Farm Class: Fairview Gardens

(download)
Rob and I started our "Walk with the Farmer and the Cook" class last week.  For six weeks we get to walk through local farms with, what's turning out to be very enthusiastic farmers, learning about their seasonal crops, preferred ways of farming, harvesting, and how to put some of this healthy, whole food yumminess into a recipe - that's the added bonus of touring with our very own knowledgeable chef and nutritionist  - Yay!

What a find!  All of this offered through our local Community College.  I love Continuing Ed classes.

Week one: Fairview Gardens

This will be the most local tour as it's practically in the city.  Urban Farming, if you will.  Kind of odd to see housing developments all around this quaint farm established back in 1895. It is considered to be the oldest organic farm in California.  Our tour guides were fantastic: Mark Tollefson and his adorable and boldly-barefoot 3-year-old son who told us, "if you put butter on corn, it is really sweet."  Smart kid.  Mark emphasized sustainable practices and the importance of being a strong presence in the community through education and accessibility.  Anyone can take a self-guided tour of the farm and I hope to drop in on a class here in the future.  I believe Composting 101 is coming up.  I learned that this garden's piles of compost can reach 140 degrees in the center.  Basically, no ugly germs could survive this inferno and practically everything goes in.  As intriguing as the compost talk was, my favorite part of the tour happened to be the goats.  Mark promises goat cheese in the near future.  YUM! 
Our next trip is out to Ojai where we'll get to stay for dinner!  Blog sure to follow.

 

 

Why Blog?

Melissalundsgaard

OK, here goes.  I'm starting this blog after days, weeks, even months of thinking about it. My inspiration comes from friend's blogs and how I can easily end up spending hours clicking around from one link to the next; connecting, researching and discovering so many new things along the way.  I'm addicted to the information at my fingertips and I love to learn.  I feel, at this time in my life, I have been given the opportunity to absorb as much as possible.  What I'm finding, I can't wait to share, as much of it is just so darn interesting...well, to me of course.  But, I can't be alone.  The world is too big to be the ONLY one in awe of the goings on all around me, every day, online, on the radio, down the street, at the market, in the cafe, up, up in the mountains, across the ocean, amongst the stars and even in my mind.

My intention for this blog is primarily to focus on food.  I'm having a love affair with food.  It definitely didn't start out that way earlier this year when I discovered that I was gluten-intolerant.  In fact, at one point I hated ALL food.  How could food be my poison?  But, I was so determined to feel better that I never went back.  After having made an unwavering commitment to myself, a whole new world opened up to me.  I was capable of making choices, healthy choices.  Of course, having a wonderful, loving and supportive husband, who also happens to love cooking and the joy of food creativity, helps me A LOT.  Every day in fact.  BUT, also knowing that I have the choice to make this change has motivated me to share the phenomena with others.  Less than a year ago I avoided grocery shopping, meal planning and any critical involvement with food preparation.  At stores or even in restaurants, I was often overwhelmed by "choice."  I wanted to make healthy choices, but I didn't know how.  I'd rather spend money going out convincing myself that a dish was somewhat healthy if it had something "green" involved or I allowed a package declaring "light" or "healthy" to make the choice for me.  Wrong, so wrong.  Hmmm...I think that is another blog post altogether.  Going gluten-free was not easy by ways of trying to figure out what to eat but also the items I did find were crazy expensive and going out to eat was practically impossible.  Besides starving, I felt my only choice was to start cooking.  And I am so grateful that I did.  Now that I am learning to cook yummy, gluten-free, healthy meals, I actually prefer to stay in and create in my kitchen laboratory.  I can be found cooking on my own or even for others!  Anyone who knows me understands that this is not a change to be taken lightly.

Discovering a direct link of physically feeling better to food was the biggest wake up call for me.  Suddenly, I realized I had a very obvious ability to control my moods, my migraines, my stomach discomfort...the list goes on.  And in my somewhat obsessive online research, I couldn't believe how many food allergies there are and how frequently the symptoms are either issues we just learn to live with, we are misdiagnosed, or even worse, prescribed a drug to hide the symptoms.  Again, another post altogether.  But, as I have empowered myself to take charge of my healing, I'm taking one step at a time in the kitchen (Rob still watches over me when I have a knife in my hand), I'm learning to not be afraid to ask questions or make mistakes and I most definitely pat myself on the back for making an effort towards living a healthier, happier life.

So, in writing this I've realized I have more to say than I thought, but for now I'll start with my objectives in writing this blog:

1)  Health.  For the love of food, eating local, organic, healthy and gluten-free!
2)  Joy.  My new found joys of spending hours in the kitchen, at Farmer's Markets, researching all kinds of kitchen and food mysteries and planning new dishes to prepare.  
3)  Community.  To reach out, sharing simple pleasures, learnings and things of beauty in hopes of stimulating a constant flow of new discoveries and conversation.
4)  Follow Through.  This blog is a commitment to myself and to those that find themselves reading it.
5)  Motivation.  To keep learning!
6)  Humor.  To not take myself too seriously.  :-P
7)  Creativity.  To practice my food photography - it is a lot harder than I thought!
8)  Growth.  To watch as the blog unfolds...where will life take us?
9)  Inspiration.  To inspire as countless others inspire me every day.
10)  Leap of Faith.  To push the "Post" button and work on my breathing exercises.

And....POST!