Cooperstown Zucchini Bread Recipe (Courtesy of my Mommy, who says, "Hi")

Since I spent all of today picking delicious zucchini, I have decided to post the recipe for one of my favorite dishes: Cooperstown Zucchini Bread.

I have no idea why it is called “Cooperstown Zucchini Bread”. I understand the “Zucchini” and “Bread” parts, but Cooperstown? Maybe it was invented there? Cooperstown has the Baseball Hall of Fame; maybe it has something to do with that? I went to the Hall of Fame once on a family vacation. We got to meet the dog from the Sandlot, but I didn’t get any zucchini bread. Hey! Now you know a little more about my life. Isn’t that spectacular?

Cooperstown Zucchini Bread

3 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

½ tsp baking powder

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups grated zucchini

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

3 tsp vanilla

1 cup pecans

½ cup raisins

2 cups sugar

1 can (8 oz.) crushed pineapple (drain juice)

½ cup sour cream

3 eggs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit or 162.77777777777777 degrees Celsius*
2. Mix all ingredients together
3. Cook in well greased loaf pan for 1 hour
4. Remove from oven
5. Devour!

Sharing with friends and family is recommended but not necessary.

*Clyfe taught me how to do that in Physics 400. Clyfe, I know you are not reading this, but your efforts with me were not worthless. Look! I can convert now!

Cayenne Peppers

I love spicy foods. I really do. Curries, salsas, chili. I have a collection of hot sauces with names like Liquid Stoopid, Ultra Hot Mad Dog Ghost Pepper Sauce, and Crazy Jerry’s Brain Damage. Needless to say, when I heard that we were growing chili peppers, I got excited.

Here are some super-neat CAYENNE PEPPER FACTS.

• The cayenne pepper is (according to Wikipedia) also known as the Guinea spice, cow-horn pepper, aleva, bird pepper, and red pepper.
• On the Scoville Scale that measures the heat of peppers, the cayenne pepper is has a midrange level of spicy with 30,000–50,000 Scoville heat units.
• The heat from chili peppers (called capsaicin) is used in making many arthritis medications.
• A teaspoon of red chili powder meets the RDA for Vitamin A, and green chili peppers have as much Vitamin C as six oranges. **
• Chili peppers are also a good source of Iron, Potassium, and Fiber.
• The cayenne pepper has a plethora of medical properties, from diet aide to anti-cancer agent to remedy for a toothache.*
• Eating a cayenne pepper will curbs your appetite. In other words, the pepper is so spicy that it makes you want to stop eating. It also boosts metabolism.
• In some Chilean cultures people put dry chili powder in their shoes to help keep their feet warm.

I will leave you with this one last tip. If you are ever bored and need something to do, just eat a whole cayenne pepper. Get a few friends together and each eat a chili pepper. Be sure to have a lake of water nearby, you will need them.

*http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/benefits-of-cayenne-pepper/

 **http://www.louisianapepper.com/about-cayennepeppers.html

Merrimack Valley Food Bank

The zucchini is coming in fine, and in a few days will be ready to harvest. The tomatoes are starting to come in, slowly but surely. The potatoes and onions are looking as healthy as ever. Most impressive, however, is the lettuce and squash. They have exploded with life, generating huge early yields.

Which means I had a lot to give to the Merrimack Valley Food Bank.

The goal for this year was to use this garden to help feed those in need, so most of the produce will be going to the Food Bank. Yesterday was the first delivery. For those who don’t know, a food bank is a middleman between those who want to donate food and those who need it. They take huge donations in food and distribute them to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, etc.

The Merrimack Valley Food Bank also runs a variety of other programs to combat the struggle of hunger, such as:

• Food Distribution Program operates a food distribution center where member agencies select nutritious, ethnically appropriate food two days a week to be distributed to low-income individuals and families.
• Massachusetts Emergency Food Assistance Program (MEFAP) distributes food purchased by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to member agencies serving low-income individuals and families.
• Emergency Food Assistance Program (USDA/TEFAP) distributes food purchased by the federal government to qualified member agencies serving low-income individuals and families. The USDA program provides large quantities of nutritious food through the federal government’s bulk purchases.
• Guy Francesschelli Food Rescue Program - MVFB operates a 16-foot refrigerator truck that picks up prepared and perishable foods from area supermarkets three days a week and delivers the food directly to pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters in Greater Lowell and Lawrence free of charge.
• Nutrition and Safe Food Handling Education Program provides valuable information to our member agencies regarding safe transportation, storage, and handling of food.
• Mobile Pantry Program is a community-based health and nutrition service program that delivers groceries to homebound, low income elderly and disabled people in greater Lowell.
• Summer Lunch Program provides an average of 7,000 nutritional lunches to low-income children in Lowell in conjunction with sponsored activities.
• Community Market - a seasonal program (July - November) offering fresh, locally grown produce to low-income Lowell residents of a specific neighborhood.
• Operation Nourish is a pilot program starting in September 2011 that provides supplemental food to pre-K through 4th grade students at a Lowell school for weekends and school vacations when they are not in school to receive free and/or reduced lunch and breakfast.

Click here to visit the Merrimack Valley Food Bank's website. Here, there is information about how you can donate to the Food Bank personally, whether with money, time, or food.

Nature and Weeds

Michael Pollan’s first book, Second Nature, is about the basic conflict within American culture: the opposition of nature and humanity. Currently, there is a deeply engrained “us-and-them” mentality about the relationship between man and nature. On one end of the spectrum we have nature: the world of sublimity, sustainability, and chaos. This world is home to small woodland creatures whose innocence and sacredness are akin to Bambi’s, and is a utopia where plants and animals live in a constant state of harmony. On the opposite side of the spectrum is humankind, the forward thinking individuals whose city environment often conflicts with and demolishes nature.

Pollan, however, argues that the garden is the middle ground between nature and humanity. Essentially, a garden is a place where humans can control nature, and form it in their own image. Nature takes on the order that humans apply to it, while retaining their connection to the earth. Additionally, a gardener must discover a way to balance her needs with natures. The garden needs to grow and be healthy, and humans must find ways to facilitate this. Gardeners need to use their own inventions and ingenuity to halt some of nature’s attacks on the garden, such as weeds that suck nutrients away from the crops.

In other words, I spend all my time fighting with nature to work with nature. I spend most of the 90 degree weather days weeding, a job that is constant. The only time when I am not weeding is when I am watering. or when nature is watering through rain. 

Things you learn in the garden. 

Positives and Negatives

The best parts about my job:

• I get to be outside for most of the day, enjoying the fresh air and sunlight.
• Though I have a supervisor to help me out, she won’t be around that much. This means I get autonomy. It feels great to be pretty much my own boss. I get to listen to my own music while I work.
• I know my hard work will pay off in food, and I know that food will go to people who need it through the Greater Lowell Food Bank

The worst parts about my job:

• I have to be outside for most of the day, which is terrible during heat waves.
• There is no one around. Ever. I am alone from 9 to 5. Which is not fun. I think it might actually be making me crazy. I have started talking to the plants. Loudly. With swears.
• Its hard work. Weeding will never stop. The sun will bake you.
• BEES. Everywhere. Aaaah.

Week 1

My first week as a sustainability intern is coming to an end.

The heat has gone up steadily since the first day, climbing from the mid 70s to high 90s. As you can probably imagine, that wasn’t the best for the plants. The chives took the worst hit, with the flowers turning gray and brittle. I am going to talk to my supervisor about that tomorrow to see if I can get anything done. The tomatoes and potatoes are growing the strongest.

Most of my work this week has been weeding. The blueberry patch became more of a weedpatch, full of vines and ivy and weeds. I am not finished, but I made progress. The worst part was the vines. Ground ivy had overrun the bushes, climbing and twisting around the branches and limbs. Other vines with bristles just grew outward and attached itself to the plants, causing me to shred some leaves to remove them. All in all, not fun. 

EDIT: The chives are okay. That was their lifetime.