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brainfoodgp · 7 years

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Brain Food Garden Project Blog April/2017

“April’s rare capricious loveliness” -Julia Dorr-

April has been a busy month for Brain Food Garden Project and for me personally. April showers helped the French tulip bulbs the ACMH Garden Club planted last fall erupt in color just in time for Passover and Easter. The rains this month didn’t stop us from getting our new standing greenhouse built and starting to plant our lounge herb garden. And a date has finally been set to tape the NY1 Queens Person of the Week segment featuring me and the work I’m doing both at ACMH and Brain Food Garden Project the interview is scheduled to tape on Thursday May 4th.

Our First batch of Brain Food Garden Project t-shirts arrived, and although we aren’t selling them yet, we formed a contest to name this monthly blog and the winner will be one of the first to get a free t-shirt. For more contest information see the end of this blog post. Also, in the future anyone that submits a story to run in our monthly blogs “feature section” if accepted and printed will also receive a complimentary t-shirt for their contribution. More on that in just a minute.

We honored Autism Awareness Month throughout our social media platforms and celebrated Earth Day by volunteering at one of our favorite organization’s and partners Leave It Better kids’ garden in the Bronx. The rain didn’t dampen any of those volunteering’s spirits it just invigorated us to push on and we accomplished so much together in support of making our planet a healthier place for future generations.

When I changed the format of this blog post to a newsletter concept with different sections it was always my intention to open up the feature story section to everyone in the Brain Food Garden Club community. I wanted anyone that had a story to share or ideas on Food Justice or mental health that they wanted to bring to the community to be able to do so. Starting next month for Mental Health Awareness Month we will have our first guest writer. I already have her complimentary BFGP t-shirt ready! I will share more details in our 2nd Annual Special Edition Mental Health Awareness Month issue on May 8th.

That brings me to this month’s feature. This month I have a real treat from one of our new partners Kate Bakewell founder of Brook Farm Group. Kate is one of the top urban landscape architects in NYC. And she recently sent me a rendering of what the possible garden space could look like if we are granted permission to use the space at Metropolitan Community Hospital. So this month I have decided to answer the top 3 questions I am asked in potential partnership meetings regarding why I think Metropolitan hospital is the perfect location for the Todd Petriscak Memorial Garden. As always we have our latest “Notes from the Resistance,” a wonderful new read for you to check out in my “What I’m Reading” section and a recipe perfect for the warmer weather we are blissfully starting to enjoy. Onwards towards summer and the adventures life has in store for all of us.

The BFGP Feature:

Whenever I am in a meeting with new potential partners for Brain Food Garden Project I am often asked a ton of questions. Many revolve around the potential space I have in mind for the first garden. In this month’s feature I have decided to answer three of the most frequently asked questions in those meetings. The beautiful rendering accompanying these questions has been provided by one of Brain Food Garden Projects latest partners Kate Bakewell an amazing New York City based urban landscape architect. The firm she started Brook Farm Group has an impeccable reputation for making the city scape greener for all of New York’s citizens for more information on Kate and the Brook Farm Group. Click Here.

Question 1:

Why do you think Metropolitan Community Hospital should be the site of your first hospital garden?

This ultimately is one of the first questions I am asked by new potential partners. By now many people know that Metropolitan Community Hospital is where I spent my second extensive hospitalization. I have told the story many times by now of the excellent care I received while at Metropolitan Hospital Center. This excellent care is one of the primary reasons. Another reason and story I love to share is after I had reached a certain level of recovery and was waiting for an affordable housing option to become available. I would go to my room after lunch every day and look down on this enormous rooftop space sitting empty (pictured in the rendering above). I started planting a vegetable garden on this space in my mind. Every day after lunch I would return to my room and looking out the window I’d plant a new crop, by the time I was discharged I had a flourishing garden blooming. I asked myself why isn’t a real community garden blooming on this space? And why aren’t our public hospitals taking advantage of unused space to help grow and feed our communities? In conclusion it all comes down to wanting to give back to a hospital that gave me a new chance at life.

Question 2:

Why do you feel operationally this would be the ideal location for Brain Food Garden Project’s first garden?

Well, first it has to do with available space. Not only do they have the outdoor space available, if future inspections prove safe to build our garden, but they also have unused office space available directly off the garden space. Second, anyone familiar with HHC (NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation) knows that although they manage most of the public hospitals in NYC, none of their direct operating systems are the same for each individual hospital. For example psych patients at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn are never allowed to leave the psych ward no matter how well they might be progressing. While at Metropolitan once your medical team has approved you reaching a higher level of recovery you are granted permission to go off ward accompanied by a clinician to use the gym, library and to occasionally take your dinner outside to a gated area to eat. This type of system would prove vital in allowing peers to use the garden as a wellness tool while hospitalized.

Question 3:

Why is the first garden to be named the Todd Petriscak Memorial Garden?

Todd Petriscak and I met and became friends while hospitalized at Metropolitan Hospital in 2012. After discharge we stayed close friends and each other’s biggest support system. Todd’s love for science influenced some of the earliest decisions made and overall direction and mission statement for Brain Food Garden Project. Todd was part of the original five team think tank that I lovingly referred to as my Big Green Machine that listened to my earliest ideas and offered advice in how to shape them. Todd lost his battle with manic depression on January 25, 2016. I continue to miss his kindness, intelligence and support every day.

What I’m Reading:

I bought the book The President’s Kitchen Cabinet back in February when it first came out. I had been a fan of author Adrian Miller’s first book Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. This brilliant follow up book has proven that there is no better historian to dig up the tasty truth and unearth the long overdue contributions of the African community to the American food culture. There could not be a better location to start the process of un white washing America’s food culture than at the slave built White House itself. This book is a must read for all history lovers and food lovers, some of the recipes in the book are simply amazing.

Notes From the Resistance:

The fascist is fast approaching his 100 days mark and other than some very destructive executive orders and one signed bill that will allow people with severe mental illness to have easier access to guns. His agenda has mostly been a wash thanks to the American people fighting it at every turn. Have no fear his next attempt is to shut down the government until Democrats agree to pay for his atrocity of a wall. These are going to be a long four years.

1. There is an agricultural crisis coming. Click Here

2. Now Yale Psychiatrists are warning us about the fascists mental health. Click Here

3. Mental Illness is on the rise but where is the access to care? Click Here

4. The fascist appoints a Mental Health Czar but is she just a hack? Click Here

5. The fascist regime cares nothing about prison reform and people with mental health concerns pay the price. Click Here

Healthy & Delicious Recipes:

When the warmer weather begins the first thing I need to make is a good old standard a pasta salad. I just crave it and this is one of my favorites I call it the Beltane Spring Salad. Make a big batch for after you’re finished dancing around the May pole.

Ingredients:

· 1 pound whole wheat small shell pasta

· 3 carrots, thinly sliced

· 1 (1-pound) bunch asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

· 8 radishes, halved and thinly sliced

· 2 cups baby spinach, thinly sliced

· 1 bunch green onions, white and light green parts, thinly sliced

· ½ teaspoon ground black pepper

· ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

· 3 tablespoons lemon juice

· ¼ cup chopped fresh dill or basil, chopped

· 1 teaspoon fine sea salt, to taste

Method:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until just barely tender, about 5 minutes. Add asparagus, carrots and peas and cook until vegetables are just tender and pasta is just tender, about 3 minutes more. Drain and cool under cold running water, then drain again. Meanwhile, in a very large bowl, whisk together oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add pasta and vegetables, spinach, green onions, radishes and dill and toss to combine. Serve at room temperature or chilled; refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

HELP US NAME THE BRAIN FOOD GARDEN PROJECT BLOG!

Submit your idea for our new blog title and if your entry is selected WIN a Brain Food Garden Project T-shirt. All entries must be submitted no later than midnight on May 4, 2017. Submit your ideas to [email protected]

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brainfoodgp · 7 years

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2nd Annual Mental Health Awareness Month Edition May/2017

“You know, I just started therapy. I love it, I love it. I went through two therapists to get to the right one.”

-Brad Pitt

The world is a different place since I wrote the first Mental Health Awareness Month edition last year. Last year’s blog started out with the last mental health decree from President Obama. He had issued a statement of support every year of his presidency marking this special month of awareness. We are now absent a voice on these important issues in the executive branch of our government.

The first bill the new President signed into law rescinded President Obama’s protections insuring that people with the most serious mental health conditions, the most vulnerable, could not so easily gain access to purchasing guns is no more. His appointment of a “Mental Health Czar” Dr. Ellie McCance-Katz is a former SAMHSA critic and is on record questioning if bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are even real. This is the person who will be largely responsible for implementing Republican Representative Tim Murphy’s already flawed Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act.

We are not without our champions. The recent House of Representatives repeal of the Affordable Care Act that will decimate the mental health community has been vehemently criticized by former Representative Patrick Kennedy founder of The Kennedy Forum. In a recent Facebook statement he said: “The bill that passed in the House yesterday is a direct affront to the millions of Americans with mental health conditions and addictions, and comes at a time when the suicide rate is climbing and the overdose rate outpaces car crashes as a cause of death. This bill is an irresponsible attempt to fulfill a misguided campaign promise, and will hurt more people than it helps. House Republicans will have to explain to their constituents how this ACA ‘replacement’ bill is actually a “displacement” bill, as coverage is cut and costs skyrocket. The newly uninsured will flood our jails and emergency departments because affordable and timely care will be out of reach for those who are most vulnerable. I urge the Senate to stop this misguided bill in its tracks.”

His cousin current Rep. Joe Kennedy in a “First Opinion” piece for STAT News stated: “All too often, mental illness is relegated to the sidelines of our health care debates. It’s somehow still deemed less critical, less acute, less wholly devastating than physical disease. One in five Americans and the families who love them would tell you otherwise. From the depths of opioid addiction to the searing pain of eating disorders and the long, often lonely, road through anxiety and depression, we have abandoned too many people in a system that cannot meet their basic needs.” To read the entire op-ed Click Here

The road we travel sometimes feels bleak, even more so in these difficult times in America. Which is precisely why we need Mental Health Awareness Month to remind us all of the work we still have to do. With a strong Peer Movement and allies like the Kennedy’s we will save lives, end discrimination and fight stigma… the fight continues!

It is hard to believe that four years ago on May 3rd I was invited to be on the Ginger New York show on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network to talk about mental health and introduce my new labor of love Brain Food Garden Project to her New York audience. I will forever be grateful for that opportunity! On May 4th of this year I was named NY1’s Queens Person of the Week for that continuing work and I feel honored. If you missed the segment that aired Friday and throughout the weekend…

Click Here

This year has been full of blessings. From a renewal of old partnerships with my good friends at Leave It Better, to the forming of new partnerships with Food Justice educator Claire Hartten, Kate Bakewell, landscape architect and founder of Brook Farm Group and Toby Sheppard-Bloch General Manager of Intervine. I am finally able to see the Todd Petrriscak Memorial Garden very much on New York’s horizon. My studies with Farm School, NYC are about to resume and my current work with the garden club I created for ACMH, INC is truly blossoming. All of these new developments have brought me to the decision that I will be limiting the monthly blog posts I’ve been feverishly working to keep ahead of each month to 6 issues a year. After this month’s May edition I will start with a Summer issue in July followed by three more seasonal issues Fall/September, Winter/February 2018 and Spring/April 2018 with two “special editions” each year the Mental Health Awareness issue in May and a Food Justice special edition in October. I hope everyone will continue to follow our blog posts as they will continue to be one of the best sources for informing our followers about our progress…and we have a new name and a winner of our recent contest!

As many of you may or may not have noticed we subtly changed out our logo and tag line on all of our social media sites recently. The new tagline is easy to remember and lets everyone know what we are about. “Planting Seeds For Wellness.” It was recently used on the backs of our first batch of t-shirts and was the inspiration for one of our Twitter followers that submitted the winning title for our naming our blog contest. She is from Miami, Florida and I love that she used it to create her entry. Our new blog name is the Seeds For Wellness Journal. Each month that is precisely what I try to do in each issue plant seeds for wellness. With our BFGP Feature article, What I’m Reading, Notes From the Resistance and Healthy & Delicious Recipes. I try to share with everyone not only BFGP’s latest news but also some of the wellness tools that keep me grounded. We were grateful for all 7 submissions and the winners new t-shirt will be in the mail in June.

Finally, I am happy to announce that the Seeds For Wellness Journal will have its first BFGP Feature guest writer, actress and singer Daralyn Jay in our May edition at the end of the month. She will share her very special vantage point of what it is like to be friends and love someone with a mental health concern. Daralyn has been my dearest friend for almost three decades and she is still right there by my side. When I think back on some of the things I put her through during the course of our friendship I don’t ever take for granted what a beautiful blessing she is in my life.

As we celebrate our accomplishments and renew our dedication to fighting for mental health parity and to putting an end to stigma this Mental Health Awareness Month. We need to remember that no matter how dark the road may sometimes seem if we take a minute each day to practice simple gratitude a brilliant light can often be found at the roads end. No matter what ups and downs I continue to face with my manic depression I see that light now and I walk towards it embracing the journey.

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