Month 3 Sunset Magazine's One Block Party contest with Team Found Fruit

The team met recently for a potluck to try out recipes and to finalize the menu for the feast. We're so excited for the party! In the next few weeks we will be finishing up our projects and harvesting fruits, veggies, and foraging for fish and berries. Photo credit Jamie Vasta This past month we have been very busy with our final food projects of the summer. Last week Kim and I went Hawaiian throw netting for surf smelt in Half Moon Bay to catch fish for the feast. Standing in the waves throwing the net is dangerous but can be exhilarating. We caught pounds of fish that will be a delicious addition to the menu. We already have some fish frozen from our last fishing adventure, catching night smelt. The surf smelt that run in the daytime are a larger variety (closer to the size of sardines) and are great pan-fried. photo credits Kim Di Giacomo In certain seasons the smelt come in to spawn after high tide at particular times of the month. Last week, every fifth wave that came in brought the smelt in. You wait until you see them in the water and then throw. Pulling the net in after a throw can be a hard pull due to the ocean's resistance. photo credit Kim Di Giacomo photo credit Michele Senitzer photo credit Jamie Vasta In keeping with the spirit of a self made feast we will be dining on pottery made by Todd. It's so beautiful that the food actually tastes better on it! Plates, bowls, cups, pitchers, you name it- he makes it. Photo credits Todd Voyageur Todd's also been busy brewing an I.P.A. for the feast. We'll also be serving sauerkraut martinis, chamomile iced tea, grapefruit spritzer, hard blackberry cider, blackberry elderberry wine, kahlua, limoncello, and orangecello. Photo credit Todd Voyageur Photo credit Jamie Vasta Photo credits Jamie Vasta There are pears, nectarines, plums, grapefruit, loquats, persimmon, cherries, berries, and more coming down the pike. Fruit compote and galette will be delicious additions to the feast. Photo credit Lori Eanes Kim is still collecting and purging garden snails for the feast. Escargot anyone? Anything tastes good with enough butter and garlic... Photo credit Lori Eanes Photo credit Jamie Vasta Three out of five of Team Found Fruit's households are now keeping bees. Kim and Oletta got a swarm from the SF Chronicle. The Chronicle building in San Francisco has a rooftop garden and two hives. We brought them home in a nuc box then carefully shook the box of bees into the hive. Before long the bees were buzzing around enjoying their new home. At our house Jamie and I are busy harvesting honey for the feast. We use the crush and strain method. We will harvest enough honey for the feast and beeswax to make our candles for the table. Photo credit Jamie Vasta In the crush and strain method you crush the comb by squeezing it with your hands until the honey drips out. It's a tasty tactile experience. Then the honey is strained through a filter to remove any bits of comb. I've read that bees can still sting when they're dead so removing them from the comb before it's crushed is essential. I love chewing the comb like gum while the honey comes oozing out. Unfortunately we suspect that our hive is now queenless. After our bees swarmed a month ago there has been less and less activity in the hive. There's plenty of honey and comb and some bees are still in there but there's no evidence of a queen. We're back on the swarm list and may try to install some brood from another hive so the bees can make a new queen. Photo credit Kitty Sharkey Over at Kitty's the farm is bustling. There's baby ducks and goat kids, bunnies, and more. Poopie Butt (PB) the chicken has proved to be an excellent surrogate mother for a clutch of duck eggs. She's in the nest with six ducklings, plus another three eggs soon to hatch in the next few days. Photo credits Kitty Sharkey There's quail, chickens, and ducks. This makes for a beautiful array of eggs. On the menu will be deviled duck eggs and pickled quail eggs. Photo credit Kitty Sharkey We'll also be dining on goat feta, camenbert, and chevre cheeses, goat yogurt, goat ice cream, braised rabbit, stuffed rabbit, and honey prickly pear glazed chicken. Photo credit Lori Eanes Our herb spiral is producing a plethora of herbs. There's tarragon, chamomile, oregano, thyme, marjoram, about 18 herbs in total. We're also harvesting peppers, cucumbers, lettuces, chard, squash, kale, garlic, onions, collards, beets, tomatoes, and carrots right now. We're excited to have delicious fresh veggie dishes like beet napoleans and stuffed squash blossoms on the menu. With our nasturtiums we will be making capers, pesto, and eating the flowers in salad. Photo credit Jamie Vasta The above photo shows some of what we're harvesting from the front yard: marjoram, chamomile, blueberries, padron peppers, and nasturtium seedpods. Photo credit Michele Senitzer One food project we haven't talked about yet is one that doesn't involve eating. It involves driving. I run my car off of 100% used vegetable oil donated Pappo restaurant and Culina deli in Alameda. I process it at home in my fueling station. While it's not on the menu, it has helped us throughout the summer to make less of a carbon footprint and to recycle used oil. Photo credit Jamie Vasta

Blackberries - Yum!

The Bay Area blackberry season is on and the Blackberries in Dimond Park, (Oakland) along Sausal Creek are ripe.  I recently picked 3 lbs on a hike.  I like to make jam and wine from the berries I gather over the month of August.  They are fine to freeze until you can gather enough of them for your recipes.

If you go, here are some helpful hints.

1. Wear jeans or you'll be in a world of hurt, long sleeves help and gloves even better.
2.  Bring an extra bag to wrap around your first bag after the blackberry thorns tear it open.
3.  Bring a third bag to wrap around your second and first bag after the blackberries rip holes in them and juice starts running down your arm.
4.  Wear clothes you don't care about so that after your bag gets ripped open and the weight of your mother lode of blackberries squishes the bottom berries and juice flows out and down your arm, all over your shirt and down your pants, you won't mind.
5.  Watch out for Pit bulls and Rotweillers running ahead of their owners.  I know they're normally nice dogs but they don't know WTF you are doing in the bushes.
6.  The farther up the creek the better.
7.  And lucky number 7....stay out of my secret spot...I mean, admire rainbow trout swimming in Sausel Creek and consider how fortunate you are to be in a place so peaceful and beautiful in Oakland.

Next time, I'll bring a bucket ;-)

Month 2 Sunset Magazine's One Block Party contest with Team Found Fruit

Month Two:

Kitty, our bunny whisperer has been busy raising rabbits for the feast. On a 4000 square foot lot in Oakland she manages an efficient microfarm with rabbits, goats, ducks, chickens, quail, and bees. She raises the animals with love and produces nearly all of her own meat and most of her own vegetables. Her goats are trained therapy animals and she enjoys taking them for walks around the neighborhood and to visit children in hospitals. Go team livestock!

Photo by Lori Eanes

Nola, Jamie, and I took a stroll over to Kitty's the other day and had a blast playing with the kids.

The kids loved us as well!

With milk from her goats Kitty produces cheeses, yogurt, ice cream and more. She recently made a quick pressed cheese with honey raspberry flavored walnuts added. She's an expert at cheddar, gouda, queso blanco, swiss, havarti, feta, mozzarella, and several we've never even heard of!

Photos by Lori Eanes

Jonah, age two, is getting an early education in urban farming. He's becoming an expert at planting seeds in the garden, and also likes to water and to play with the baby chicks that Todd and Kate are raising. Starting with a dozen Rock Island fertile eggs from the supermarket and a heat lamp,Todd and Kate hatched one chick- Harry Potter (the chicken who lived). Harry, along with a few buff orpington chicks from the local feed store, is now housed in a beautiful coop built by Todd, with a living roof covered in greens. Although it looks like Harry Potter won't be laying eggs anytime soon because it is becoming more and more apparent that he is indeed a rooster. Their garden is thriving- lettuces, arugula, chard, strawberries are abundant. Yay team chicken and garden!

Photos by Lori Eanes

At our house the garden has grown enormously and we are enjoying harvests of chard, beets, carrots, edible flowers, herbs, berries, and salad greens. The peppers are plentiful and the cukes and tomato plants are the biggest ever thanks to Nola’s magical compost!

Photo by Lori Eanes

Our front yard is an edible oasis of peas, beans, artichoke, blueberries, tomatillos, young melon plants, and more. It doesn't look like we'll get a great crop from the nectarine tree this year but the pear tree is loaded with fruit. Across the street, Nola has a lot of fruit on the trees but we aren't saving much because we all eat it as fast as we can pick it!

Go team garden and team fruit!

Photos by Lori Eanes

Kim and I, the fisherwomen that we are, have been out catching Dungeness crab, poke poling for monkey-faced eel, and netting surf smelt. It’s a bit dangerous at times but totally exhilarating! For the crab we use our fishing poles with crab traps fitted with lassos that snag the crabs legs. Let’s just say we’ve been eating well! After taking Kirk Lombard’s fishing workshop in San Francisco we decided to try our hand at poke poling. When Kim caught that first one it was an outrageous scene. We were screaming and running around on the jetty while the eel slithered around on the line. And when I got to her with our bucket, already filled with hungry crabs, we realized that putting the eel in with them might not be the best idea afterall…we managed to get it home separately, and it was delicious filleted and batter-fried.

Earlier in the month we went out night smelting with an A frame net. This involves standing in the waves and dipping the net into a crashing wave. You can see the smelt glistening in the light of the moon! For day smelting we have been learning how to cast a Hawaiian throw net. Go team ocean!

Tis the season for morels and Kitty has been foraging up a storm. Kim and I also go hunting regularly throughout the winter collecting chantrelles and black trumpet mushrooms. Through our friends at Far West Fungi in Moss Landing we decided to try our hand at growing mushrooms. We had a fun road trip down there and returned with garbage bags full of logs inoculated with oyster, king, and shitake mushrooms. We built mushroom towers, similar to our potato towers but with wood shavings and straw packed in with the logs. The mycelium spreads to the new growing medium and before you know it you’ve got mushrooms! After growing out of the small holes in the tower the oyster mushrooms even corrected themselves and have grown huge. They’re fresh and taste amazing! Go team mushroom!

Kim started making wine vinegar, using her two-year old homemade ginger wine. We also have plans to make a foraged blackberry and elderberry wine, which we've had luck with in the past. The foraged limoncello and arancello are done and delicious! We were recently gifted a 35year old sourdough starter from the Arizmendi bakery collective in Oakland.

Photo by Lori Eanes

That plus the kombucha, sauerkraut and kimchee we’ve been making has been great for our fermentation fun. Go team ferment!

We even tried making a fruit kimchee, but it is definitely an acquired taste...one I haven't acquired yet.

Earlier this season, we foraged olives from the trees on the Mills College campus up the road. They've been brining for some weeks now and they are delicious! Go team brine!

Build your own vegetable oil fueling station

With diesel gas prices skyrocketing these days more and more people are turning to alternative fuels like biodiesel and waste vegetable oil WVO. You can buy a vegetable oil conversion for diesel engines that will allow you to run in any proportion diesel, biodiesel, straight vegetable oil SVO, or WVO. Some conversions are single tank like Lovecraft conversions, while other use a dual tank system that you can switch between like Veg Rev conversions. The purpose of conversions are to heat the fuel and to filter it.

It can be competitive out there in terms of collecting used fryer oil, but building relationships with restaurants can get you a dedicated supply. Choosing the right restaurant is also important because one that changes oil on a schedule will have much cleaner oil than one that changes oil out of necessity. Restaurants used to pay to have the oil removed, then it became a free service, and now some companies pay to remove the used oil because of demand. Used oil can be made into biodiesel, soap, and straight up fuel. Some restaurants will pour the used oil back into the containers they came in called cubies for collection, while others will fill a 55 gallon drum which you then pump out into 5 gallons heavy duty containers called carboys.

Managing veggie oil is a dirty messy job but can be well worth it if you have the space and time. When building a fueling station there are many things to consider such as how much space you have, how many gallons of oil you will be managing, what your budget is, and how much time you have to dedicate to this. Managing oil is comprised of two things, removing sediment and water. Oil and water don't mix afterall and can be harmful if put into a gas tank. If oil is not filtered properly sediment can "coke up" or clog the injectors, and replacing the injector pump can be costly.

A good low budget system can be comprised of a barrel, filters, and a pump. I get my polyester sock filters from dudadiesel, a biodiesel supply store with everything you need for veggie oil and biodiesel. The smaller the micron the finer the filter. Generally, one can start with coarse filtering at about 100 microns.

With the sock filters I hang a few over a broom stick over a drum.

I use 2 drums for filtering. One is for coarse filtering at 100 microns. The other is for fine filtering down to 1 micron. Most people filter down to 5 microns. Another type of filter is a drum filter. I have also used this type of filter for coarse filtering. Some are also washable.

Pumping from barrel to barrel can be done with a manual pump or electric. I am using a hand crank transfer pump. It pumps 10 gallons per minute.

You can also use an electric pump, either 110volt or 12volt. I have used a tuthill1604 7gpm (gallon per minute) 12 volt pump with a car battery. It comes with a plastic gas nozzle and hose. Expect long back orders.

Some people use an inline fuel filter and water separator , while others use gravity and time to allow the natural separation in the container. Time also helps the sediment to settle at the bottom of a container. The rule of thumb is- never use the bottom of the barrel! Water appears white and milky while sediment can be silty or with larger particles. In a 55 gallon drum it's best not to use the oil on the bottom 8 inches just in case of settling (even after filtering.)

A centrifuge spins all of the particles and water out of filter vegetable oil before it is used as fuel. At around $1000. it is the most expensive and the most effective.

I use a four barrel system with sock filters and a hand crank pump. A coarse filter and settling barrel, a fine filtering barrel, and two holding tanks. I have used inline fuel filters as well as the gravity method. When I used the 12 volt pump, I trickled charged the battery with a solar panel. At home I filter 2 times, and then my conversion filters it another 3 times, 1 of them being an inline filter for water separation as well as sediment. Plus there's the strainer in the gas tank. My 1979 Mercedes wagon has run off 100% WVO for over 60,000 miles now! There are classes held around the Bay Area on how to make biodiesel. However, if you want to go "all in" and run 100% veggie oil then this blog's for you.