour

butter

cream cheese or feta cheese. I used feta cheese for these. I used 8oz (1/2 lb) measures of each and got a nice sized basket of crackers. Several dozen.

I love Hungarian recipes! They are usually quite simple. Okay, so I mixed the butter and cheese together until it was well-blended. Then I added the flour and mixed it with the dough-hook on my stand mixer. The dough is very thick. You can see the bits of feta in my dough.

Generously flour a surface and roll the dough out as seen below. You will fold each edge to the center until you have 4 flaps folded in. Repeat this several times and keep it well-floured. The rolling part is very important, otherwise the crackers won’t puff.

Wrap in plastic and let rest in the fridge for about 1/2 hour.

Roll out thinner than 1/4″ (I have photos of the overly puffy crackers. Don’t let this happen to you!) and cut with a small drinking glass or other cutter. I used a canapé cutter, which I think was too small. So about 1 1/2-2″ across. I also suggest poking them with the tines of a fork to keep the puff factor down.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes until they are golden brown. You can put them directly on the cookie sheet. There’s enough butter in these that they won’t stick to anything!

They are best warm, but are still delicious room temp. If you have any left over you can always warm them up and have with lunch. I only had extras because I had an insane amount of food at the party where I served them.

A few weeks ago we went to Ikea and bought down comforters. We pay for our heat, which is somewhat unusual here in New York City. We like to keep our house cool, especially at night when we can hunker down under the covers. Our down comforter finally exploded a year ago, so we’ve been on the look out for an inexpensive replacement. At Ikea they rate their comforters on a scale of 6, with 6 being the warmest. Without hesitating, we grabbed a 6 for us and for Lindsay. At $49.99 the price was unbeatable.

I usually go to bed in the winter with ice blocks for feet and warm them up on my poor husband, who we refer to as the polar bear. After the first night of the #6 comforter I was insanely hot and so were Neil and Lindsay. We turned the heat OFF the next night. We were still hot (Lindsay had just gotten nice warm pjs for the holidays) so we went to bed in t-shirts and undies. It made trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night interesting in our no-heat house! I was still too hot. I was downright sweltering if Neil came anywhere near me. For the sake of marital harmony, we decided to get a #4 comforter and try to sell our #6s to friends with cabins or who wanted to hike the Andes. A queen size was $39.99, which was amazing! So far so good. We turn off our heat and we can still snuggle without overheating.

I was thinking about how much this little addition to our family has helped us save energy. I mean, who actually turns their heat off when it’s 20 degrees outside?

Looking around the internet I found some interesting facts that might help encourage you to turn down the heat. A warm comforter is a good first step!!

• The rule of thumb is that you can save about 3% on your heating bill for every degree that you set back your thermostat” full time, says Bill Prindle, deputy director for the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
• Try turning down the thermostat 5 to 10 degrees at night, and then turn it up again in the morning when the coffee is brewing. If you can get used to that, you’ll save 5 to 10 percent of your heating bill.
• It does NOT take more energy to re-heat your house after the heat has been turned down than to keep it at the same temperature all the time. Nor does turning your thermostat up make the house warm up faster — it simply makes the boiler stay on longer before turning off.

Things you can do

• Close curtains or blinds at night to keep out the drafts.
• Turn your thermostat down or off at night. You can get programmable ones that will turn the heat on in the morning, so you aren’t freezing when you wake up. Then turn the heat down when you go off to work.
• Check the seals on windows. We have a huge window in our apartment that is too high to reach. It is single pane glass and the wood between the panes looks brittle. Neil once put plastic up (don’t ask me how he got up there without killing himself) and sealed it with a sheet of plastic. That lasted several years, but has since come down. We rent, so we are at the mercy of a landlord who isn’t interested in fixing the window. We can see things moving in the draft caused by this window.
• Wear sweaters around the house instead of turning up the heat. Whenever I complained to my father that I was cold, his reply was always to put on a sweater. Makes sense.
• Put plastic up over windows that leak. There are lots of different plastic coverings that are made especially for this purpose. You stick them around the window and then heat them up with a hairdryer. This causes the plastic to shrink a bit and pull tight. We do that with the window in our home office and it makes a huge difference.

Let me know your ideas for keeping the heat down.

Here’s a great video of Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl, showing how easy it is to build a raised bed garden and hoop house. She doesn’t get into it in depth, but she keeps chickens and rabbits in cages over the gardens to help fertilize the soil.

While we are helping birds out this hot summer, let’s think of our backyard chickens. It’s been in the 90s here for the past couple of weeks. The run is in a shady part of my garden, so the girls aren’t bearing the brunt of the heat. However, they are wearing little down coats and have to be feeling it. I’ve been getting fewer eggs on the really hot days, so I decided to try a “redneck air conditioner”. All that consists of is a frozen bottle of water. In this case I used a cranberry juice bottle filled with water. The idea is that  you put it in their run and they can sit or lean up against it to cool off.

The temperature outside is unbearable, and I can’t remember the last time we had a decent rain. Besides watering your plants (sparingly!) put some water out for the thirsty birds. You can put together a simple birdbath for not a lot of money. Don’t worry about having mosquitoes breed in your birdbath. Mosquitoes need water that hangs around for at least 10 days. You will dump out the old water and add fresh water more often, so you won’t have that problem.

I had been looking around for a nice birdbath for my small Brooklyn garden without much luck. They were too expensive, too ornate or too big. Mostly it was the cost that deterred me. I was in a garden shop this Spring with Neil when we put together the idea for our birdbath. We have a large terra cotta flower pot that we turned upside down. On top of that we put a glazed dish. The dish is actually what you put under a flower pot to catch the water that flows out of the bottom. Nice garden supply centers can carry these in pretty large sizes for a decent price. I think this one was $20 or less. The terra cotta pot is fairly big, so the dish is stable on top of it. I like that it isn’t too high or large and fits into the garden in a very low-key, organic way. We have robins and catbirds coming into the yard to drink and bathe, which is a nice change from the sparrows that usually hang out with us.

I’ve been reading my daughter the Little House on the Prairie books lately. What amazes me when I’m reading them is how many different skills people had back then. They raised animals, they built houses out of trees, they gathered honey from hollow trees, they made cheese, soap, maple syrup, beds, clothes, you name it. It seemed as though there was almost nothing they couldn’t do to meet their needs. It seems now that there is almost nothing we can do to meet our needs. Okay, computers, heat, cars and all of that are fantastic inventions, but we’ve become so specialized that things that a child could do during Laura Ingalls’ time seem exotic to us now.

Take cheese making for instance. How many people know how to make their own cheese? Maybe there isn’t enough incentive now that wonderful, artesian cheeses are available in every decent-sized town. We have a great cheese shop in our neighborhood called Stinky. But I digress.

Almost a year ago I started to read up on making cheese. I found the New England Cheese Making Supply Company online and promptly ordered a cheese making kit. They teach you how to make fresh mozzarella in 30 minutes. I tried it and it was delicious. I decided to try yogurt and discovered this site. He errs on the side of caution with heating the milk up, but I decided I would try his method and then I could always scale things back when I was more comfortable with the process.

So let’s make yogurt!
You will need:
1 gallon of milk
1 8oz. container of yogurt that’s unopened
powdered milk (optional)
a big stock pot
enough jars (mason, spaghetti sauce) to hold the gallon + of milk
cooler

• First you want to steam the jars you will be using for about 10 minutes to sterilize them.
• Add a gallon of milk (not ultra pasteurized!) to a big stock pot (with a heavy bottom). You can make your yogurt full fat or lowfat by choosing what kind of milk you use. You can add 4 T of powdered milk to make a thicker yogurt.
• Heat the milk slowly until it reaches about 185-195ºF.
• Place the covered pot in a pan of cold water to cool it down. Again, some people skip these first steps, but this kills any pathogenic (euw!) bacteria that may be hanging around.
• When the milk cools to 122-130ºF, remove it from the cold water bath. Pour 1 cup of the milk into a 2-cup measure.
• Add 1 cup of fresh yogurt until mixture is well-blended.
• Slowly add your yogurt/milk mixture into the rest of the milk and mix well.
• Pour milk mixture into the sterilized jars and cover immediately. One of your jars can be an 8oz. jar that will serve as the fresh yogurt for your next batch.
• Add water that is about 122-130ºF to the cooler. Set the jars in the cooler. The water should be below the level of the lids. Let the jars sit undisturbed for at least 3 hours. If you don’t have a cooler, you can wrap the jars in towels and keep in a warm spot.

Your unopened jars will keep for up to 2 months in the fridge, so you have plenty of time to enjoy this delicious yogurt.

How funny/cool is this? The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has classes on teaching women to be self-reliant in the great outdoors.

Becoming an Outdoors-Woman (BOW) and Beyond BOW are programs designed to teach women outdoor skills. These national programs provide women with information, encouragement and hands-on instruction in outdoor skills such as fishing, shooting, archery, hunting, trapping, outdoor photography, map and compass, survival, camping, canoeing and outdoor cooking.

Paddling a kayak
Becoming an Outdoors-Woman workshops are designed primarily for women who have little or no experience with outdoor activities. These are three-day workshops that offer many different classes over the course of a weekend.

Beyond BOW workshops are another opportunity for women to learn outdoor skills and are anything we offer that is not the traditional three-day BOW workshop. They may be “next step” classes for women who have completed a beginner class at a BOW workshop. They may be one day, one subject classes. They may even be an actual hunt, canoe trip or camp-out.

BOW and Beyond BOW workshops are open to anyone aged 18 and over – past participants have ranged in age from late teens to the mid-eighties!

Upcoming BOW workshops:
September 18 – 20, 2009 – Silver Bay YMCA on Lake George, Warren County. Registration materials will be available in June 2009.

Upcoming Beyond BOW Events:
The following Beyond BOW events will take place in the Saranac Lake / Lake Clear region of the Adirondack Mountains. For information on all 2009 Beyond Becoming an Outdoors Woman programs, view or download the 2009 Beyond BOW Schedule (230 KB PDF).

May 29 – 31, 2009 – Beyond BOW
Please choose one class
Cost: Early Bird Registration,
Before January 31st $375*
After February 1st $395*
*Fee includes meals. lodging and instruction.

Firearms in the Forest: Contact Jackie Emslie – (914) -475-4901 or jslie@earthlink.ne

On-Water Canoe/Kayak Interpretive Paddle: Contact Carol Drury (518) 524-2036 or Dryadguide@yahoo.com
Angie Berchielli (518) 797-3747 or AngieBerchielli@MSN.com

Map and Compass: Contact Sheila Young (518) 359-8194 or foothill@capital.net

October 16 – 18, 2009 – Beyond BOW
Please choose one class
Cost: Early Bird Registration,
Before June 30th $375*
After July 1st $395*
* Fee includes meals, lodging and instruction.

On-Water Canoe/Kayak Interpretive Paddle: Contact Carol Drury (518) 524-2036 or Dryadguide@yahoo.com
Angie Berchielli (518) 797-3747 or AngieBerchielli@MSN.com

Adirondack Hiking: Contact Sheila Young (518) 359-8194 or foothill@capital.net

Becoming an Outdoors-Woman Listserv
Sign up for the Becoming an Outdoors-Woman e-mail notification listserve and get notices and registration information for all BOW and Beyond BOW events sent right to your inbox. All you need to do is click on the listserv link below and follow the directions on the screen. You will get a confirming e-mail back. You must respond to the confirming e-mail to activate the e-mail notification service.

Becoming an Outdoors-Woman listserv

For further information on the BOW or Beyond BOW program, contact: NYS Becoming an Outdoors-Woman, 625 Broadway, 5th Floor, Albany, NY 12233-4754 or call (518) 402-8883

Here’s a great video from the environmentals about building a worm bin.

The Enviromentals (Episode 1) How to Make a Worm Composting Bin from Hal Brindley on Vimeo.

photo by Susan Heller

A lot of people are very interested in composting, but find the process too intimidating. With a few pointers, it’s really very simple. In this lesson I will assume that you have an outdoor space for your compost. We will have a lesson in composting indoors coming up shortly.

How do leaves, berries and other organic matter turn to soil (or compost) in nature? They get rained on and start to decay. What’s the difference between breaking organic matter down at home versus in the wild? Nothing much just some time and energy. If you have a big yard, you can have one or more piles in an out-of-the-way area and let nature slowly break them down. This process could take a year or more depending on what you put on the pile. However, many people don’t have that kind of space or patience.

So let’s assume you have some outdoor space and want a contained pile that will produce rich compost more quickly. There are many online sources to find compost bins. Many cities have compost programs in which they give or sell (at reduced prices) compost bins. This is mutually beneficial because while you get a free or inexpensive compost bin, they don’t have to haul away as much garbage. About 60% of everyone’s garbage consists of organic matter that could be composted. It’s a shame to throw this into a landfill when you could turn it into rich soil for your plants. The New York Sanitation Department has a partnership with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to subsidize compost bins and classes. This wonderful project is facing the axe of budget cuts unfortunately. The bins are still less expensive than many commercial sites. If you live in the NYC area, you can email them for information about purchasing their bins at compost@bbg.org.

Some online sources for compost bins:

www.composters.com

www.compost-bin.org

www.gardeners.com

Or, you could build your own:

• Take a galvanized trash can and punch holes in it. This compost bin is the best solution if you are at all worried about attracting rodents.
• Or follow the directions on this website, which shows several different types to build.

The most important thing to remember in the beginning is that the organic material you toss in your compost bin will eventually turn into compost no matter what. Short of shellacking your leaves, there’s really nothing to prevent them from breaking down into soil, so don’t worry about messing up the process. They are going to decay and break down without you, so you don’t need to dig into the nitty gritty too much to compost. If you are type-A like myself, you will want to know about the bacteria and fungi that are involved with the process, but let’s keep things simple for now. We want to get you started and help prevent some common problems.

There’s a whole list of things that you can put into your compost pile, but let’s first talk about what should not go in. 

DO NOT ADD:

• Meat or Fish – This will stink and attract rodents.
• Dairy
• Oily foods – Oil coats the food preventing the bacteria from getting to the food and doing their good work.
• Pet feces -Dogs, cats and other meat-eating animals carry a host of diseases that won’t break down in a backyard pile. Some cat litter says it’s compostable and it is if there’s only urine in it. But maybe you shouldn’t even go there. 
• Inorganic/manmade materials – Rubber bands, metal twist ties, plastic, metal or anything that will last on the planet longer than our grandchildren.

GOOD TO ADD:

The short answer for what to put in is basically everything else and some water. You can certainly make compost with this much information. The stuff that follows just adds a bit of information to make your scraps turn into soil faster and avoid smells. I’m breaking the good stuff into two parts: green and brown.

Add GREEN materials such as: 

• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Grass clippings
• Animal manure – From non-meat eating animals such as horses or chickens. Chicken poop is very high in nitrogen, which makes it an excellent choice
• Coffee grounds
• Bread
• Old flowers
• Weeds – Avoid weeds that have gone to seed as they will flourish in your compost and then grow wherever you spread it in your garden.

Add BROWN materials such as:

• Leaves
• Egg shells
• Sawdust
• Tree branches – Avoid ones that are too big as they will clog up your pile for a very long time.
• Unbleached napkins and paper towels
• Newspaper
• Wood ash – Ash from charcoal shouldn’t be used.
• Lint from the dryer or vacuum cleaner bag

Green materials have a lot of nitrogen in them, which helps them decay faster, but can smell in the process. Brown materials have a lot of carbon in them and take longer to decay, but don’t smell. Try to mix some green materials with some brown materials to give you the best of both worlds. You generally want slightly more browns (60%) than greens (40%), but don’t lose sleep over the ideal proportions. If your compost bin is smelly, add some more material from the brown list.

After you’ve added your kitchen and yard scraps you should add some water and mix everything up. You can use a pitchfork or a more specialized comport crank. I use a compost crank that looks like a giant corkscrew. The ideal wetness of a pile is often described as being as wet as a wrung out sponge. You can decide how often you want to add water and turn the pile. The more often you do, the faster the process will be. But if you go away on vacation, you don’t need to find a compost sitter. The pile will continue to decompose on its own. There are products on the market that claim that they will speed up the process so much, you will have finished compost in 14 days. That’s a bunch of snake oil as far as I’m concerned.

Well, that’s pretty much it. You should have beautiful rich garden soil in about 3-6 months. You will also find plenty of earthworms and other little creepy crawlies. They are big helpers in the process and shouldn’t be seen as pests. When you sprinkle the finished compost on your garden, they will only help to enrich the soil. Have fun with your composting. Spread the word. And bask in the knowledge that you are doing a big part in making your part of the world greener and healthier.