May 17th, 2012
This past week has been a very productive one at the St. Lydia’s Enough for Everyone Garden. We now have four beds constructed, with three of them filled with soil and compost. Yesterday we planted peas, green and yellow pole beans, red flageolet beans, eggplant, collards, kale, cucumbers and zucchini in the first bed.
This Saturday, we’ll be making a trip to home depot in the early morning to purchase the rest of our soil and compost and some materials for our retaining walls. At 10 AM, we’ll meet at the garden to unload soil, build retaining walls, fill more beds with soil and plant more seeds and seedlings! Email me at rachel@stlydias.org if you want to come help out, or just show up. Bring gloves, a sunhat and sunscreen, and get ready to make some garden magic. Everyone who has worked in the garden so far has reported feeling uplifted by the experience, with a mysterious buoyancy in mood and outlook resulting in direct relation to hours spent volunteering. There’s more where that came from and its ours for free so come on down on Saturday!
Here’s a revised layout of our plan:
Our soil came in the form of a large pile:
Able and ready!
Some treasures unearthed from the lots:
Jason raised the bar of our bed-building considerably:
Mark takes a well-deserved lean in the shade:
Ta-da!
The Garden Manager consults his plan:
Bean seeds!
May 17th, 2012
Ingredients
- 1 Package Lentils
- 2 qt (approx) bottle of veggie juice
- 1-2 qts of water
- 4-5 large sweet potatoes in large chunks
- 4-5 large carrots chopped
- 1/2 package of frozen spinach
- 1/2 bunch of celery chopped
- 1 onion chopped
- 3-4 red bell peppers diced
- 1/2 jar of natural crunchy peanut butter
- Cumin, coriander, cinnamon and black pepper to taste (about 2 tsp of each)
Preparation
Combine lentils, liquid, carrots and sweet potatoes in a large pot and cook on med-high heat. Clarify onion and combine with mixture in pot. When the lentils, carrots, and sweet potato are starting to soften but are still a little firm, add celery and bell peppers. Just before removing from heat, stir in spinach and peanut butter until they soften and blend with soup.
-Prepared with our help by Richard on May 13
May 17th, 2012
by Wendell Berry
Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.
We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.
-Read at St. Lydia’s on May 13
May 17th, 2012
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
During the summer, we sing a different response during the Eucharistic Prayer. It’s brighter, in a light three, and written in a major key to reflect the season. Listen to the Summer Table Acclamation.
May 17th, 2012
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
We sing “Jesus, We Are Gathered,” a piece from Zimbabwe, as a gathering song at almost any time of the year! Click here to listen to Jesus, We Are Gathered
May 16th, 2012
Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Dot Dot Dot,” on her blog, Sit and Eat. The text is the last few verses of the Gospel of John — John 21:20-25.
May 16th, 2012
Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Jason Segel is Wrong,” on her blog, Sit and Eat. There are muppets. The text is John 21:15-19. It all fits together somehow.
May 10th, 2012
by Denise Levertov
To lie back under the tallest
oldest trees. How far the stems
rise, rise
before ribs of shelter
open!
To live in the mercy of God. The complete
sentence too adequate, has no give.
Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of
stony wood beneath lenient
moss bed.
And awe suddenly
passing beyond itself. Becomes
a form of comfort.
Becomes the steady
air you glide on, arms
stretched like the wings of flying foxes.
To hear the multiple silence
of trees, the rainy
forest depths of their listening.
To float, upheld,
as salt water
would hold you,
once you dared.
.
To live in the mercy of God.
To feel vibrate the enraptured
waterfall flinging itself
unabating down and down
to clenched fists of rock.
Swiftness of plunge,
hour after year after century,
O or Ah
uninterrupted, voice
many-stranded.
To breathe
spray. The smoke of it.
Arcs
of steelwhite foam, glissades
of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion—
rage or joy?
Thus, not mild, not temperate,
God’s love for the world. Vast
flood of mercy
flung on resistance.
-Read at St. Lydia’s on May 6, 2012
May 6th, 2012
The next volunteer hours at the St. Lydia’s Enough for Everyone Garden will be Saturday, May 12 from 10-3. We are hoping to get a good crowd together to build more raised beds and the two retaining walls for our terraces. Come out and enjoy the sunshine and the infectious can-do atmosphere!
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I have news! Our garden volunteer hours on May 6 were very productive, and when we arrived, we found that most of the seeds we planted in our burlap sacks last Saturday have sprouted! The radishes are doing the best, probably because they get the most sun. But most of the lettuces and the chard have sent up little green buddies too (some even found their way through the weave of the burlap where they got dislodged from their shelves in the bag that fell over), and there are two pea shoots. It was nice and wet last week, and we hope the sun we’ll be having this week will help the rest find their way out of the soil. So exciting! It was a beautiful day in the garden today, with lots of butterflies and bugs that weren’t there before. The creatures are starting to get interested in all the new life emerging on our lots, and it is a wonder to behold.
We also built two new raised beds today, our first non-sack structures. It was much easier than we thought it would be, and we used donated wood A Small Green Patch received as a from the owner of the middle lot. We are so grateful for all these gifts!
May 6th, 2012
serves 4-6
Note from the cook: Nearly everything in this dish can be varied and adapted to taste or available ingredients. The only exception I’d say is to be careful with the amount of ginger because it can be overpowering. Likewise, don’t substitute anything in that has a really strong flavor. The main flavor in this dish, umami, is subtle. It comes primarily from the mix of mushroom and soy sauce; nutritional yeast is an old trick to add “umami” flavor to meatless dishes and umami is also in asian cabbage. So this dish is basically an umami overload, which is why it’s so yummy. -Phil
INGREDIENTS
Peanut or a flavorless cooking oil (do not use olive oil)
1/2 – 1 lb thin noodles (thin spaghetti or yakisoba noodles are best, but any noodles will work) — use less for vegetables to be dominant, more for a more filling pasta dish
1/2 lb firm tofu, pressed, then cut in cubes or triangles (or 1/2 lb chicken cut in small strips)
6oz shitake, crimini or white mushrooms, sliced very thin
1 medium to large onion, sliced very thin (or scallions or spring onions)
2+ garlic cloves, finely chopped
1-2T fresh ginger, finely chopped
1/2 t turmeric
1/4 t ground Szechuan pepper or black pepper
1/4 head of napa cabbage or 4 baby bok choy, shredded (or better yet, use a mixture of the two)
1-2 carrots, sliced thinly on the diagonal
1-2 handfuls of baby spinach
1-2T Soy sauce (if possible, use strongly flavored high quality soy sauce; this is the main flavoring)
1/2-1 c mushroom stock (you can use chicken stock but mushroom is better) — use less to just coat food, more to have broth
2t nutritional yeast (optional)
PREP
1. Press tofu.
2. Cook pasta al dente. (If using spaghetti, break in half or thirds when adding to water so strands are several inches long.) After draining, rinse with cold water, toss with a little
oil and set aside.
3. Slice mushrooms and onion thin.
4. Slice carrots thin on diagonal.
5. Mince garlic and ginger.
6. Shred cabbage or bok choy.
7. Drain tofu. For triangles, cut lengthwise in four then each piece in half diagonally lengthwise, then cut into triangles.
COOKING
1. In a large pan, heat oil over medium high heat, add mushrooms and sear for 5 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, onion, turmeric and pepper. Saute a few more minutes and move to
bowl.
2. In the same or a different pan, heat oil and sear tofu for 1 minute each side. Move to bowl and drain.
3. Saute carrots and cabbage for 2 minutes or more til soft but not mushy.
4. Return mushroom mix and tofu to pan with vegetables and add cooked noodles.
5. Add stock and soy sauce and simmer for no more than a couple of minutes.
6. Toss nutritional yeast into the liquid, stir, and cook for another few minutes.
7. Remove from heat, stir in baby spinach and serve.
VARIATION – a little less healthy but a little more yummy
1. In large flat pan, heat oil over medium low heat and add 1/4 of the cooked noodles in a layer.
2. When crisp and brown on bottom, flip frying noodles and cook other side.
3. Remove and drain crisped noodles.
4. Either place this disk on the plate or chop into chunks and scatter then serve over it.
-Prepared with our help by Phil on April 29, 2012
