Ideablob: Vote for Forage Oakland

Hi. I've entered a contest to win a grant for Forage Oakland (in the amount of $10,000) to purchase a fleet of 'harvesting bicycles', organize ongoing biking and walking tours of the neighborhood's bounty, and possibly have someone help with creating a website. The contest is very participatory, totally democratic, so please vote for Forage Oakland!

Thank you in advance!
Asiya

To Clarify

Just in the way of clarification, the Jam Exchange has not yet happened, and will not happen until Sunday, February 22nd. More details to follow.

Cheers,
Asiya

The Marmalade Project

Suzanne with two of the eight jars of orange and lemon marmalade.

This evening on the way home from work, I made two quite fruitful pit stops. First, I stopped to Georgia's, where on the porch was a small jar of nocino for me. In turn, I left a small bottle of nocino for Georgia, and so on, and so on. I'm certainly going to wait for a special occasion to bring out the nocino.

Secondly, I stopped by the house of Suzanne to retrieve the marmalades that she'd made as part of the Marmalade Project, which was essentially a sharing of recipes between Suzanne and and her French grandmother. Suzanne is moving from the Bay Area, and needed to unload the jams pretty immediately. I collected eight large jars of orange and lemon marmalade this evening, all of which will be put away for the February 22 Jam Exchange.

Winter Jam and Marmalade Exchange.

(Please note: see 19 February post for most current Marmalade Exchange details.)

You are all cordially invited to a (homemade) jam, marmalade, jelly, and syrup exchange on Sunday, February 22, 2009 between 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm at the Temescal Farmer's Market, which is located at the Claremont DMV. I will be there waiting, with my own collection of syrups and marmalade, and will be on hand to fascilitate exchanges. You can exchange any number of jars of jam or bottles of syrups; there is no upper limit. Please bring friends (with jams) and if you plan to attend, please take one very quick moment to complete this super-brief questionnaire. That way, I can gage the interest and know whether it's worth my time to linger at the market.

More details of the precise location of the exchange will follow as the day approaches.

P.S.: If you cannot make it to the exchange yourself but would like to participate, please send me a brief note and we can arrange a time to collect jams, etc. in advance. I will then deliver your trades at a later date.

Cheers,
Asiya

To Cambridge.

Aside from harvesting rosehips at the DMV today, I packaged this quince jelly, which will hopefully find its way safely to Cambridge. The quince were harvested in Dublin, Ireland.

Winter hibernation, of sorts.

Rosemary syrup, to gift. The rosemary was harvested from 45th Street in Oakland.

Rosehips, which will become rosehip jelly. The rosehips were harvested from Claremont Avenue in Oakland.

The abandoned tricycle in my backyard, along with a fallen orange from the backyard tree.

Happy New Year!

(Foraging of a different sort: Jerome and I 'rescued' six Christmas trees and currently have a forest installation in our living room and dining room.)

(Here is a tree resting in the basket of my bicycle.)

Oranges from the tree in my backyard, prepping for marmalade.

And the backyard fallen fruit.

Anya searching for passion fruit on 41st Street.

The found passion fruit.

Come one, come all.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009, OPENrestaurant and Yerba Buena will host an OPEN event. Click here for more information. I will be attending as one of the twelve 'panelists'. Come and have a bowl of soup, a glass of wine, and a chat about urban food systems.