alexandra’s kitchen: California Here We Come

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

California Here We Come

Yay! So we just found out. Ben has been assigned to 1st Battalion, 4th Marines. We're moving some time around the New Year to Camp Pendleton, just north of San Diego.

While there are many things I will miss about Philly — pretzels, the Fair Food Farmstand, the Tuesday South and Passyunk Farmers' Market, Ding Ho and The Bulletin, to name a few — I am so excited to have the chance to live in California for the next three years. My sadness about leaving certainly hasn't settled in, but I cannot wait to finally see if all of my West Coast roommates' digs at East Coast Mexican food have been valid, and if it really doesn't rain in their perfect state.

Oh, and check out my latest entry about Claudio's fresh cheese on Uwishunu.

The Eggmobile

The eggmobile houses laying hens. It follows the herd of cattle, arriving to grass they've grazed on four days earlier.The hens peck at the four-day-old cow pies, eating various insects, larvae and parasites - rich sources of protein - and accomplishing a whole lot more along the way: By eating the fly larvae and parasites, they rid the land of potential pathogens and disease; by scratching through the droppings and spreading them across the grass, they enable the manure to sink into the ground and fertilize the soil; and by eating the pesky insects, they reduce the presence of one of the cows' biggest irritants.

The Barn

Joel Salatin stands in the open-sided shelter where his cows spends a portion of the winter. During the winter, the cows eat hay (dried grass accumulated throughout the growing season), and live on a bedding consisting of woodchips, sawdust and old hay to absorb the cows' excrement. When the heavy cows tread on their nitrogen-rich manure and on the carbon-rich bedding, packing it together, they allow the mixture to ferment (anaerobic composting). By adding corn to the bedding, Salatin entices his pigs to turn the bedding into compost: When the cows return to pasture in March, the pigs dig through the densely packed bedding, searching for the tasty fermented corn, aerating the pile and turning it into compost for the spring.

Corn Pudding