Making Whole Grain Sourdough Bread

I always wanted to try sourdough bread...someday...but was put off by the all the complex instructions out there for getting started. This summer, I got lucky when a friend gifted me a starter from his own sourdough baking, with the instructions to follow the recipe for sourdough in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. the starterBittman's recipe is a good place to start because it's almost like sourdough-lite. You still add commercial yeast...

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Making Sense of Outdoor Space in the City

I'm over at the Green Phone Booth today reflecting on my conflicting desire to have my own outdoor space so I can do seemingly green urban homesteading activities like vegetable gardening and composting, even though it's not sustainable for everyone to have their own piece of land to do so. Moreover, my yard turned out not to be a dream come true. Read on to find out why...

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Spicy Pumpkin Soup with Bacon Croutons

I have been fortunate that the lives of most of my friends and family were not upset by Hurricane Sandy. Even my parents' beach house on a New Jersey barrier island somehow pulled through okay, sitting an extra 20 inches off the ground past the top of the flood water. I do have some friends who went without power for more than a week, like the couple who run a food truck business out of their building in Red Hook. Luckily their commercial kitchen...

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Guest Post: Hunting My Own Meat

While New York gets back on its feet and prepares to return to the normalcy of going back to work, my sister Lisa is here to share a guest post from Oregon about fulfilling her lifelong dream to learn to hunt (which I never knew she had).A long, long time ago, when I was a child on a goat farm, I became a vegetarian. My reasons: it was environmentally irresponsible, wasteful, and often cruel to animals. My parents weren’t into it, but they stopped...

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A Day in My Life

I'm over at the Green Phone Booth today, where I'll now be blogging every so often. To introduce myself to the booth, I've shared a typical day in my life, so go check it out if you've ever wondered how I spend my days. Although, this week has been anything but typical. Hurricane Sandy hit New York hard. I personally felt thankful to be unaffected and thankful for all of our modern infrastructure and conveniences, which meant I was snug in my apartment on high ground without even losing power, able to monitor the news via internet throughout the...

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Lavender Gin Fizz

It might not seem like the right season for this refreshing cocktail, but I want to take advantage of the fresh herbs growing my backyard before they succumb to the cold. After transplanting my lavender plant into the ground to help it weather the winter, I picked a handful of green leaves to simmer into a sweet and lightly aromatic syrup.Evan asked for advice from his friend who he considers to be a cocktail expert, and within minutes had a...

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Scenes from a Music Video Shoot

Last weekend my band Sexy Neighbors had a video shoot for our song "Breaking Walls." When I originally heard the concept was for us to play at a house party, I thought we would just shoot random shots of a party. But when I showed up I was extremely impressed at all the work that went into it -- from our guitarist who planned out all the shots, to our videographer who was on top of this game, and especially the generosity of the people...

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Why You Should Follow the Frog

People want to know what they can do to help protect the environment. They fear that their personal actions are not making enough of a difference. But, all of our small actions do add up and we can only make change by starting at home. The organization I work for, Rainforest Alliance put together this (very amusing) video to explain that you don't need to go to the ends of the earth to protect the planet - you can start by "following the frog." By purchasing goods like coffee, tea, chocolate, and juice with the Rainforest Alliance frog seal, you...

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Living Small

Upon moving out of the apartment with the bed bug issue where I lived with my best friend, my next move was in with my boyfriend. He had been living in a smallish one bedroom, but we thought it was just a little too small for the two of us, so we spent all of March and April hunting for a bigger apartment, to no avail. Because his current rent would be so cheap split two ways and we knew we could make it work, we didn't want to move unless we...

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Watermelon Lime Mint Punch

Although the weather is easing into fall, watermelon is still making appearances at farmers markets and end-of-the-season outdoor parties. Now, have you ever noticed that it's nearly impossible to eat a whole watermelon, or even for that matter, a half-size one? It's fun to eat, but hard to finish off all that volume. Even after dinners with friends, there are leftover pieces that languish in my fridge. So this watermelon punch is a great solution...

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Bed Bugs Part 2: How it affected my life

The unpleasant thing about bed bugs is not the itching. That is much worse if you have say, a mosquito problem, which I've experienced indoors and outdoors in Brooklyn. It's the way you have to live carefully, so that you won't spread bugs anywhere or to anyone else. It's the work involved in keeping your things meticulously clean and sealed up in bags. And doing it all over again when you realize you left a bag open after a late night of drinking...

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Bed Bugs Part 1: The Story

I was waiting for the bed bug ordeal to be over and my apartment security deposit to be returned before talking about it here. So now that it is safely past me (at least this time...because there is no guarantee that I won't get bed bugs again when they are so prevalent in New York) ...There are two kinds of bed bug infestations. In the first one, you notice a couple bugs and bites and get sprayed right away, a few times over the course of a month and a half. You don't experience any bug evidence after the first spraying, so after the last one...

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Double Birthday Party

When we found out we were moving into an apartment with a yard, we instantly started to get excited about hosting Evan's upcoming birthday party at home. Originally we hoped to have an afternoon outdoor affair, but our bizarre daytime mosquitos dashed that dream (more on that later) so it turned into a nighttime inside-outside party. It was good motivation to get all unpacked and settled both inside and out within the month of moving, even if it...

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How to Make a (Vanilla Blueberry) Ice Cream Cake

First, find a good reason to make one. I knew for months that I wanted to make an ice cream cake for Evan's birthday party. He tried to steer me away, saying it would be too messy, too hard to serve, etc. Indeed, I usually avoid making cakes for parties, preferring to bake simpler handheld apportioned desserts like cupcakes. But I felt a special occasion such as a double 30th birthday party (he shared his party with his best friend who was born only...

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