#food swamp

[thestudentfarmer]

Hello hello!

No garden post today, but I wanted to share some things I'm doing in the kitchen. After all, if the gardens producing then I need to be able to use and preserve things 🌱 as well, One of the things I've been learning along my sustainable/eco-journey is how to make food stretch better for my family. I like to think I've been pretty good at that over the years but with learning to grow my own crops as well as inflation hikes, i wanted to learn more.

This week I was researching ways to use up watermelons entirely. Surprisingly enough, I found that the rind and the skin are edible as well!

Usually I give what we don't eat to the chickens (the rind/green part) as a way to give them extra feed sources and to reduce my homes green/kitchen waste going out. Im not worried about them missing out though, With the way we eat watermelon they will still certainly still be able to enjoy the bounty melons provide.

This time I'm trying out some food use from a tiktok I found while doom scrolling the other day. The user morocooks, shared a video with uses of watermelon. This included a recipe on making watermelon rind kimchi. Now I enjoy myself some kimchii, it's good for the gut, delicious in soups, stir fry, as is and even blended into bbq sauce. But I've never tried kinchi that wasn't cabbage or onion. I've also never made it before either, so this will be a first on a few levels!

I didn't take a picture of the watermelon, but imagine a big watermelon 😉 to start I used salt and water to scrub down the exterior pretty well and gave it a good rinse after.

I peeled, sliced and cut the melon up. The flesh went in the fridge for dessert and snacks over the next few days and then came the usual waste/chicken scraps. The rind and the skin.

I peeled the skinoff, discarding the funky spots in the scrap bucket and then blended the watermelon skin with some water till smooth to make cubes for smoothie additives.

A lil online slouthing showed that Watermelon peels are low in calories, but are rich in vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin B6, potassium and zinc. And everyone can always use some more vitamins~

So far ive been mixing the melonskin w/ plain Greek yogurt, and some frozen fruit.

I did not blend the skins smooth enough, so definatly be sure their smoooooth! Or there's going to be a bit of texture that while I can get through, might be off putting for others.

The rind, cut up and salting.

A little internet slouthing says that Watermelon rind has high amounts of vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin B6, potassium and zinc. Watermelon rind is also rich in nutrients with chlorophyll, citrulline, lycopene, amino acids and flavonoids, phenolic compounds and fiber.

I also found out some folks use the rind in stirfrys???? I am going to give a try with the next batch! I admit possible curiosity as to wanting to attempt a 'sloppy joe' with watermelon rind too.

The sauce/seasoning.

All mixed and ready for the fridge! I did add some ribboned carrots and sliced white onion. (Leftovers from meal prep this week)

Admittingly I've never had fresh or varied veggies for kimchi before, so I'm not sure if this will get a similar taste profile. So far (day 3) it smells pretty good. The taste is a bit, different. I expected that, and look forward to seeing the flavor develop.

A few other things I did over the last few days was to freeze up some blueberries while their in season at the market.

I like to wash them up (cold water and baking soda ratio is 2 c water to 1 teaspoon baking soda. Let set 15 minutes. Stir every 5 gently. Rinse well.)

Dry them out on a towel on a baking sheet, then freeze them. Usually overnight.

when frozen pull up towel and funnel into freezer safe containers. I use a ziplock bag, but will reuse them till the bag is basically useless. Though when I'm able to I want to switch to a silicone bag or freezer glass.

I did the same as well with starberries (though I like to slice them into quarters for easier use later!) And cherries. (Pit them before freezing.) If I had thought about it I would have made some cherry pit vinegar for sauce, but due to time restraints I was just trying to move along quickly.

Today I'm cooking up some spaghetti squash for the freezer for quick meals s well. That's not done yet, but perhaps later I'll do a seperate post for that alone if anyone interested. :)

I hear the oven, so for now i'll have to head off-

🌱🍉Happy homesteading and sustainable journeys! 🍉🌱

[detroitography]

Mapping the Detroit Food Swamp

by: Jordan Zuael, UM Taubman College For Graduate Architectural Thesis, 95 ASB : Radical Exclusivity in the Food Commons The thesis lives within and adapts the urban fabric of Metro-Detroit, bolstering and promoting the emergence of the Food Commons. This thesis is anti-tabula rasa, acknowledging the systematic injustice present in policies and organizations as well as the current intentional…

[quesadilla-day]

delicious jade 😋yummy yummy 😍

[naamahdarling]

Edit: Thank you all so, so much. I am incredibly moved and incredibly grateful for everything you all have done. Donations, signal boosts, kind words. We can cover their food for at least one month. Anything sent from here out is most welcome and will go towards their needs, but the food crisis is past for now!

The extra will be held until Raleigh sees the specialist on the 11th and either put towards vet bills or used to get him more of his stinky wet food.

----

Guys, we REALLY need help paying for cat food. This is not normally an issue, they come first, but a lot of bad shit happened this month and it has literally taken everything we had. I have tried my hardest to stretch their food to the end of the month but the boys, all three, are out of scrip food TOMORROW.

I'm so sorry. I don't want to be doing this.

It isn't helped by the fact that their food has shot up in price so much I can't believe it.

Please if you can help we would be so grateful. Just five bucks. My boyfriend's PayPal is theothershea@gmail.com.

We need a total refill on Dried Pickle Man/Sid tummy care kibble, and hopefully a month of wet food for Raleigh, which is around $300 for it all. That sadly isn't an error. That isn't even touching the cost of their vet plans and vet debt, which are another $300, and we are behind by about $100 on the vet plans. But all we really need is most of that $300 for food.

The boys can't be off their scrip food. Sid becomes violently ill (I had to buy hospital biohazard spill absorber for when he throws up) with even a little regular food, and Dried Pickle Man eats the same food he does. For Raleigh, well, he's dying. He needs to be kept comfortable for what time he has left and without this food he develops extremely painful and very dangerous urinary crystals very fast and without wet food he can't eat without severe pain in his mouth. We are trying to fix his teeth but need clearance from a specialist which we cannot get until July. He has already been off his scrip food for a couple of days.

We have gotten along this far via Patreon every month, which pays for a lot of the cat stuff, but PayPal and Patreon are holding over $700 of our money due to some sort of technical issue and I don't know when that can be resolved. Without it, we will have nothing in either bank account by the end of the month. Like. Nothing.

We need help. Badly.

Again, my boyfriend's PayPal is theothershea@gmail.com.

All money will go to him to get food for the cats and pay for their monthly plans and medical debt.

This is Raleigh, who will take your fingers and kiss them if you hold your hand out. Please at least help us get wet food for him so he can eat without pain while he is still here to hold my hand.

(If Raleigh does pass before his food runs out, we can easily return the remaining cans and put that money toward the cost of the euthanasia.)

(Reference, reference. These foods cost the same everywhere I can find, and have gone up in price a lot because greedflation, which is a big part of why paying is suddenly more of an issue.)

[hermitkin]

SMALLISHBEANS — stimboard with themes of shrek! requested by anon

× × × · × × × · × × ×

[sinusoidaldysfunction]

Gharial. Bro rizzed up an Icewing princess.

[doomspaniels]

Mmmm, lunch! Tristan and Guinevere are getting half their food in puzzles most days, because outdoors Florida in July is disgusting. Indoor fun is the way to go! And it does seem to be fun: they get a snack, they get to solve a puzzle that's challenging enough to take time even though they know exactly how to open all the little pockets, and they wag! wag! wag! the whole time.

[kekherlyg]

They won't bite, but they can spit.

[chaoscouncilcreaturecorner]

Request: "📻 Radios, tea, cooking, swamps"

🐊📻🍵 - 🐊📻🍵 - 🐊📻🍵

[frogonamelon]

It's that time of year again where it gets a little warmer and I remember that Amphibia is a show I very much enjoy thinking about. Have some Anne outfits, as a treat <3

If you would like to see what aspect of headcanon/ au worldbuilding had consumed my consciousness like a pestering maggot, feel free to continue below.

Hello! Welcome to I focus on researching one very specific detail until I burn out!

My entire day has been consumed by figuring out how Amphibia's farming works. Like... amphibians are carnivores why do they have farms?

Well, I'll tell you why! The Plantars grow animal feed for predominantly crickets but also others such as silkworms, spiders, snails, etc. They grow produce like cabbage, mushrooms, parsnips, potatoes, dandelions, and turnips as well as heartfruit, a fruit not found on Earth.

In the past, the original amphibian hunter/gatherer societies found that mealworms were attracted to fallen heartfruit, among others. They began to use this knowledge to make traps and eventually began both containing the worms as well as growing the fruit.

Despite mealworms historical prominence in the farming and feeding of Amphibia, crickets are more popular nowadays due to their higher levels of protein. They also began growing a larger variety of produce to further increase efficiency.

Heartfruit is a kind of tree grown fruit with the color of a raspberry, size of a kumquat, and shape of a peach (hence the name). The Plantar's orchard is the only producer of this fruit as its traditionally significant but not necessary for frog kind. They are Anne's personal favorite of the Plantar's produce, being chalk full of nutrients and somehow feels nostalgic to her.

Speaking of Anne, she survives mostly on the Plantar's produce along with cricket meat (knowing that she can at least eat crickets).

After discovering that the amphibians hibernate, she begins to plant pole beans, blueberries, elderberries, and other produce and herbs in her greenhouse to cultivate while she forages and stockpiles for winter. She preps and stores wild rice, pecans, and sunflower seeds (discovered through trial and error). She keeps spare root veggies and other product in the basement. The Plantars help her do this, once they understand the situation, drying heartfruit and salting and smoking fish as well as making jerky out of bugs that they know she can have.

Anne's gonna learn to survive, even if the first winter is especially hard.

[thestudentfarmer]

Repost :)

Plus this carrot harvest

I used the greens for salad, stirfry and omolette :)

The carrot became snacks and soup :D

Good day everyone :)

This week's garden update~

The beans and pumpkin that grew with the sunflowers are gone now and I've begun thinning out the sunflowers as the seeds get selected by birds.

I like to leave the smaller heads for the smaller native birds of the area. The heads i save, I've been setting into a drying rack where no birds can get to them.

The stalks I've been discarding the leaves in our cities green barrel (compost) program and I'm saving the stalks to either burn, or to chunk up and try a Hügelkultur grow bed. Not sure 100% what will eb grown in it, might be flowers or herbs, maybe strawberries.

This is currently the biggest sunflower yet! That pole is about 6ft off ground. I'll definatly need a ladder when it's time to take a few of the heads.

The broccoli row, there's some little florets now on most the plants! :D

Cabbages, all four are similarly headed now.

The nasturtium, which i need to go through and clean up a bit. The cold did get one side of em pretty sharply.

The carrots.

This is the batch I used the cornstarch planting method. So far, while they lined up real nice I feel like they aren't growing as well as i hoped. Now weather that's the seed, the planting spot or the season/weather I'm not entirely sure. I think I'll do a summer grow as well, just to test it out again.

The back 'l" bed, ive direct seeded some lentils with the asparagus. I intend to grow the lentils then till them back in to the soil. We were going to dump this bed, but it seems we like it still so we'll likely be doctoring it up for a few more seasons.

Well thats it for now :)

🌱🌻Happy Homesteading and Gardening 🌻🌱

1 18 2024

[thebisexualmandalorian]

I know I bitch about Louisiana and its politics and its weather all the damn time, but I love it here aside from those two factors. I want to share my home with everyone, but it's so exhausting combating the stereotypes and everything else constantly, especially in leftist spaces.

[inittosinit]

The fellas! Flit and Ripple my beloved [for @missterious-figure’s Swamp Things AU]

Flit belongs to @sillyscribblinggoose

Skit watching disapprovingly from the bushes

[reasoningdaily]

New grocer turns food swamp into hub for healthy food options on Detroit's east side

We first brought you this story back in February about a Black-owned grocery store set to open on the city's east side, and now it has come full circle as we take a closer look at the work being done to create a more equitable food system in Detroit.

"The city really showed up and showed out on our first day, and it's been very steady ever since," Raphael Wright said.

"This store is the only convenient grocery store that's in this area," Wright continued.

Over the course of six years, Wright, with the help of crowdfunding and a grant from Motor City Match, took what once was a food swamp or an area with more access to less nutritious foods than nutrient-dense foods and turned it into a hub for fresh produce.

"I do want a healthier Detroit," Wright said.

His goal is to aid in a large-scale effort to create a more sustainable and equitable food system in the city.

"He came already connected to the community," Winona Bynum said.

"So, he opened with the idea of making sure that he's serving the community's needs," she continued.

Bynum, a registered dietitian, heads Detroit's Food Policy Council, a group dedicated to supporting grocers like Wright while ensuring Detroiters are aware of healthy food options and policies promoting food security.

Detroit is continuing its coverage on food insecurity.

In an east side neighborhood, one business owner is taking the initiative to close the food gap.

The last Black-owned grocery store in Detroit closed its doors in 2014, and now there's a new owner in town working to bring culturally appropriate food back to the neighborhood. He's taking matters in his own hands to make Black history in his own backyard. 

"This neighborhood is classed as a desert because there's no immediate grocery store in it," said Raphael Wright, owner of Neighborhood Grocery. "I'm on this mission of rebuilding the neighborhoods that I grew up in and that starts with food."

The building is currently under construction, but there's a bigger vision in the works. That vision is to bring a full-service grocery store to the corner of Manistique and Essex in the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood. 

"Only about five to 10% of Detroit is designated as a food desert," Bynum said.

"However, we do have the need for more food access; we're not where we want to be," she continued.

In fact, according to the Council's latest food metrics report, nearly 70% of Detroit households are food insecure, a 7% increase since 2019, confirming the city's need for the Neighborhood Grocery and a hope for more full-service stores just like it.

"As a black person, we've got a lot to fight for, and we can't do it off McDonald's," Wright said.

"So, it's time to put some healthier food options in the community," he continued.

Neighborhood Grocery is located in Detroit's Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood; it's now open Tuesday - Sunday from 9 AM - 9 PM.

According to Wright, this is just the store's "soft opening," and he's using this time to collect community feedback before November's grand opening.  

[nostalgicfun]

Forgot to show off the hilariously (appropriately) terrible Shrek cupcakes I made a while ago