October 3, 2011 {Meal Plan}

Ingredients & Inspiration:

• I harvested a ton (well, several huge bowls) of green tomatoes, peppers, and herbs this weekend when frost threatened.
• I ended up with four bags of Swainway Urban Farm sprouts after working the booth on Saturday. Yum!
• Hello birthday week!! I want to go to Athens Farmers Market for my birthday and backpack the night at Wildcat Hollow. This will be our first time to the market ever and first time backpacking since Lil was a baby.

Menu:

Monday - fried green tomatoes, remoulade, dinner salads

Tuesday - salmon cheeks (fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads), stuffed peppers, sprout salad

Wednesday - dinner with Dad at India Oak?

Thursday - Applicious cooking class at Franklin Park Conservatory (tickets still available, $63 for six (6!) courses including fennel apple slaw, apple braised pork, and rustic apple tart)

Friday - Trail burritos (dried beans/salsa, cheese, tortillas, sprouts), dried fruit

Saturday - Dinner in Athens (Casa Nueva or Jackie O's? Maybe one for early lunch, the other for dinner?)

Sunday - Birthday dinner of fondue and small plates at our house

PS. Stay tuned to the blog this week for a series of giveaways celebrating my birthday!

Celebrate Local Pop-up Shop {Profile}

Combine interest in the inaugural Easton Farmer's Market, an empty store front, and a community of local producers and what do you have? Celebrate Local, a pop-up holiday shop of all-Ohio goods.

Celebrate Local opens October 1 and will continue sales through the winter holidays at Easton where Harry & David's previously resided. The shop offers frozen, refrigerated and fresh local foods, handmade pantry items, and locally made crafts. Customers can select items from around the store to build a personalized custom gift basket.

A project of the Economic and Community Development Institute (ECDI), Global Gallery, and the Easton Community Foundation, Celebrate Local seeks to showcase Ohio food producers and artisans to shoppers searching for local gifts. A generous vendor agreement will feed the economy by returning much of the sales to the small businesses and entrepreneurs of central Ohio.

I spotted Hound favorites Snowville Creamery milk, Stinky Bomb soaps, Ohio Bison Farm, and Made by AmyD aprons in the shop. More vendors are coming; several fresh produce vendors from the Easton Farmer's Market will house their wares at Celebrate Local and Jenny from Purely Simple Raw told me she will stock healthy snacks like kale chips and caramel apples. When the liquor license is issued (permit inspection happened this week), the store will also carry Brother's Drake mead and Ohio wines.

Stop in to shop for daily meal ingredients or gifts for the holiday season. Celebrate Local has the best of Ohio waiting for you.

Celebrate Local Store October 1, 2011 - January 2012 4030 The Strand, Easton Columbus OH 43219 614-596-1303

Bites October 2011

Dig in with your knife and fork - early October serves up a full plate of Columbus food news! 1. Local Foods Week starts Friday with a happy hour at restaurants around the city benefiting Local Matters. Festivities continue October 1 - 8 with events as diverse as an urban farming forum at the Wex to local drink tasting at House Wine to the culminating Harvest Dinner and Ball and Market to Market ride. Head over to the Eat Local Ohio site to find the activities that match your calendar and budget.

2. Local radio station WCBE turned 55 on Monday. Happy Birthday 90.5! A documentary about their history will be screened on Monday October 10 from 5:30-8:30 at Shadowbox. Notable for promoting local music and events, WCBE is also host to Foodcast, a radio show about all things edible in Columbus. Tune in at 2:01 on Saturdays or listen to archives and read notes on the Foodcast website.

3. Carole at ChopSizzlePop is seeking interview questions for her newest blog feature, "Ask the Chef". The first "chef" (who claims he is just a home cook) is Cleveland native Michael Ruhlman. I submitted my question; head over to the ChopSizzlePop page to ask yours.

4. Columbus Underground celebrates their 10th anniversary of being the go-to source for independent online news this October. Walker and company have scheduled a slew of celebratory events including new flavor launches from Sugardaddy's and Vienna Ice Cafe listed on the 10th anniversary messageboard thread. Huge kudos to the CU team for featuring the best of Columbus every day!

5. Franklin Park's Hungry Planet exhibition and events continue in October with a Live-fire demo October 2, food truck court on October 9 and Wednesday 'Food for Thought' lecture series.

6. The latest art exhibition at Brother's Drake is Yummy! an explosion of food and art. The opening reception is this Saturday, October 1 from 7-11 pm featuring nosh from local and independent folks and a raffle benefiting Mid Ohio Food Bank. The exhibit will continue through October 23.

7. Celebrate Local, a pop-up holiday shop featuring Ohio produced foods and gifts, opens Saturday. The non-profit store will be located in the former Harry and David store at Easton. Tomorrow, I'll post a preview of the Celebrate Local.

I must apologize in advance for light posting over the next week. I am teaching four classes in the next seven days and will celebrate my own birthday on the 9th. You can see me in person at the Family Pasta and Sauce class this Sunday or the Applicious Culinary class on Thursday October 6. Contact me to register for either.

Apple Fennel Cabbage Slaw {Recipe}

What's colorful, nutritious, and full of autumnal ingredients? Apple fennel cabbage slaw! My mother originated this slaw in my family, probably as a spin off from a magazine. We now make the salad regularly as a side to grilled meats or bite of freshness among a rich oven roasted chicken.

With a very light dressing, the recipe is vegan, low fat, and full of vitamins and crunch. Fennel haters have been known to change their mind over this salad.

Apple fennel slaw keeps for up to seven days in the fridge. When we tire of eating it fresh, we toss it in a cast iron skillet and braise the mix over medium heat until the vegetables are sweet and tender.

[print_this]

Fennel Apple Slaw Makes: 12-20 servings Time: 20 minutes preparation, 30 minutes resting

1/3 cup vegetable oil 1/4 cup white wine or champagne vinegar 1 tablespoon white granulated sugar or honey 2 teaspoon soy sauce 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1/2 teaspoon ground dried ginger 1 fennel bulb, core removed and thinly sliced 1 small head red cabbage, core removed sliced thinly in 3 inch lengths 2 granny smith or other tart apples, peeled, cored, and cut into matchsticks

1. Whisk together or shake in a jar the oil, vinegar, sugar/honey, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and ginger. 2. Pour dressing over fennel, cabbage, and apples. Let macerate for 30 minutes at room temperature or overnight in the fridge.[/print_this]

Added to Hearth and Soul and Traditional Tuesdays.

On Blogging

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of recording an hour long radio episode about niche blogging with Erica Pryor of Digital 411 and Andrea Ratulowski of Food Embrace. We talked about blogging platforms, working with PR agents and advertisers, social networking, audience and more. I loved chatting about technology in the professional Talktainment studio. Listen here to the free full niche blogging episode as an mp3 or on iTunes.

It took me a few days to realize exactly what was the most fun about the experience and then it hit me - I had a full hour of uninterrupted conversation with adults. Between homeschooling, homesteading, and homemaking, rarely does an hour go by that I am singularly dedicated to anything.

Do you have blogging questions for me? Ask them in the comments and I promise to answer.

Lil is Six!

Lil's kitty cat cake was made by my sister Heather of Taysetee Pastry. Lil's birthday marks two weeks until my birthday, yippee!

Experience Columbus Bathrooms {Friday Five}

Last week, Experience Columbus treated a group of bloggers from around the US and I to a whirlwind tour of the Columbus food scene. The other guests captured some fabulous shots of the food we ate and drank. I took pictures in the bathrooms. My line of reporting was unintentional but actually makes sense in hindsight. More than a place to wash up, the best restrooms reflect the sensibility of a place. Here's what I found in the toilets around town:

1) The food scene tour started in the Men's Room of the Westin Columbus. The loo is not of note but it houses one of the most notable people I've ever met in central Ohio: Carey, the Shoe Artist. Fine shoe collectors send him their leathers and Carey restores the shoes to former luster...from his office in the bathroom. 2) I carried my purse into the Basi Italia water closet. I didn't expect to use the camera in the bag but I couldn't resist documenting chef Johnny's cookbook collection and quirky choice of a light switch plate.

3) Rockmill Brewery is an earthy yet refined place. The birds eye maple sink cabinet drawer fronts reflect this aesthetic exactly.

4) The light and tasteful restroom of Pistacia Vera perfectly mirrors the atmosphere of the rest of their elegant bakery.

5) The last bathroom I want to highlight is not pictured because it doesn't exist, sorta. Non-Columbus folks were surprised and thrilled at the diversity and quality of the taco trucks we toured with Columbus Food Adventures, whose van is not equipped with a lavatory. Ever prepared, guide Bethia was ready with potty break spots for guests as needed.

Stay tuned to my fellow travelers for their impressions of Columbus: Blue Kitchen (Chicago) Cincinnati Nomerati Eat The Love (San Francisco) The Heritage Cook (San Francisco Bay) Joe of The Hungry Dudes (Detroit) A Thought For Food (Boston) Vanilla Icing (Pittsburgh) Wine Me, Dine Me Cincinnati

Disclosure: Experience Columbus paid for my meals and transportation for a three day extravaganza of eating. I bet they didn't expect a review of restaurant johns when they asked me to come along. ;)

Unschooling Scope and Sequence

One of the requirements of the state of Ohio is that we notify our school district that we are educating at home. Another is to provide a general outline of our plans for the year. The list I sent superintendent Gene Harris was imbibed with eduspeak. Our real scope and sequence is more like this: Scope (the variety of what we teach practice together)

Life: contribute to our family and the community by daily participation in chores, projects, and social interactions feed ourselves well exercise our bodies daily monitor and provide for the plants and animals we keep develop friendships, learning to resolve conflicts, negotiate, and hear other viewpoints communicate with friends and family around the world via phone calls, text messages, and paper letters explore community norms by exchanging money, understanding traffic laws, voting, and supporting local businesses

Appreciation: observe nature, measure and count, and accumulate identifications of what lives around and among humans question the past, using first hand experiences and many sources to understand history listen, dance, and make a variety of music play and experiment with art mediums visit museums, parks, historical sites, and libraries ask questions about the world and find answers read, read, read Sequence (how we choose what to study and when)

We follow Lil's development as a natural guide for choosing what interests and activities to pursue. She is currently fascinated by the natural world, exotic places like Africa, and movement.

Alex and I empower Lil to make decisions about herself and find answers to her questions in all aspects of our daily life. We help her learn to use tools such as books, rulers, calculators, encyclopedias, cameras, maps, computers, knives, and logical reasoning to find answers. Our home, garden, and neighborhood are hers to explore.

To ensure that Lil experiences a variety of social learning, we daily learn with others outside our home. Our weekly activities include: Monday - morning class and play with a friend Tuesday - two classes at our homeschool co-op Wednesday - afternoon at Gram and Tompa school (Alex's parents) Thursday - gym and pottery at rec center Friday - field trip with friends Saturday - home, field trips, family Sunday - home, field trips, family

If Alex's work travel schedule aligns with my cooking class schedule, we will travel at least every other month this year. We may be able to accompany him to India, Philadelphia, Arizona, and/or France this year. Family trips to Athens, Ohio (October 2011) San Salvador Island (February 2012) and Hawaii (June 2012) are already in the works.

With a month of official homeschooling (but no travel other than Urbana, boo) under our belt, I am loving the freedom and opportunities we have with this learning situation. Lil is not the only student - her questions prompt Alex and I to inquire, study, and take on new projects. We truly enjoy building our lives around this fascinating world.

What's the scope and sequence of your current life?

PS. Lil is recording some of her experiences in her own words at her blog, Lil's Dot Com.

Added to Simple Lives Thursday.</em>