Category Archives: Superstruct

[Superstruct] Urban Food Producers’ Coop

Posted on October 7, 2008 | Comments Off

deck garden

If you haven’t signed up yet, I strongly encourage you to go to the Superstruct site and create a profile. It’s only been up for a day, but already there’s tons of activity. Then, I hope you’ll go to the Urban Food Producers’ Coop page and join that as well.

One of the things I’ve been trying to figure out is how we give people in urban areas (that being the concentration of world populations) access to healthy, local, sustainable foods. To everyone, not just fanatics like me who can spend the extra time. I think one of the central steps has to involve connecting urban food producers together, and creating a lightweight, flexible distribution system. Even if the producer is just someone with extra tomatoes from their backyard, or surplus eggs from their chickens in midsummer, or an overgrown apple tree. I hope that this can draw in larger producers near urban areas as well. We still have a number of small farms within city limits and just outside.

Also, can we do more than just subsist? How about food community that really thrives? I love the local food specialties I’ve encountered while traveling abroad, but in the US travel food is often about trying to avoid the overprocessed, unvarying junk found from one chain restaurant after another.

I’d like to see this build upon existing resources like local grocery stores, farmers markets, and CSAs; also, a balance between just-in-time connective technologies and face-to-face community-building like market days. I know we have the interest and ability in Portland to make it happen. But what about other areas? What’s needed to nurture these structures elsewhere?

A related topic I want to get people thinking about is subsistence foods for our specific climates and land resources. I think knowing what we can grow and produce to live on where we are is an important (and largely forgotten) piece of knowledge. I’d love to see input from people outside the PNW, and especially outside the US. What foods would work for your community?

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[Superstruct] Wild Bread

Posted on October 7, 2008 | 9 Comments

Where Sourdough Comes From

This is what I know about sourdough bread.

You can buy sourdough starter, but I made mine from scratch. You mix together flour (unbleached organic, or whole wheat, or even rye) and water, cover with something breathable like cheesecloth, and let it sit till it bubbles. I added a splash of cultured buttermilk to mine as well, which gives it lactobacilus cultures for a jump-start. Whole grapes are another effective addition (that dull white coating is yeast). It’s ready when it has a layer of foamy bubbles on top.

The starter needs to be fed each time before you use it, but it can sit dormant in the fridge (or other cold place) indefinitely between feedings. If it seems a little weak after a long period of inactivity, use some to make pancakes and feed it again. But I neglected mine all summer and it was just fine when I finally reactivated it. For feeding I mix in a cup of flour, and enough water to make it pourable. If you measure, the added ingredients should be equal amounts of flour and water by weight.

Round 4

My basic bread recipe is 1 cup active starter, 2 cups flour, .5 cups water, and a heaping teaspoon of salt. I mix and knead it in a kitchenaid stand mixer, but you can do it all by hand if that’s what you have. The dough is sufficiently kneaded when it’s smooth and pliable, like soft modeling clay or skin. Let rise until it doubles in size (2+ hours), form into a loaf, proof for another hour or two, and bake at 450F for approx. 25 minutes. For handformed (no pan) loaves, I usually slash the top with a knife before baking so it doesn’t explode out the side.

That’s all. After this it’s just practice, and practice, and more practice. Even the mistakes will be edible. If the dough doesn’t rise, turn it into pizza instead.

Other recipes:
Sourdough biscuits: Cut 1/2 stick butter (4 tbsp) into 1.5 cups flour + 1tsp salt. Add 1 cup starter and a splash of cream. Mix. Bake @ 450 for 12 min.
Sesame wheat crackers: 1 cup sourdough starter, 2 cups whole wheat flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tbsp sesame seeds, 1/4 cup oil. Split into 3rds to roll thin and cut into squares. Bake @ 300, 15 minutes on each side.

If you want a reference book, Classic Sourdoughs by Ed Wood is very thorough. The author is a pathologist who has collected sourdough cultures from around the world, and he gives detailed explanations of how and why sourdough works, including using grains other than wheat.

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[Superstruct] This week at the market

Posted on September 28, 2008 | Comments Off

I’ve been trying to get to the PSU market earlier to beat the crowds. There’s a great mix of summer veggies like tomatoes and peppers, and fall items like beets and squash right now. I was hoping to find more table grapes like the selection we got from Ayers Creek Farm at the Hillsdale market last week, but mostly I saw concords. So we skipped those and picked up apples instead. Also no sign of quince. Maybe I’ll walk over and see if the tree listed on Urban Edibles is ripe.

The haul:
Spring Hill Farm: beets, carrots, a Walla Walla onion, a zucchini, a green pepper
Sun Gold Farm: Gala apples
Groundwork Organic Farm: eggplant
Deck Family Farm: pastured chicken

Almost bought more hazelnuts from Freddy Guys, but we’re not quite out yet. I keep eyeing their wild rice, too. I don’t know what time of year they harvest it, but it seemed like there was more to pick from this time: whole rice, broken pieces, and a pilaf mix.

Several vendors had dried beans, so this is a good time to look for that as well.

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[Superstruct] The Hunt for Bread

Posted on September 25, 2008 | 6 Comments

First, I want to point you over to my wiki, where I’m posting some specific responses to the questions raised by the GEAS videos. I thought about doing it as a blog post, but eventually decided that me going on and on about food and oil was less interesting that just telling you what I’m eating, how, and why.

I’ll start off with a story about bread. Sandwich bread, even. You know, the kinda squishy big square kind. A while back I started paying more attention to how far my food was traveling, and what else was being added to it (notably lots and lots of HFCS). It’s all Michael Pollan’s fault (though I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that). For a lot of the foods Lucas and I eat, this wasn’t a big deal. We buy produce from New Seasons or the farmer’s market, where those questions are easy to answer.

Bread turned out to be more tricky. While I can (and do) make it from scratch, it takes several hours from mixing to final product, so it’s hard to create it on demand throughout the week, without making it a central part of my schedule. I tried to demonstrate that this was feasible, but even with my enthusiasm for cooking, it proved hard to keep up.

[Here I will omit a long digression on what makes sandwich bread suitably sandwichy, and whether the bread I make from scratch even qualifies. I will also skip a discussion of whether bread, let alone sandwich bread, is an important part of one's pantry. We just want to get to the next part, about trying to buy bread that doesn't suck.]

We went back to the grocery store and started reading labels. The store-brand loaves we normally bought didn’t work. Pretty much everything seemed to have corn syrup. There are a number of local bakeries that offer sandwich bread with more reasonable ingredients (i.e. some combination of grains and yeast and water without tons of extra sugar), and some of their offerings are delicious, but also more expensive than we were comfortable paying for a staple food, especially given their tendency to go moldy before we reached the end of the loaf.

We tried a number of things before landing on our current choice, Franz Whole Grain White, which is maybe a little dry but otherwise fine. The bakery is within walking distance from where I live.

This process of finding something healthy and practical for us was much more complicated (and frustrating, and occasionally absurd) than I expected. It might seem like a small thing to obsess over, and that’s exactly the problem. Something is very wrong when a food as basic as bread only comes in industrialized (under-nourishing and over-processed) or upscale (and priced accordingly) varieties.

I know I’m fortunate to be able to make this sort of choice at all, instead of buying whatever I can afford. For much of my life, the food budget has been much tighter. (Ask me sometime about gleaned bread and mold removal.) But maybe that’s also why I believe so strongly that those of us who can afford to demand better food options should do so. None of this exists without a market.

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[Superstruct] Five Threats

Posted on September 24, 2008 | Comments Off

This fall, the Institute for the Future is leading a collaborative future forecasting game called Superstruct. The idea is to use collective storytelling and problem-solving to explore problems we are likely to be facing in the next years. I’m really excited to see how this works to generate creative solutions, and encourage preparedness. It may be more fun to work on near-future risks if we all pretend to be in the midst of it now.

I’ll be using my blog, Twitter, and other tools to participate. Since it’s a speculative exercise taking place ten years from now, I’ll use the [Superstruct] label in the title of blog posts, to separate that content (or #2019 if on Twitter). I already feel like I live in the future, so it should be interesting to intermingle real life and speculative content, and find ways to frame things from my current activities in the context of the game.

To start, go watch the five GEAS threat videos. I’ll be posting my thoughts on “Ravenous” soon.

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