That’s the topic of this thoughtful piece by Mark Bittman, but the point isn’t just the familiar fact of the hidden high (and highly subsidized) costs of processed food in America. Bittman reflects more generally on how regular ingredients can be bought cheaply and prepared easily to make healthy delicious meals at home (which, coincidentally, is this blog’s wheelbox). His overall point is that “the alternative to fast food is not necessarily organic food, any more than the alternative to soda is Bordeaux”:

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

Brought to my attention by the ever-informative Adam Conover’s google feed.

In a whirlwind of apartment cleaning this weekend, we threw out our cats’ cardboard scratching board, which had all but disintegrated on our kitchen floor. As the little monsters were threatening to transfer their attention to the molding around our doors, Caroline insisted that I get them a replacement, but I had a different plan.

I googled “DIY cat scratching board” with the intention of figuring out how to make something out of carpet that would work with the space in our apartment, but then I instead i found this post, which seemingly was not written in English and passed through an auto-translator. But the idea seemed simple enough, and cardboard boxes were something we already had lying around the apartment (unlike random patches of carpet). I pulled up another hit for DIY cat scratching board from the google results and started cutting until I ended up with what you see in the picture.

Tools: Razor (box cutter or exacto knife), straight edge, wood glue

Materials: one shallow (about 2 inch) cardboard box (for container); other cardboard boxes (3-4, depending on size)

Instructions: Cut cardboard into 2-inch strips (or other width, depending on the depth of the box you use for your container). Once you have enough to stuff the container full, apply glue between each strip so that the cardboard forms a solid block. After the whole board is glued together, put it in the box (although do not glue it so you can flip the board when one side wears out) and decorate the outside as you like.

The construction process is incredibly easy, if a bit tedious, since it involves cutting strips of cardboard over and over again until you have enough to fill the box. Notice that the first link has a deep box while the other is quite shallow. The box I used was about 2” deep, which I chose because it was about the depth of the scratching board I threw out and because it was a box we happened have in our paper recycling at the moment. It occurred to me after I’d started that having a deeper box might have been better, but you would also end up wasting more cardboard that way (since I don’t know that cats ever really scratch down to the middle of the board).

As far as attaching the boards, the guide I followed (second link above) suggested hot glue, which I don’t have on hand. Instead, I opted for wood glue, putting a thin strip on each piece and then stacking them up. I worked through the board by applying glue to about 25-30 pieces and then applying pressure until that stack dried, then moving on to the next one. If you apply pressure just by setting a weight on the stack you just glued you could immediately start applying glue to the next one. Instead, I set the freshly glued stacks into the box and so added them on to the previously glued stacks, and then would just wait 30-45 minutes before moving onto the next stack, which required about 4-5 stages of gluing.

Finally, a note on the cardboard: if you click through both links, you’ll notice that the first has the cardboard cut horizontal to the length of the board, while the latter seems to have vertical strips. It would no doubt be much easier to make fewer long cuts than many more short ones, but I didn’t look at the second link until after I’d already started compiling cardboard strips. Next time I make one of these I will definitely do it the other way. Also, some of the cardboard I used (particularly one USPS shipping box, and the box used to make the container) were very thin, so much so that in retrospect it wasn’t worth the time it took to cut them up. In the future, I wouldn’t use just any box I happen to have, but look for boxes with nice thick sides so that they fill up the box more easily. But all in all, an easy project that only takes a couple of hours to complete.

Pickling beans up in here.

This is not exactly food-related, but today the NYC announced that Alta Bike Share won the contract for the NYC Bike Share. For anyone not in NYC (or just not following this story), the City put out a call for bids last fall, and since then there has been much speculation about what a share for a city as large as New York will look like. Now we have it:

• Within the service area, which will stretch from the Upper West Side and Upper East Side to Bed Stuy and Greenpoint, New Yorkers will have access to 10,000 public bikes at about 600 stations.
• Annual memberships will cost under $100. Members will be able to make trips of up to 30 minutes at no charge.
• The stations will be sited with input from local communities, and the City Council will hold hearings on the program.
• The system must operate without public subsidy.

I confess, this sounds incredible ambitious, and I wonder how realistic it is. The Paris bike share was be much more costly than initially predicted, but I understand that subsequent programs have learned much from the mistakes made there (bikes are apparently much harder to steal in other cities). And of course, even if the rates have to go up, the program would be a success if it convinced people to at least try biking, and then maybe encouraged people to buy their own. Whatever happens, I’m excited to see how this plays out.

Step 1: Make a Peach Pie

Thanks, Angie, for sending me your friend Tom’ mom’s crust recipe! 

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup (half a stick) butter or margarine
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tbsp vinegar
• 3 tbsp. water

Combine flour and salt in a large bowl.  Cut in the shortening and margarine by hand (with a pastry blender or using a fork and knife) until well blended.  In a cup, beat the egg with a fork, then add in the vinegar and water.  Stir to combine, then pour into the flour mixture.  Combine well by hand with a fork.  Divide into two equal balls, and then chill for at least one hour before using.  Should make enough for one two-crusted pie.

For the filling, I used 3.5 pounds of CSA peaches, unpeeled but scrubbed and then sliced, tossed with a mixture of 1/3 a cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 3 Tablespoons flour, and the juice of 1 lime. 

Step 2: Bring the potted plants in:

This spring, some neighbors started a community garden in a formerly vacant lot by our apartment. Unfortunately, we were out of town the weekend they met to divide up plots, and, sadly, didn’t end up getting a plot of our own. But we stayed involved: Anthony helped build their compost bins, and I attended a garden potluck a few weeks ago.

While at the potluck, I noticed that one of the beds hadn’t been filled. Asking around, it seemed like none of the other garden members knew why its owner hadn’t taken advantage of the open plot.

Machiavellian community garden political maneuvering ensued, resulting in our triumphant acquisition of said empty plot. Alternately, Anthony emailed the google group and asked if we could take over the plot, seeing as the garden had a “use it or lose it” rule and that the summer is now winding down, and everyone else was cool with it. Believe whichever version you want.

At any rate, last week we bought 10 bags of soil and transferred most of our rooftop garden a couple blocks up Franklin Avenue. Though our garden seemed big on the roof, it only filled half the plot, even with the extra habanero plants I picked up when I bought the soil. Next year, though, we hope to fill the entire bed. Here’s what it looks like now:

food-forthought:

Make it these:

When you consider the Twinkie as a product — which it truly is, in every sense of the term — it’s not that hard to fathom its link to the world economy. Twinkies’ ingredients are the products of a rural-industrial complex, made from a web of chemicals and raw materials produced by…

Seeing cities as the environmental solution, not the problem, from the National Resources Defense Council Staff Blog.

American environmentalists from Thoreau and John Muir onward have held country living as more desireable and superior to life in morally bankrupt towns and cities. The NRDC argues that it is time to critique and rethink the American bucolic ideal, which, in practice leads to sprawl, increased car use, and further environmental degredation. Rather we should encourage more attractive “human habitats” in the form of beautiful, livable cities in order to better protect nature. 

New York City boasts less than half the US average for per capita carbon emissions: 10.6 tons versus the US average of 23.6 tons, and is the only US city where most households do not own cars (source). Clearly, any modern, relevant definition of green living must take such factors into account.

Dinner, a few nights ago.

Anthony and I were upstate last weekend, hiking in the Catskills and visiting friends in Tivoli. The Tivoli friends had just harvested their first heirloom tomato from their backyard garden and would not let us leave without taking it home. A giant orange beauty, I regret not taking a before picture.

At any rate, we made a caprese salad, using the tomato, basil from our garden, fresh buffalo mozzarella from Caputo’s, balsamic reduction, and salt and pepper. (To make a balsamic reduction, boil balsamic vinegar at a low heat until it thickens. Don’t let it burn, or it’ll be gross to clean up; I speak from experience.) 

We served this with pasta in pink vodka sauce, using more or less this recipe, plus roasted CSA zucchini. 

This is what I was up to earlier tonight! I’ve had a cucumber surplus problem of late, which I’ve dealt with by making cucumber fridge pickles. Recipe here.

brooklynskillshare:

just announced…

PICKLING & HOME CANNING
When: Tuesday, August 16th from 7-9pm 
Where: LaunchPad in Crown Heights (721 Franklin Ave Brooklyn, NY 11238) 
Description: Learn how to quick pickle (that can survive in the fridge for 2-3 months or, really, for a very long time) & how to do a waterbath pickle (that is shelf stable).
Taught by: Nomnivorous

(photo by quixoticpixels on flickr)