put a f on it

spring.

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:27:36 -0400

spring.

oh hello, new friend.

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:51:18 -0400

oh hello, new friend.

totally unrelated -> ever since i saw portlandia's 'put a bird on it', that's what i think of whenever i see your tumblr on my dash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XM3vWJmpfo

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 22:47:38 -0400

Haha, my friend keeps telling me about that show. If you are interested in a kombucha mother I have a few ready.

EAT with R, Lydia, Nicholas, Hugh and brand new friends....

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:12:00 -0400

EAT with R, Lydia, Nicholas, Hugh and brand new friends. EAT’s owner, Jordan, has changed the restaurant’s structure quite a bit in the past couple of years. Currently, they have a NO-CHOICE menu- you come in, sit down, and they bring you food, usually 3-4 courses of seasonal vegetarian fare. Almost everything comes from NY farmers except some salt from Maine or rice from the Carolinas. It’s fun. Kind of like going to a friend’s house for dinner.

R and I just finished some epic Spring cleaning and a Spring...

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:13:12 -0400

R and I just finished some epic Spring cleaning and a Spring juice cleanse.

(Markets have been a little sparse after the winter, but we were able to use a lot of local sprouts, carrots and apples. Sprouts from Windfall Farms, carrots from Garden of Eve.)

love the kombucha series! the pictures were lovely too. i might be coming over to borrow some scoby ;)

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:13:22 -0400

You are more than welcome to one, I will have a batch ready in a couple weeks, you can get a sample and take home some scoby.

How to Make Kombucha Kombucha is so hot right now!!! We really...

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:16:00 -0500

How to Make Kombucha

Kombucha is so hot right now!!! We really enjoy this fizzy fermented beverage and started brewing it ourselves last summer. Traditionally kombucha is made with black, green and/or white tea (1), but we wanted to try a purely herbal blend. These instructions will work just the same for a black/green/white tea kombucha, and if you’re just starting out, make sure your first several batches include black tea and white organic cane sugar to ensure a strong culture.

Ingredients:

4-6 bags(8000mg - 12000mg) - Organic pure nettle leaf tea (pharmacopoeial quality from Traditional Medicinals) or the same amount of another tea.

4 - quarts filtered water

1 - cup organic turbinado sugar

2 - two-quart wide-mouth glass canning jars

A tight mesh cloth and 2 rubber bands

2 kombucha mothers (one for each jar) also known as a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) You can grow your own or purchase them through the internet, perhaps even get one from a friend :)

Before getting started, thoroughly clean all your utensils, pots, jars, and hands with soap and water. Avoid anti-bacterial soaps as they could harm the culture.

(1) from our research into kombucha, which is not that much, the cultures actually feed on many substances (even caffeine) in the black and green teas. Without these teas the culture will weaken over time and eventually die out so we brew normal tea for most batches and just use a few ‘children’ to try herbal concoctions.

Step 1, Making Tea As fun as watching 4 quarts of water boil may...

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:15:00 -0500

Step 1, Making Tea

As fun as watching 4 quarts of water boil may be, you can speed up the tea making and cooling process by brewing a very strong tea with 2 quarts of water and combining it with the other 2 quarts of unheated water later.

1-1

Boil 2 quarts of water then set to low heat. Add your tea bags and brew for 10 minutes (I like a stronger tea so I let them go 15-20 minutes).

1-2

Remove the pot from heat and take out the tea bags. Press out all the water and herbal goodness from the tea bags using a couple spoons, not your fingers. They are HOT!

Step 2, Adding Sugar, Bottling Tea After taking out the tea...

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:14:00 -0500

Step 2, Adding Sugar, Bottling Tea

After taking out the tea bags, wait for the water to cool, slightly, about 5-10 minutes.

2-1

Slowly poor the sugar into the tea and stir continuously so that it dissolves quickly and doesn’t caramelize on the bottom of the pot. It is important not to add the sugar over heat or it will burn and make a sticky mess.

2-2

Divide the other 2 quarts of water between 2 jars. Slowly add the hot tea until both jars are within an inch of the top. If you overfill the jars, adding the SCOBY (culture) will cause an overflow.

2-3

Wait an hour or so for the tea to come down to room temp or at least body temp.

Step 3, Adding the SCOBY, Covering, Fermenting 3-1 Add a SCOBY...

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:13:49 -0500

Step 3, Adding the SCOBY, Covering, Fermenting

3-1

Add a SCOBY to each jar. We also poor a little starter tea left over from a previous batch to help kick off the fermentation and lower the pH. You can test pH to make sure you are below 4.6 to prevent unwanted guests from getting a foothold in the tea.

3-2

Cover each jar top with a cloth and use a rubber band to secure. Store the jars in a warm (78ish) dark place for 2-4 weeks.

There is no exact rule for when it is ready. After a week, use a straw to taste the tea. If it is still sugary then it has a ways to go. Once it has a more acidic taste (like vinegar) then look for SCOBY growth and clarity. Along with your original SCOBY there should be a new one forming on the top surface of the tea. This new child can be used to start your next batch or stored in a jar of strong sweet tea for a couple months. I reuse the SCOBYs at most twice, as they just start to lose their vigor after that.

We will post pictures of the finished tea in a few weeks to give an idea of what it should look like.

Reminder: It is important to keep all your utensiles, jars, pots, and hands clean to avoid contaminating or damaging the SCOBY. Also, it is a good idea to avoid anti-bacterial soaps since the B in SCOBY stands for Bacteria.

For more information you can start here.

Still meditating.

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:09:53 -0500

It has been a while since I have written about meditation, mostly due to a necessary period of less experimentation and more in the trenches work. The past couple months felt like a gently sloping plateau. As with any practice these leveling off periods are very important for opening pathways of evolution. In essence it was an interval of contraction in the learning cycle, where I was wrestling with calming my body and mind enough to sit for 20 minutes.

Sitting really is the key here. I don’t just mean planting my posterior on the floor and closing my eyes for a few minutes a day. What is important is that the act of sitting actually isn’t that important. In fact I find it quite boring and even painful to think about sitting for an extended length of time, but it seems necessary for practicing meditation. So most of my focus has been on not focusing on the sitting and just meditating.

I don’t follow a regimented yoga practice like Laura (I totally should, but one step at a time), which basically helps develop the body to deal with sitting still for longer periods. Instead I have been doing it the ‘hard’ way (not that yoga is the easy way, just more direct). I just sit, and sit, and sit for 20 minutes twice a day.

In the past two weeks I have experienced a rapid change in my practice. I was able to easily reach a place of stillness for the whole 20 minutes as well as quite fluidly increase to 25 minutes regularly and even 30 minutes from time to time. Most of the restlessness and anxiety has passed and I have been able to reach some really interesting states. My body melts to just an impression of a shell, with little sensory input. My mind, while still noisy, is limited to a much narrower range of thought. I am not talking about out of body experiences or astral projects, but simply a stillness separated from the physical sensations of my outer body.

As I said, I attribute much of this change to digging in and doing the fundamental foundation work. Practice, practice, practice. Though I have also been more regularly consuming herbal mushroom teas such as reishi, maitake, and shiitake from a local organic mushroom farmer. These all contribute a calming effect without an overwhelming presence or druggy sensation. I have also been well regimented in supplementing my vitamin D and B12 during the winter, which combined with an increasingly simple lifestyle all works synergistically to enhance my meditation.

If you are interested in the day to day of meditation please sign up and follow me at www.ffflourish.com/robert :)

Last night we cooked local winter bounty with chef Peter Berley...

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:49:00 -0500

Last night we cooked local winter bounty with chef Peter Berley at Brooklyn Kitchen. Robert and I made the carrot and celeriac slaw with a spicy mustard and toasted fennel seed dressing. Also to be had were heaping helpings of braised purple cabbage with apples, spicy cayenne mashed rutabaga, pickled herring potato salad, local pork sausages and honey poached pears with shortbread cookies.

Peter is opening a place out in Long Island in April that will have a big kitchen for classes and a wood-fire oven for making bread. He’s also starting a 4-season garden. We’ll definitely be spending a weekend or 2 out there this summer. Love this man!

Hi Tumblr friends!We want to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day...

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:57:23 -0500

Hi Tumblr friends!

We want to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day and invite you to FFFLOURISH! We would love for you to try out our little site that we’ve been working on and tell us what you think.

Go to www.ffflourish.com, and answer the question “What are you doing right now that’s healthy for you?” to sign up. Or, click “Show me an example!” to see what’s happening in the community.

FFFLOURISH is the simplest way to share all the little things you’re doing to stay healthy, naturally, right now. It’s also a great place to support friends or be supported while working towards a resolution or health goal. There are so many social networks out there and many places to share information on the internet, but we wanted a place to talk positively about personal health.

Thanks for checking it out! We would really appreciate your feedback as well!

Laura and Robert

P.S. (Using FFFLOURISH is already keeping us honest in terms of sticking to eating more healthily and keeping a positive outlook! Yay! If you want to connect with us to see what we’re up to, our ffflourishy URLS are ffflourish.com/laura and ffflourish.com/robert)

I studied architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY....

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:37:24 -0500

I studied architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Before attending Cornell, though, I grew up in various small towns peppered across Texas and Oklahoma. I had seen snow and had built a snowman or two, whenever Colorado decided to shed some of its overload onto the Texas panhandle. But, it was never such a big deal. Mom would make a stew or a chili, some hot cocoa perhaps, and burn a log in the fireplace. We pretended we were living in a colder climate for a couple weeks every year.

Ithaca was really my first introduction to cold weather- to snows that wouldn’t quit and clouds that wouldn’t go away while working in a less-than-airtight studio. There was one cafe at Cornell that had fairly ‘real’ food for the offering, and nice people making it, too. Temple of Zeus made 2 homemade soups everyday, but you pretty much had to get there at 11am to ensure you would get fed and avoid a massive line. I lived off of their soup (and I think their friendly demeanor had something to do with my unwavering patronage, as well). It nourished me and warmed my insides against what sometimes felt like what I imagine the arctic tundra to feel like.

If you’ve noticed, there are a lot of soups on this here blog. I’m beginning to realize that the soup ritual never ended. Even now, living in Brooklyn, I persist in having bowl after bowl of warm comforting soup in the face of blustery weather. Only, now I’m responsible for the love and flavor.

This week I couldn’t get my mind off of Zeus’ ‘thai carrot’ soup that they used to serve regularly on Tuesdays. I now see that they’ve actually published their recipes online, but not having known that, I tried to re-create it myself. Surprisingly the recipe I came up with is pretty close to theirs, and pretty delicious in its own right.

Thai Carrot Soup Recipe

1 T. coconut oil
1 small yellow onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
4 inches or so of a ginger knob, peeled and minced
1 jalapeno, de-seeded, de-stemmed and diced
4 inches or so of a lemongrass stalk, towards the base, sliced
4 cups really good tasting vegetable broth (If you wouldn’t eat it by itself, use salt and filtered water instead.)
8 medium carrots, sliced
1 can coconut milk (I made mine with ¼ cup coconut solids and ½ cup or so of water, alternatively)
1 T. ground cumin
¼ tsp. ground cardamom
¼ tsp. turmeric
1 lime, juiced
fresh cilantro for garnish

In a large pot or stock pot, heat the coconut oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, ginger, jalapeno and lemongrass. Sizzle until fragrant, about 1-5 minutes. Add broth or water and bring to a boil. Add carrots and spices, turn down the heat, and simmer for about 15 minutes until the carrots are cooked through. Add the coconut milk. Puree the soup. Return to pot and add lime juice and salt to taste. Garnish with cilantro.

A long overdue post highlighting one of the many ways to take...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:36:14 -0500

A long overdue post highlighting one of the many ways to take advantage of the local mushroom harvest from Mycomedicinals Madura Farms.

We set up the dehydrator, broke up these crazy frilly maitake (hen of the woods) mushrooms, dried them for 6 hours, and finally blasted them into dust with the handy Vit-a-mix.

Now this powder can easily add a stunning flavor to soups and sauces, or just make an extremely relaxing mushroom tea that I find perfect for meditating.

Once more before their epic transformation into an immune...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:36:10 -0500

Once more before their epic transformation into an immune boosting, calmness inducing, super powder.

(btw, these are the same mushrooms (same type / same grower) that chef Tom Colicchio uses for his roasted Hen of the Woods at Craft.)

Laying them out on the dehydrator sheet, check out that...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:36:03 -0500

Laying them out on the dehydrator sheet, check out that spacing!!!

The maitake, broken down for optimal drying airflow.

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:35:54 -0500

The maitake, broken down for optimal drying airflow.

Whole maitake mushrooms (aka hen of the woods) from...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:35:50 -0500

Whole maitake mushrooms (aka hen of the woods) from Mycomedicinals Madura Farms in Goshen, NY. These must be of the speckled hen variety.

A ‘posole rojo’ is pretty awesome on a cold day....

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:12:28 -0500

A ‘posole rojo’ is pretty awesome on a cold day. Mine is made with: hominy slow-simmered with dried poblanos and a dried chipotle, homemade red chili sauce, garlic, onion, pink potatoes, carrots, cilantro, lime, tortilla strips and crumbled, raw 3-corner field farm feta. Basically, everything I had in my fridge. Leftovers are great with some shredded cabbage or even spinach thrown in. (There are probably infinite delicious variations on this Mexican stew.)

Also, of interest, check out the ritual significance.