Pine Nuts and Pesto

Pine nuts (piñon) are the edible seeds of pines (family Pinaceae, genus Pinus). About 20 species of pine produce seeds large enough to be worth harvesting; in other pines the seeds are also edible, but are too small to be of value as a human food. (wiki)

Pinyon pine is a widely distributed pine that grows in the Intermountain region of western North America. It is a major indicator tree in the pinyon-juniper life zone. P. edulis is a short and scrubby tree that rarely reaches heights taller than 35 feet. Growth is very slow and trees with with diameters of 4 to 6 inches can be several hundred years old. It typically grows either in pure stands or with juniper. The chunky little cones produce a well-know and tasty nut. The wood is very fragrant when burned. Pinus Edulis - About.com

Audio Postcard: The Pine Nut Harvest (NPR)

How to Make Pesto like an Italian Grandmother Recipe

- The Ag Geek

Carne Asada Is Not A Crime

This is all kinds of ridiculous.

From The Great Taco Hunt:
We already know the Los Angeles city government is anti-taco. First it was the LA city Council that passed a law that required taco trucks to move every half hour or face a $60 fine. It was a small but revealing gesture and the message was clear,the government was coming after the taco. Now the LA county board of supervisors has double dipped into the proverbial guacamole sauce with a ridiculous law that requires taco trucks to move every hour or face a $1000 fine and possibly jail time. What’s next? Waterboarding taco reporters to get them to reveal locations of their favorite loncheras?

Sign the petition to save the taco trucks:
http://saveourtacotrucks.org/



- The Ag Geek

Return to the Victory Garden. Yes!

Wheat Not Lawns!
To combat the skyrocketing price of flour, several Massachusetts bakeries have taken on a project that's part Little Red Hen, part World War II Victory Garden. The bakeries are recruiting their customers to till up their lawns and gardens and plant wheat.

Michael Pollan's latest
But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

- The Ag Geek

Bees!

Urban beekeeper. Ha.

- The Ag Geek

Non-conformist lettuce

It's getting warmer, but we're still growing lettuce! Even if you're not eating it, it's useful as a living mulch.


Really Locally Grown, Hydroponic Lettuce

Everything you ever wanted to know about hydroponic lettuce

Everything you needed for hydroponics

Earthbox, paper mulch, and bare ground Lettuce Production trial (the earthbox lettuce was sweeter)

Galactic Lettuce - somebody get me some of this seed. Gorgeous!

It's been awhile since I posted, but I'm still here. Would love to see some comments and feedback!

- The Ag Geek

Fallen Fruit

Cheaps Eats recently posted about Fallen Fruit, a group in Los Angeles that are mapping the location of fruit trees. They host "nocturnal fruit forages," although I'm not sure when the next one will take place. KCET has a feature on Fallen Fruit that you might like to take a look at.

- The Ag Geek

In Defense of Food in a Nutshell

Michael Pollan on The Hour via YouGrowGirl

School Salad Bar

Link via the excellent What To Eat blog.

- The Ag Geek

Food Not Lawns

Food Not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, by Heather Coburn Flores.

The premier guide for ecological living in the city through paradise gardening and shared resources by a co-founder of the original Food Not Lawns grassroots gardening project in Eugene, OR. With a foreword by Toby Hemenway and over 400 pages of text, enhanced by almost a hundred drawings by Northwest artist Jackie Holmstrom, Food Not Lawns offers a theoretical and practical handbook for ecological community transformation. (Chelsea Green, 2006, 334 p.) ISBN 1-933392-07-X

http://www.foodnotlawns.com/

The Story of the Banana

It's 1922 and you are the United Fruit Company. The first copy of your book "The Story of the Banana" was such a rousing success, you printed a second edition. 86 years later, your book, surviving on some library shelf, has been scanned where an unsuspecting Ag Geek types "banana" into Google Book Search and you (United Fruit Company) no longer exists.


The Story of the Banana

"One will readily appreciate the necessity for infinite care in handling a bunch of bananas when he pauses to consider that this fruit, which is cut from the tree in a green state, is, until fully ripe, practically a living organism drawing sustenance from its stalk, with sap flowing and tissues changings; that it generates heat within itself in the ripening process..."

More on:
United Fruit Company (discussion)

- The Ag Geek