By John Diodati, Team Leader

 

Posted and edited by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Photographs by Thomas J. Story

The Beach Tractors are a group of young families in Morro Bay, on California’s central coast. Over the course of this One-Block Party contest, they’ve replaced concrete slab yards with edible gardens, seeded an oyster bed, and planted a rooftop garden; raised meat chickens and laying hens; and borrowed goats for milk. Rather than just one party, they decided to do two: one for the adults and one for the children, featuring a whole separate children’s menu, grown in gardens the children have tended themselves. Throughout, they have kept their own active blog. This post describes their party weekend of August 28 and 29. For their incredible efforts and transformative effect on their neighborhood, Team Beach Tractors won our One-Block Party contest. The prize was announced on October 2.

 

“Don’t cry because it is over. Smile because it happened."

Whoever coined that phrase had the Beach Tractors in mind. Each one of us was a bit blue to see this summer’s Sunset experience come to a close. But there was no doubt that our feast weekend was an absolute celebration of homegrown food, of our bountiful environment, and of family and community.

The smiles were as plentiful as the food.

 

—FRIDAY—

Feast weekend began Friday in Morro Bay, literally in the water, as we harvested over 350 well-shaken oysters that all Tractor families tended over the summer.

 

After drying off and icing down our haul, all families met in the Children’s Garden for harvest time. The children picked what they'd need for cooking their feast the next day.

 

—SATURDAY—

 

We met at "Chicken Dave"’s house, where his hens had been busy laying eggs for the children’s meal. Each child was allowed to pick an egg from the coop and bring it back to the garden for cooking in the adjoining house.

With eggs in tow (and all in one basket!), all the families rode bikes from the coop to the children’s garden, where the kids cooked eggs in pots (little individual egg-and-vegetable dishes) and made zucchini fritter faces. 

 

The food was ready. One by one, the four oldest children (the leadership team) gave toasts about what they had learned this summer, accompanied by a karaoke machine. Common themes were fun, friendship, silly experiences like runaway goats, and the happiness of being outside with responsibilities.The children sat at their own tables, eating the dinner that they themselves had cooked. Even the littlest ones were still for at least an hour, while we adults watched from the perimeter. To say the children’s feast was a success is truly an understatement.

 

 

—SUNDAY—

 

We ended our amazing One-Block Feast journey by dining on the 72’ luxury yacht “PapaGallo II”. The boat was once owned by the head of Gallo Salame, which added a bit of humorous irony to our feast; while the ingredients of processed salame are typically questionable, there was no questioning the source of ingredients for our feast. In fact, the beautifully arranged oysters waiting to be eaten on the bow of the yacht, showcasing three different 100% home-grown and homemade sauces, had started their lives directly beneath us on the floor of Morro Bay.

 

Let me back up a bit and explain how we ended up on the PapaGallo II. 

 

The Beach Tractors have an “any excuse for a party” view of life. We like to get together right here in our neighborhood.  But we are not only about fun. Someone once referred to our group as a ‘bunch of over-committers’. It’s true. Walk into any community meeting in Morro Bay and you’re likely to find a Beach Tractor involved in some action, event, or activity.  However, after being picked by Sunset Magazine for the One-Block Party contest, we knew we had to celebrate the once-in-a-lifetime contest with a once-in-a-lifetime party. So, that's why we didn’t just plan one feast. We planned two—one for our children and one for the adults.

 

Our menu had been tailored around the ocean, not only with seafood but with vegetables and fruits that could survive the cold, windy, foggy summers we experience on the Central Coast. When Len and Midge, the owners of the PapaGallo II, offered us their boat as our feast location, we couldn’t say no. It fit with our menu theme and provided us with the singular opportunity we were looking for. It also allowed for an adult-only event that would relieve us of “kid duty” and allow equal participation from everyone. 

 

Preparations on the day of the event were almost as exhausting as growing and making the food all summer. The old “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” analogy probably wouldn’t be appropriate considering our main course...so let’s just say we were busy.

Making honey-wheat muffins with home-grown, home-ground wheat.

Milking the goat and gathering bouquets for the tables.

We milled wheat, collected vegetables and eggs, and thawed the chickens we had slaughtered a few weeks prior. We milked goats and cut flowers for table decorations. We cooked and cooked. I’m sure I'm forgetting at least ten more things we did, but you get the point.

And, then, somehow, it all came together.  Somehow, all 15 of us managed to settle our collective 16 kids for the night with sitters and we arrived at the boat (which we had  tastefully decorated that morning) dressed festively, hair and makeup in place, and with warm food and cold beer ready to be enjoyed. 

While we sipped our cocktails, we were entertained by local surfboard shaper and musician Shane Stoneman. Shane strummed his guitar and sang his own original gentle melodies as the PapaGallo II took us leisurely around Morro Bay Harbor. 

 

This was our first opportunity to slow down and absorb what we had accomplished. This was the first time we could look around at our teammates, all smiling ear to ear, and embrace the fact that we had come together in April with a plan—a crazy plan—and here we were, just five months later, actually fulfilling almost every single crazy idea outlined in our plan.

So what were the crazy food ideas? We had a surf & turf concept. We ate oysters we'd raised in Morro Bay with the local rock cod we'd caught and made into ceviche, and paired them with chickens we'd raised and mindfully slaughtered at a Beach Tractor home. Homegrown vegetables and fruits (citrus) that grow well in Morro Bay were also on the menu. We made and ate wheat rolls, an All-Tractor garden salad, corn succotash, and goat cheese frittata. The dessert was pavlova, with backyard chicken eggs; we garnished it with the ollalaberries, strawberries, and blueberries we'd grown.  A few even used the homemade sugar we'd manage to extract from homegrown sugar cane.

Ceviche, left, and a plate with everything, right.

All of this was washed down with a choice of three beverages: lemon ginger beer; wheat beer seasoned with coriander, orange peel and chamomile; or wine from Beach Tractor Josh Becket’s own hands, as he is the winemaker at both Chronic Cellars and Peachy Canyon (in nearby Paso Robles). We made the two beers, and had attempted to make wine, but wine grapes throughout California were still not ripe by feast day.

 

John Diodati makes the first of many toasts.

We ate. We feasted. And while we savored our food, we got up and toasted each other like Russians on New Year’s Eve. Finally, the PapaGallo II returned to its dock.

However, you must know that we weren't sad, because we decided to take the party, along with our wheat and ginger beer, back to the Beach Tract—where it all started—and continued to celebrate all that we had accomplished.

We celebrated the Children’s Feast, knowing that our children had learned a rare lesson about food and community-building that they will carry in their hearts and minds for the rest of their lives. We celebrated Morro Bay, this treasured little part of California that we call home. But, most importantly, we celebrated the simple fact that even in this chaotic, distracted, and detached culture of the 21^st century, we humans are still capable of slowing down, coming together as a group, and connecting with our land, our food, and one another.

 

 

RECIPES FROM THE FEASTS

 

Zucchini Fritter Faces

 

Serves 4

 

1 lb. (about 2 medium) zucchini or squash

3 or 4 potatoes

1 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. freshly grated lemon zest

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup wheat flour

About 2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

Lettuce, sliced carrot rounds and carrot sticks, sliced pepper sticks, sliced cucumber rounds and cucumber sticks, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced radishes — all for decorating

 

1. Using the large holes of a box grater, shred zucchini and potatoes into a medium bowl. Add salt, lemon zest, and eggs. Mix well to combine. Slowly add flour, stirring so no lumps form.

2. Heat 2 tbsp. oil in a large pan over medium-high heat until oil sizzles when you drop a small amount of mixture into the pan. Carefully drop about 2 tbsp. mixture into pan; repeat, spacing fritters a few inches apart.

3. Cook fritters until golden underneath, 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce heat to medium. Turn fritters over and continue cooking until golden on second side, 2 to 3 minutes more. Transfer fritters to a plate; set aside in a warm place. Cook remaining mixture, adding more oil to pan if necessary.

4. Decorate each fritter with various freshly cut vegetables to make a funny face unique to that child.

 

 

Lemon Ice in Lemon Cups

 

Makes 8 to 10 servings

 

3 to 4 lemons

3/4 cup sugar or stevia liquid sweetener

 

1. Wash the lemons. Show children how to grate the peel of two of the lemons, then combine the lemon zest, 3 cups water, and sugar in a medium saucepan.

2. Bring the liquid to a simmer and continue simmering it, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved (about 3 minutes). Remove the pan from the heat and let the mixture cool. Pour the cooled liquid through a mesh strainer into a medium mixing bowl. Discard the zest left in the strainer.

3. Halve the lemons and, with a lemon reamer or citrus juicer, juice enough of them to make 2/3 cup juice. (If you plan to serve the ice in the empty halves, store them in the refrigerator until you're ready to use.)

4. Stir the juice into the sugar water. Then pour the mixture into a large, shallow baking dish and place in your freezer. (Note: if the liquid is still warm, chill it for 1 hour first so you don't defrost your freezer!)

5. When the mixture starts to freeze around the edge, stir and mash it with a fork to break up the ice. Repeat this periodically until the ice is firm (3 to 5 hours). Spoon into cleaned-out lemon halves or small bowls to serve.

 

 

Rock Cod Ceviche

 

1-2 lbs. fresh rock cod

Sea salt

1-2 cups fresh lime juice

2 finely chopped cucumbers

2  finely chopped small jalapeños, with seeds

1 finely chopped cilantro plant (leaves and tender stems)

4 finely chopped tomatoes

2 finely chopped onions

 

Wash fish and sprinkle with sea salt to taste. Chop into small cubes. Put cubes in a bowl and add lime juice, making sure to cover fish completely with juice. Store overnight.

Drain juice and add vegetables. Serve in cowboy-size oyster shells (at least 5 inches long).

 

 

Fritatta with Potatoes and Goat Cheese

 

2 cups potatoes, thinly sliced

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

2 tsp. sea salt, plus more to taste

12 eggs, beaten  

½ cup heavy whipping cream

8-12 oz. fresh goat cheese

2 tsp. thyme

Pepper to taste

 

Preheat oven to 375°. Toss potatoes with olive and 2 tsp. salt.  Roast until lightly browned and tender, about 20 minutes. Whip eggs with cream. Arrange potatoes in a large non-stick frying pan, then add egg mixture and top with goat cheese, salt, pepper, and thyme. Bake frittata until lightly browned and puffy on top, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool and serve warm or room temperature.

 

Posted and edited by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Team Bad Skunks is a group of food exchangers in Los Angeles, near Highland Park, who like to have fun. Everyone in the group grows food—interesting things like nopal cactus, loquats, and burdock along with standbys like beans and peppers, as well as lots and lots of fruit. Team leader Max Wong, who has a fun blog of her own, raises bees and makes preserves from produce her neighbors forage from the area and bring to her. Then she delivers the jars to them as thanks. “It was a cinch to convince them that a summer’s-end block party  challenge was a good idea,” says Max. “Who doesn’t need another excuse to have a party?” This post catches up with the team on the day of their end-of-summer feast in early September, the final event in this year's One-Block Party contest.

 

The prawn pad, empty now, and its attached hydroponic garden—from which Tino harvests chives.
Photos: Andrea Gómez for Sunset.

 

PARTY DAY, PART 1: GATHERING SUPPLIES

By Kristi Reed, Team Member

Now that Tino had harvested and processed the prawns, I started out the day by seeing what the garden had to offer. I knew there would be a few things I could count on: tomatoes, squash, Japanese eggplant, and several different herbs.

But I was surprised by a few other goodies that I thought were done for the year. I found three Japanese cucumbers, a handful of jalapeños, two poblano chiles, and a few shiitake mushrooms from our mushroom stump. Score!

 

Normally, I would be pretty stoked with this haul. But this isn't any normal day. This is a competition, and well...we wanna win. Time to step it up.

With my long picking pole in hand, I went around to the other team members to see what they were willing to contribute for today's feast. I walked away with grapefruit, avocados, oranges, lemons, and limes. Sweet.

Collective citrus—plus the urban papaya that Max stalked to get fruit for
our green papaya salad.

 

PARTY DAY, PART 2: THE FEAST

By Jason Kessler for Sunset

 

When I exited the freeway into the Highland Park/Mt. Washington neighborhood, I couldn’t believe there was a Sunset One-Block Party happening anywhere nearby. I passed liquor store after liquor store, check-cashing facilities, auto body shops, and low-cost grocery stores. This area is well-known for its vicious Latino street gang called The Avenues, so named for the street nomenclature: Avenue 50, Avenue 62, etc. It is certainly not a neighborhood known for its urban homesteading.

That’s what was so amazing about this party. The block where team leader Max lives is like a Sunset magazine oasis in the midst of a completely different culture.

Noel and Sonita, Max's neighbors, live here.
Photo: Andrea Gómez

The party was to take place at Max's house, and its real centerpiece is the backyard. Max and her boyfriend, Steve, told me that they bought "a yard with a house attached,” and when you walk into that yard, the first thing you hear is the burbling of a little stream that leads to a koi pond. Along the back wall are five honeybee colonies. Max sells the honey at local farmers’ markets under the label “Sticky Acres.” She also uses it to trade with her neighbors for various goods like ducks and chickens (both of which will be on the table today).

 

Steve and the hives.

 

Not only that, Max is a beekeeping mentor for the local Backwards Beekeepers Club and helps capture wild swarms in the area. Interestingly, a wild swarm landed on their loquat tree earlier today (they took off again little while later). Maybe bees are just drawn to Max.

 

 Party crashers.

Max told me that she keeps hearing people say, “You can’t feed a family on a victory garden.” Her response is always, “Well, yes you can, if you share with your neighbors. ... In an urban space, you can grow a huge amount of food if you team up.”

 

Together the team grew 18 varieties of tomatoes. Photos: Andrea Gómez.

 

Max met her future teammates through her “jam fairy” project, an extension of the Hillside Produce coop, which helps neighbors swap excess fruit. Her goal was to find neighbors who would donate fruit; then she'd return their fruit to them in jam form. Sean, a first generation Iranian-American and magazine editor, gave Max picking rights to his figs, lemons, sour tangerines, pineapple guavas, pomegranates, and raspberries.Tino and Kristin, who pitched in too, have lived in Mt. Washington for nine years. Because their garden did so well, their produce is front and center at today's party. Noel and Sonita are English. Noel does all the gardening and Sonita does the tasting. They moved to Mt. Washington in 2008, "before it was cool," says Sonita. When they moved in, their yard was covered over with concrete, which Noel jackhammered away. Now they grow tomatoes, corn, watermelon, peas, greens, two types of collards, beets, onions, garlic, celery, fruit trees, and beans.

 

 

 Steve gets the carbonator ready to fizz up homemade
citrus soda.

While waiting for the rest of the Bad Skunks to show up, Steve served a tart, refreshing citrus-mint soda, made with lemons, oranges, mint and water fizzed by a penguin-shaped SodaStream carbonator. They served the drinks in tumblers from now-defunct bars like the Polynesian Palace in Waikiki.

Max gathered a huge bucketful of green tomatoes and then fried them up, using a Cajun spice blend, a bit of flour, and baking powder.

   

Max cooks on a Wedgewood stove from the forties.
"It's like having a classic car in your kitchen," she says.

 

As soon as the rest of the guests arrived, the evening’s bounty was set out on a small wooden table in the backyard under a hanging lantern. Sean’s father, Massud, made the coucou, a traditional Persian dish of mixed greens and eggs. The greens today included romaine lettuce, bok choy, swiss chard, parsley, green onions, and dandelion greens. It bakes for something like six hours, and ends up looking like extremely dark cornbread, with a bright green interior and a mild yet verdant taste.

 

Sonita and Noel dig in. The coucou is in the large frying pan.
Photo: Andrea Gómez

Then the bugs descended, and we moved dinner inside. The main courses were duck from nearby City Farm, roasted with rosemary and salt-preserved tangerines (made using Sunset’s salt-preserved lemon recipe) until extremely tender, with wonderfully crispy skin. We had a City Farm chicken, too, roasted beer-can style using a local beer called Solidarity from Eagle Rock Brewery to steam it from the inside. Alongside were greens sauteed in the duck's fat, plus jams and homemade pickles (the chipotle loquat jam was a big hit).

Also in the protein category: those laboriously raised Malaysian prawns. The big ones were sautéed with barbecue sauce, and the smaller ones were cured in lime juice and seasonings and added to a green papaya salad. That tart-sweet, crunchy salad was my favorite dish of the night.

 

Green papaya salad with lime-cured prawns; green cherry tomato pickle and nopales
(cactus-paddle) pickle. Photos: Andrea Gómez

Other salads included a three-tomato with oregano, chiles, and garlic; tomato and cucumber, with a simple vinaigrette; and grapefruit and avocado salad. For a mid-meal amuse bouche we had disks of Japanese eggplant topped with chopped shiitake mushrooms.

 

  

Inside, safe from bugs; miso-marinated eggplant with shiitakes. Photos: Andrea Gómez

 

For dessert, we had gazpacho popsicles, slightly sweetened with honey and herbed up with mint, that felt worthy of Willy Wonka. The fig newtons that Max wanted to make didn't work out—it was too hot for the dough to set—so she made buttery thumbprint cookies instead.

Photos: Andrea Gómez

As jazz floated out of hidden speakers, the group enjoyed the (literal) fruits of their labors and shared tales of their gardening triumphs and mishaps. When it was time to leave, I was hesitant to say goodbye. They had the kind of community spirit you usually only read about in magazines like Sunset.

 

 

Team Bad Skunks, clockwise from left: Sean, his father Massud, Steve, Tino,
Kristi, Max, Noel, and Sonita. Photo: Andrea Gómez

 

RECIPES FROM THE PARTY

 

Pickled green tomatoes

Makes 2 pints

You will need 2 sterilized wide-mouth pint jars or 1 wide-mouth quart jar to make this recipe. For a good primer on how to sterilize (and, for that matter, all things to do with canning), see the National Center for Home Food Preservation website (ncfp.ugs.edu)

2 lbs. green (unripe) cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
Fresh chiles to taste (I used a mix of hot chilis from our gardens)
1 tsp. each cumin seeds, peppercorns, celery seed, and dill seed
4 cloves garlic, sliced into thin slices
1 cup white vinegar
1 tbsp. sea salt

 Evenly distribute the green tomatoes, jalapeños, cumin seeds, peppercorns, celery seed, dill seed and garlic in the jars, packing the tomatoes in as tightly as you can. In a saucepan, bring to a boil 1 cup of water, the vinegar, and sea salt. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture into the jars, leaving 1/2 in. of headspace. Cover with lid and fasten with rings. Allow to cool and then refrigerate overnight. They will last for 1 month in the refrigerator.

Alternatively, you can place the covered jars in a canning pot or stockpot and process the jars in boiling water for 15 minutes. Remove the jars with tongs and then allow to cool overnight. If you are processing this way, make sure that your lids have never been used before, as they will only seal once. These jars will not require refrigeration until after opening.

 

Coucou (Persian herb omelet)

This recipe is from from Sean's father, Massud. Coucou is essentially an omelet, but unlike regular omelets it cooks long and slow. Be ready to spend a few hours preparing it. Also, you can use other greens instead of dandelion and mint, but romaine lettuce leaves, parsley, and green-onion greens should be dominant.

4-5 romaine lettuce leaves
1 1/2 green onions (tops only)
1 bunch flat-leaf parsley
1/2 bunch dandelion leaves
5-6 sprigs mint, leaves only
2 tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
10 eggs
2 tbsp. canola or other vegetable oil 

1. In a food processor, chop and blend all the greens. Be careful not to chop them to a pulp.This is very important. Originally the vegetables used to be chopped by hand so tiny pieces of leaves remained visible.

2. In a large bowl, mix flour, turmeric, salt, and pepper. Mix these very well. Then break in 2 eggs and blend in well. Break in the rest of the eggs and again blend well.

3. Add the chopped greens and mix well. Your mixture should be a very heavy, slow-flowing soup.

4. Heat oil in a large frying pan over low heat. Pour in egg mixture. After 30 to 40 minutes, lift a corner with a flat spatula to see if it is solid. If it is, cut the omelet into pie-shaped wedges and try to turn them piece by piece. Drizzle oil around wedges so they do not burn, and keep cooking until solid.

The best way to eat it is when it is at room temperature (not cold or hot )

 

 

By Karen March, Team Leader

Posted and Edited by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

In California's Central Valley ag country, No Gardeners Left Behind—a group of teachers at Yolo Middle School, in Newman—combined forces to enter our One-Block Party Contest. They grew vegetables, herbs, and fruits in their collective gardens, raising chickens for eggs, and learned from one another all summer long—veteran gardeners are teaching novices. They threw their party at the school on September 12, and it was a big hit; even the local paper, the West Side Index, came and wrote about it. This is Team No Gardeners’ description of the feast.

 The team at table. Left to right, seated: Steve Roberts, Verna Cheever, Cheryl Beaty.
Standing: Mark Malmberg, Karen March, John Paiva, Katie Wison, Elsa Juarez.

Our party was a huge success. We had a great turnout, with fellow teachers, spouses, kids, the superintendent of schools, and even the local press sampling our garden goodies.

The school day ends at 3 p.m. and that’s when we flew into action to set up the faculty room. Cheryl brought her blue and white lace tablecloths (school colors) to dress up the tables. In honor of the classy occasion, Cheryl also brought blue dishes from home and Anne contributed silverware left over from her wedding so that we wouldn't have to use sporks and eat off paper plates. The centerpiece was sunflowers (weeds allowed to grow) from Karen's garden. 

Cheryl Beaty and Verna Cheever (with Anne Rhoads in
the background) set out the food.

By 3:30, our team had assembled and guests began to arrive. The common theme of the afternoon was amazement that the food was all home-grown.  Everyone filled their plates and spent the next two hours enjoying one another's company and the delicious spread of food.

Superintendent of Schools Ed Felt and
team member Elsa Juarez start the feast.

The beverage of the day was refreshing lavender honey lemonade. (Originally we had planned our party to be outdoors, but extra-warm weather encouraged a change of venues.)

Appetizers included sungold and pear tomatoes, dried apricots, guacamole, salsa, deviled eggs, and zucchini pickles.

We had a choice of potato salad, a Japanese-style lemon cucumber salad, and mixed tomato salad. 

Guests and team members sampled nasturtium butter or fresh chive cheese and roasted tomatoes on John's hearty potato onion bread. 

Butternut lasagna, stuffed zucchini rounds, vegetarian eggplant “meatballs” in marinara sauce, and pesto pasta tempted those still hungry.

But wait, there was more. For dessert we had rosemary orange marmalade cookies, freshly churned cherry chocolate chip ice cream, apple goodie (an Amish-style apple crisp), peach cobbler, zucchini cake, and candied walnuts.

No one went home hungry.  Several took food to go for family members, and we still had leftovers for the staff to enjoy for several days!  

Our homegrown food even made it to the classroom that day. Anne brought cherry tomatoes for her English classes to taste and held up carrots with their tops still on...Not what the kids are used to seeing at the grocery store!

Katie, who made the delicious peach cobbler, summed it up well in a post-feast e-mail: "Thank you, everyone, for letting me be a part of the Garden Party.  I had a wonderful time talking with all of you, eating, and getting these wonderful recipes. Hope we can partake in another event like this soon." We do too!

----------

P.S. from Karen, dated December 18:

Our feast may be over, but Mark is still supplying the staff with fresh eggs. John's apricot wine continues to ferment. I've whipped up basil pesto weekly until freezing temperatures hit. I harvested apples. I dried and roasted fresh tomatoes until well into December and with the remaining tomatoes I made and froze some super green-tomato salsa. Just this past week, when Christmas preparations are usually forefront, I've been experimenting with pomegranate recipes! Oh, and I just discovered that I still have a few zucchini left on the vines, chard ready to harvest, and a beautiful crop of Meyer lemons all ripe and ready to pick. The one-block party continues!

 

 

Recipes From the Summer Party

BUTTERNUT SQUASH LASAGNA

Cheryl Beaty made her own fresh noodles for this lasagna, but storebought works fine too.

3 1/2 lbs. butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-in. cubes
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 lb. whole-milk ricotta cheese
1/2 c. heavy cream
2 large egg yolks
1/2 lb. fresh mozzarella cheese (2 cups grated)
Freshly grated nutmeg
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
1/4 c. finely chopped onion
1/3 c. loosely packed fresh sage leaves, coarsely chopped
1 1/4 cups low-sodium chicken stock
Fresh lasagna noodles (4 x 13 in.), cooked (approximately 9 noodles made my own)
4 oz. finely grated Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 425.° Toss squash with oil, 1 tsp. salt, and pepper to taste; place on baking sheet. Bake until light gold and tender, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

2. Reduce oven temperature to 375.° In a medium bowl, combine ricotta, cream, yolks, mozzarella, and a pinch of nutmeg (use more if you desire).  Season with salt.

3. Melt butter in a small pan over medium-high heat. As butter starts to sizzle, add onion and cook until transparent. Add sage leaves and cook 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat.

4. Place half the squash in a medium bowl and mash. Add the other half, leaving it in whole pieces. Gently stir in the butter & sage mixture. Add the stock. Season with salt and pepper.

5.  Spread 3/4 cup of ricotta mixture in a 9-cup baking dish. Top with a layer of noodles.  Spread 1/2 of the squash mixture over the noodles. Top with a layer of noodles.  Spread 1/2 of remaining ricotta mixture over noodles . Repeat layering and sprinkle top layer of ricotta with Parmesan.

6. Bake lasagna until cheese is golden and bubbling, 30 to 35 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

 

EGGPLANT MEAT(LESS)BALLS

Karen March made these vegetarian “meatballs”.

3 tbsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 12-oz. eggplant, peeled and diced
1 1/2 tbsp. water
1 1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
1/2 cup minced fresh parsley
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. oregano
2 large eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 cup Italian cheese (preferably a hard cheese)
1/4 cup olive oil
3 cups tomato basil sauce, kept hot

1. Heat oil in large frying pan and cook garlic over medium heat until golden. Add eggplant and 1 tbsp. water. Cover and steam over low heat until very soft, stirring occasionally. Add remaining water only if eggplant begins to stick to frying pan. Set eggplant aside and let cool. 

2. Meanwhile, combine bread crumbs, parsley, salt, oregano, eggs and cheese in a large bowl. Stir in eggplant, mix well, and let sit for 20 minutes. 

3. Using a cookie scoop, shape eggplant mixture into balls. Heat olive oil in frying pan over medium heat and cook eggplant balls in batches, turning occasionally so they brown evenly.  Serve with tomato basil sauce.

 

SOURDOUGH POTATO ONION BREAD

This is John Paiva’s specialty. To make it, you need to allow about a week to make a sourdough starter and about 3 days to make the bread (most of it is unattended time, though!). To see John make the bread, click here.

1) Boil 3 to 4 small, washed but unpeeled potatoes in 2 cups water and let sit overnight.  Save the potato water!

2) Refresh the sourdough starter by removing it from the refrigerator and adding 1 cup water and 2 cups organic malted bread flour per cup of starter.

3) Using 1 cup refreshed starter, add 1 cup potato water (from soaking the potatoes in Step 1) and 1 1/2 cups organic malted bread flour to a bowl and let ferment at room temperature for 6 hours. Return the fermented dough to the refrigerator for 12 hours. Remove this fermented dough (called “preferment”) from the refrigerator 1-2 hours before the next step.

4) To the preferment, add 1 cup warm potato water and stir vigorously. Add 1 tbsp. kosher salt, 1 cup mashed boiled potatoes, and 1/2 cup minced green onions. Add 2 to 3 cups organic malted bread flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough is difficult to work with a wooden spoon. Roll the sticky dough onto a bread board and continue to sprinkle on flour until the dough no longer sticks to your hands as you knead it for a full 10 minutes. Spray a large bowl with oil and then put the dough inside. Cover and let rise in a warm place until dough has doubled or tripled in volume.

5) Roll the dough back onto the bread board and cut and shape into two loaves.  Spray loaf pans with oil and place shaped loaves into the pans. Cover and let rise until almost doubled.

6) Score each loaf with a razor, mist with a spray bottle of water, and bake in a preheated 400° oven 40 minutes. Rotate loaves halfway through so that they bake consistently on all sides.

7) Let bread cool for 20 minutes before slicing.

 

FRESH CHERRY CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM

John Paiva brought this freshly made ice cream to the party. Freeze the container of your ice-cream maker for at least a day before making the ice cream.

1 egg, whipped
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
2 cups fresh cherries
Mini-chocolate chips to taste

Thoroughly mix all ingredients in a bowl and place in the pre-frozen container of an ice cream maker. Turn on ice cream maker and let freeze (about 20 minutes). Sample finished ice cream with friends!

 

 

By Abby Peterson, Team Leader

Posted, edited, and photographed by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

 

These four young families in Sausalito, CA, love food and kitchen projects and “mucking about outside with our preschoolers,” says team leader Abby Peterson. They are, in her words: "Two stay-at-home moms with plenty of dirt under their nails; several small preschoolers who love feeding grapes to chickens; a solar consultant who makes his own pâté and salami; an engineer who brews beer on the side; and a stay-at-home dad who is a great cook and a glassblower to boot.” A wonderful neighbor, Frank Pacoe, joined the team partway through, and says that Abby—in pulling this team together for the One-Block Party contest—"has created a neighborhood in a town that had lost that." Their party this September, high in the hills of Sausalito, was sun-drenched and mellow, with the occasional foghorn blowing very softly in the distance. This is Abby's report.

 

Abby Peterson and her son Paul set the table, left. Right (at bottom), the menu; at top, the song Paul sang at the feast. Here are the lyrics: "Earth who gave us food/Sun that made it grow/Good earth, good sun/we thank you for the blessings on our meal."

 

 

Hello One-Blockers!

After waiting and waiting for the fog to clear and our "real" summer to start, we finally got some warm weather and some ripe tomatoes in the first week of September! And that meant we could finally set the date for our feast: Sunday September 18th.

 

Making Cheese for the Party

Earlier in the month, we met to hone our mozzarella-making skills. We were amazed that it really, truly isn't that difficult to make cheese. There's something so intimidating about all the steps and equipment, but once you start, it's really not bad at all.

 

Mozzarella-making. Photo: Erica Nofi/www.bravepotato.com

Our first batch of mozzarella went like clockwork. What fun to dip the curds back in the hot whey to get them all stretchy and then roll them up! And to realize curds really are squeaky, just like you always heard! We also made ricotta with the whey from the mozzarella—my new favorite breakfast, with a slice of toast and whatever jam we have on hand. Our big logistics decision after a couple batches of cheese was that we wanted to make all the cheeses on the actual day of the feast; they taste SO much better on the same day. (This came back to bite me a bit on the morning of the feast, though, as things got busy. In my rush, I messed up the ricotta and it was a little too runny, but it still was yummy.)

 

Finding Flour

 

 Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park. Photo courtesy CA Dept. of Parks and Recreation

We also took an early September field trip to obtain a much-needed ingredient: flour. My husband, Alex, and the boys and I drove up to Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park in Napa one beautiful sunny Saturday. The place is amazing! It's the largest waterwheel west of the Mississippi (my boys loved watching it turn) and has, indoors, a completely restored mill operation. After 30 years of fundraising and work, the restoration was just finished this past August. The woodwork on the mill machinery is so beautiful; it looks like a New England Shaker village or something.

On the tour, you can learn all about how stone-ground mills work and all of the funny phrases we use today that have their origins in the language of millwork ("fair to middling," "run of the mill," "nose to the grindstone"). Nose to the grindstone came from the millers keeping their noses up close to the stone so that they could smell any faint hints of smoke, which meant something was going wrong with the grind and they needed to adjust. 

The best part of visiting Bale Grist Mill is that you can buy local organic stoneground flour right there. Since we didn't grow grains, this is how we got flour for our bread, croutons, and pie crusts for the feast. We bought three things: organic stoneground wheat flour, organic stoneground wheat pastry flour, and corn polenta. The most hilarious part: The mill isn't technically allowed to sell its flours as food (I guess because of regulations), so all of the bags are marked "Not for Human Consumption." But of course, consume we did! Whit Halvorsen and Frank Pacoe, our two expert bakers, say the stoneground wheat was a little bit different to work with for feast day, but it was delicious. And it was so cool that we actually got to see our flour being ground on a historic mill.

 

Prepping for the Feast

As the feast approached, there was a flurry of getting ready. Suddenly, since we knew Sunset was coming, we just HAD to lay new pavers, repaint the deck, and do a million different other things along with the food! It was a whirlwind, but we were so excited. The emails were flying back and forth with different plans and menu lineups. There was so much "okay you bring this, I'll do that, wait, who's bringing the pizza crust, can you bring your mandolin for the potatoes" etc etc. But it was so fun.

 In the last few days before the party, it felt like we were nursing along every single little precious vegetable. Whit and Todd had two cucumbers that they were being VERY careful to preserve, and over at my house, I was doing my very best not to topple over any tomato vines, and I hid the trowels so the boys wouldn't dig up all the potatoes. Two days before the feast, we ripped out our spent green bean plants, picked off the last beans, and planted broccoli and cabbage for winter. 

On the morning of the feast, we started by dumping out all our bounty on my big kitchen table. We had tons of potatoes, zucchini, salad greens, and tomatoes; herbs and herb flowers of course; our jars of dilly beans, mint jelly, and plum compote from earlier in the summer; homemade mayo and butter from Frank; our bread, pizza crusts, and tart crust; AMAZING home-cured meats from Todd Halvorsen; and eggs from the Halvorsens' chickens.

 

Todd Halvorsen with his amazing bacon.

 

Let me tell you, Todd is someone you want around when you're planning a One-Block Party. Over the summer, he had bought a full pig belly from Marin Sun Farms and cured it to make his own bacon. He caught Sierra trout and made trout rillettes. And he made lamb sausage with herbs from his garden and lamb that we had bought direct from an organic farm in Dixon.

Lamb sausages, zucchini succotash, and salad (with Abby tossing) underway.

Todd Halvorsen makes the pizzas; Whit, his wife, opens the wine, made on a local houseboat from California Primitivo grapes. Its maker called it "Nipples of Luna," and the label further notes that it was "fermented in the belly of the research vessel 'Rhino Auk'".

 

The main courses, with flowers from Abby's garden.
The beer (in a keg) is behind the table.

 

We planned for a lunchtime feast, since we all have little kids who still nap, and we decided to do it buffet style, since sitting down to a quiet meal, all at once, is not really something that happens with a bunch of four-year-olds in the picture. We invited a couple of bonus neighbors who were very interested in all the happenings, and we even tried to Skype with former-team-member-who-moved-away Anna, but it didn't quite work. We were so lucky because Sept 18th turned out to be warm and sunny, so all our plans to sit under the trees and around the garden were possible. 

 

Here's our menu:

APPETIZERS

Dilly beans (beans and herbs from Abby's garden, made as a group over at Frank's house)
Cucumber-tomato salad (cukes from Whit and Todd, tomatoes from Abby)
Smoked trout rillettes (Todd caught the trout and smoked it)
Whole wheat bread (Whit made it with Bale Grist Mill flour)
"Bacon and eggs" (Todd's creation; deviled eggs with his own home-cured bacon on top)

MAIN COURSES

Lamb sausage patties (Todd made the sausage with our Dixon lamb)
Zucchini "succotash" (Abby's zucchini, and she used her grandmother's recipe)
Whole-wheat pizzas with potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, garlic oil and herbs (crust from Bale Grist Mill     flour, veggies from Abby's and Whit's gardens)
Salad with green garden dressing (greens and herbs from Abby's garden)

DESSERTS

Blackberry tart with thyme whipped cream (Frank collected the berries from the bushes near his house     and made the crust with Bale Grist Mill flour)
Plum compote with ricotta cheese and fennel pollen (we met as a group earlier in the summer to make     the compote from plums in Abby's yard, Abby made the cheese that morning, and Whit and her girls     collected the fennel pollen from fennel that grows wild everywhere here in Sausalito)

DRINKS

Hefeweisen home brew (we brewed it back in June)
Local wine (a friend donated it; the wine was made on a houseboat here in Sausalito)
Lemon verbena tisanes with Sausalito honey (Whit's neighbors made the honey; we bartered some bacon     for it)
Blackberry vodka (berries from the bushes around the corner from Abby's house)
Blackberry spritzers (sparkling water with syrup made from berries Abby collected with her boys)

 

Paul and Marin loved the lamb patties. Anja preferred the hammock.

Matt, Abby, and Frank in mid-party; two of Whit's chickens, Sam and Lucy, peck the plates clean. Over dessert, Frank said, "Most meals are just ephemeral. But this one has history."

 

Walter picking blackberries (he ate quite a few); Walter waiting for blackberry galette.

 

It was such a special day. I've never experienced anything quite like it. Just to know that we'd had our hands in everything, that we had made EVERY SINGLE THING from scratch, together as a team, with (mostly) stuff from our own yards—it was such an amazing feeling.

And it was over too soon. We are already planning a late-fall feast with more sausages, more of our potato bounty, and green-tomato relish with all of the tomatoes that never ripen!

I still say the best part about the One-Block Party is how it has brought our families together. Whit and Frank and Alex and I all share a common interest in doing things the old-fashioned way, having a big garden, doing lots of outdoor things with our families, and making stuff. We love that this project has connected us back to things like canning, preserving, cheese- and beer-making, and berry-picking. I'll never look at that plum tree down in the corner of my yard without thinking of the sunny afternoon we spent hulling those plums and stirring a pot of compote over at Whit's house. I walk past the blackberry bushes where we got our berries with my boys all the time, and the fennel patch where Whit collected pollen with her girls is right next to our favorite beach. What a lesson to realize that food is everywhere, even in a suburb like Sausalito.

 

Thanks again for the wonderful experience!

Love,

Abby

 

 

By Tina Keller

Edited by Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

The Bees' Knees are based in Campbell, CA, a suburb of San Jose. They all like to cook and garden, and they enjoy taking on food projects—everything from chicken-raising to mushroom hunting, brewing, cheesemaking, and especially beekeeping (hence their name). 

I have to admit to a certain fondness for Team Bees' Knees members Tina and Thomas Keller. They have helped us out of innumerable jams with our hives, saved Nugget (aka Whattheheck!? That's a rooster!), and have taken us along on mushroom forays. When Margo True, Editor of our One-Block Diet blog, offered to let me go to this team's harvest dinner, I knew I'd be in for a good time, if not a feast. I was not wrong. With delicious food like green bean pâté, fresh salmon, and the ecstatically delicious candy cap mushroom ice cream, I left this party stuffed, and just a little tipsy from two kinds of limoncello and some really good beer.

We only had about 2 weeks after learning of the One-Block Party contest back in March to put the team together and present our entry, so we were not as organized as I had hoped. We didn't have enough time to properly plan the gardens and determine growing times for the vegetables so that we could plan our menus. Also, with all the late rain we had in the Bay Area, our planting got off to a slow start.

Lizanne and Fred Oliver, and Katie and David Arken have been across-the-street neighbors for years, sharing the enjoyment of vegetable gardening.  Every year, late in March, they plan their crops and layout, the Arkens amend the soil in their raised planter boxes, and the Olivers purchase the bedding plants.  Katie Arken usually finds some interesting tomato varieties at a master gardener sale to try.  As soon as the soil is warm, the couples spend an afternoon together planting.

Appetizers with Team Bee's Knees

Given that the two neighbors share so much already, we had the creative idea to plan a "progressive" feast, starting with drinks and appetizers on the Olivers' deck, and then moving across the street to the Arkens' deck and garden for the main courses and dessert.  That way we could enjoy being in two areas and spread out the fun!

The dinner table

Katie made the tablecloths from clearance fabric at Ikea. She had seen it at the end of last year and liked that it had plants and butterflies which goes with the gardening theme, but also that it was black and white which would be a nice background to let the colors of the dishes stand out. Katie also has a keen eye for recycled garden art.  She picked up our "buffet table"  on the street.  It had a sign that said "FREE" and Katie snapped it up.  The flowers were from the Arkens' and Oliver's yards.  We used the cute little cream bottles from Straus Creamery for our vases on the tables.  We also had homemade beeswax candles, both tapers and owl candles from our own beeswax which we melted in the solar melter.

 

The catch of the day

Thomas had been planning on going halibut fishing for months and months in the San Francisco Bay, but the timing just wasn't working. Finally his friend David Jackovich from our mushroom club said they would go out for salmon. They went out of the Berkeley Marina on Joey's super-fast sport fishing boat, The New Easy Rider. It was the first time Thomas had ever gone salmon fishing; he must have had beginner's luck because he brought home a salmon.  A pretty pricey salmon considering the cost of the fishing trip, but it was fresh!

Grilled salmon on cedar plank

Tomato with mozzarella and basil vinaigrette

We made mozzarella cheese.  That was fun.  We have Ricki Carroll's book, Home Cheese Making, and we got her cheese making kits at Fermentation Solutions in Campbell. 

Early on in the contest, we remembered that bee guild member Mark Jensen had a cow, and thought maybe we could get some milk from him.  I called back in May or June to inquire about the milk and told them that we were in a contest with Sunset and I needed some milk early September.  Well, come to find out that THEY were on a competing team, Dances With Legumes!  They were very gracious and said we could get some milk if there was any, but turns out they thought their cow was pregnant and so didn't have any milk yet, so I ended up using milk from Straus Family Creamery and Organic Pastures.

The buffet table

 

Dinner was filling. Some of the other things on the menu, besides the salmon and tomato with mozzarella and basil vinaigrette, were:

• smoked trout souffle
• roasted beet salad
• wild mushroom and potato tart
• spaghetti squash with pepper cream sauce
• zuchinni frittata
• braised fennel
• whole wheat short bread
• whole wheat bread
• honey comb
• bread-and-butter pickles
• melon
• green bean pâté
• kim chee
• butter with fennel fronds
• raw 'Jewel' radishes
• raw carrots

We had 2 kinds of  limoncello to try. One from Nate and one that I made. They were both made from Everclear, and both were delicious. Nate's was less sweet than mine was. 

Dunkelweizen beer

Nate also brewed dunkelweizen beer.  It lost its foamy head in the transportation, but it was still wonderful.  Thomas and I contributed mead that we made a few years earlier, only to find out it hadn't aged as well as we had hoped.  We also had pressed apple juice and hard apple cider that we made the previous fall. The fresh juice had been in the freezer and it was still really tasty.

Fig tarts

For dessert, Katie made a fig tart from her backyard figs with dough I made from the One-Block Feast book using locally grown Sonora Flour and my homemade goat cheese, for which I used Ricki Carroll's cheese making kit, which I bought at at Fermentation Solutions.

Fresh sweet corn

Our corn growing was ripening well before our feast, so we thought we would try something different: sweet corn ice cream. Also, being the mushroom fanatics that we are, we made candy cap mushroom ice cream. I never made anything with candy cap mushrooms, so this was an experiment. (Editor's note: This experiment was wildly successful. The candy cap ice cream was so good we all had seconds, thirds, and then fourths, until we had eaten all the ice cream. We even licked the container!)

It was pretty stressful getting ready for the dinner—cooking, roasting, baking—but it all turned into relaxing fun once the party began.  We found out at 3 p.m. the day of our party that one of our team members could not make it. We had to do without edible flowers, fig ice cream, fresh herbs, and marinara sauce. We had to go with the flow and change our menu at the last minute, but it turned out nicely and we all had a great time. In fact, we promised each other we'd do it again.

By Jennifer Harvey, Team Leader

Posted by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Team Food Court, of Bellevue, WA, named themselves in honor of the food at the mall just a few blocks away. “We want all the variety of a food court, but this block will be much more delicious. A salad bar, an ice cream place, pizza...The Food Court has it all.” Team leader Jennifer Harvey moved to Bellevue from Sausalito, CA, in 2010, and by organizing her team's entry in the One-Block Party contest, saw a chance to both grow good food and get to know her neighbors better. This is the team's final report.

By Jody Suhrbier, Team Member, and Joellen Reineck Wilhelm, Team Leader

Posted and edited by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor 

 

Based in Olympia, Washington, the Gray Sky Growers are six families united under a common purpose: to win Sunset's One-Block Party contest. And, of course, to have a great time. Being in a cool climate, they've mixed cool-weather crops like kale and kohlrabi with the warm-weather plants like berries. This is their final posting, describing their lavish salmon-and-shellfish feast on September 5.

Hops (for home-brewed beer) growing in a Gray Sky garden.
Photo: Joellen Reineck Wilhelm

 

The warm air that settled on our shoulders and in the spaces between us was stirred up and lifted by the soft tinkling of forks being gently tapped on glassware. With her arms raised slightly at her sides, our team leader, Joellen, was beaming. With a bountiful harvest of thank-you’s, kudos, and general satisfaction at having achieved our goal, we toasted all who contributed to the feast before us.

A toast, with home-brewed witbier (wheat beer).
Photo: Steven Herppich Photography

 

We were not certain, when we entered this contest back in March, that we could make this little venture work. Gray Sky Growers live in the urban area of Olympia, Washington, within earshot and varying view of the downtown core. However, many of us had at least dabbled in backyard gardening. Having arrived here from many far-flung places throughout the world, some of us grew up on farms, spent years involved in 4-H clubs, or had the means and wherewithal to now work acres of land with crops and livestock.

And we did have just the right mix of myopic optimists, gold-star achievers, and practical planners to have some real fun with this, so we began. Certainly, we could grow the usual backyard-garden suspects of greens, onions, garlic, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, peppers, eggplant, berries, horseradish, potatoes, carrots, and herbs. We could harvest clams and oysters from nearby tidelands; we could talk with the beekeepers who supplied us with honey and listen to the suggestions of fellow fishermen and crabbers. We could keep chickens to collect eggs; we could make beer, cheese, dressing, butter, jam, and countless other home bounties. And we could use local well water for all our beverages, including the beer.

 

Harvesting Clams and Oysters

At a friend's beach on Case Inlet on the Puget Sound, we hand-gathered manila clams
and Pacific oysters for our feast. Photos: Joellen Reineck Wilhem

 

Stocking up on Artesian Well Water

 

The artesian well in downtown Olympia is in a parking lot…
kind of an odd juxtaposition of purity and grunge!
Photo: Joellen Reineck Wilhem

 

Could we grow our own amaranth for gluten-free baking?

Joellen and Bea, rubbing amaranth seeds off the dried seed-heads.

As it turns out, yes, we could. No, it was not ready in time for the feast and the yield ended up being a mere trifle. It was worth it to us, though; the dozens of wanderers who take daily work-day walks within this neighborhood will be seeing those bold yellow-green leaves and brave chestnut-brown flower stalks raised toward the sun again next year. 

 

Could we make our own salt?

Yes again. Earlier this summer, while on an annual camping trip, we gathered ocean water off the beach near Kalaloch Campground in the Olympic National Forest.

After baking the water for a couple of hours at 350°, we had salt. It was surprisingly easy, and ours is interestingly sweet—the result of the specific blend of algae and plankton floating about on collection day at the beginning of summer. 

 

Could we roast and blend coffee?

 

It was one of the highlights of our project. At Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters, we all learned a ton about coffee, and we roasted and created our own blend of Ethiopian and Costa Rican beans that we labeled "Blue Sky Blend".

Photos: Joellen Reineck Wilhelm

 

And: Could we catch enough salmon for the feast?

To many of the Gray Sky Growers, salmon cannot be topped as the centerpiece of a late summer meal.

 

The answer: Yes! Left to right: Brian Stoll, Dave Watts, Andy Suhrbier and Matt Reineck.

One day before our party, very early in the morning, four men on the team set out on the Cowlitz River The boat slowed and quieted such that the little sploosh of each line dropped into the water could be heard. Minutes passed, then hours. At last, the cell phones of those waiting at home rang, beeped, and buzzed with calls and text messages bearing the good news—there would be fish for dinner! Five of them, in fact.

 

The Feast

Grilled salmon, mixed green salad with raspberry vinaigrette, and Cascadian "zucchini" canoes with oven-dried tomatoes and fresh homemade mozzarella (they turned out to be not zucchini, but baby winter squash). For the entire menu, scroll down to the end. Photos: Steven Herppich Photography

As the toasting came to an end, the scent of the freshly grilled salmon drew us closer to the food, along with several uninvited yellow jackets, buzzing excitedly at their good fortune. The reds, greens, and golds of the salads, sauces, and side dishes rivaled that of the recently cut flowers from our many small but bursting urban gardens. The children waited as patiently as they knew how, the sweet-tart taste of strawberry lemon verbena punch still on their tongues, tempting their tummies. The homebrewed blackberry stout and rosemary witbier were likewise readying several others in the group for savory sustenance. The plump hens kept up their ongoing chatter, perhaps remarking on the injustice and mystery of their continually disappearing eggs. Then came the applause and cries of glee; at last, it was time to dig in.

Photo: Steven Herppich Photography

 

As the adults settled into sturdy wooden chairs at white-clothed tables in the lush, green backyard, the children gathered on picnic blankets to alternately pick at and forget about their food. 

Photo: Steven Herppich Photography

 

We ate the dazzling green beans, drizzled with nutty basil pesto. We ate delicate little crustless quiches, light as air. We ate the salmon with two sauces—horseradish parsley or raspberry rosemary—and the clams steamed in their stone gray shells in a heady broth of rosemary witbier, sweet onions, garlic and extra rosemary. And so much more (see our menu below)!

 

Photo: Steven Herppich Photography

 

The sun began its slow descent behind the hills, bringing shade to a long day and rest to a sated bunch of optimists, achievers, planners, and those along for the ride. For dessert, we had two dense and richly sweet treats: mixed berry sorbet and blackberry tarts with fresh ricotta. Between bites that made our mouths purple, we took deep swallows of our own hand-roasted and blended French-press coffee.

 

Photo: Steven Herppich Photography

 

Sunset had the notion, with this contest, that given a wee bit of guidance, many, many people could make this idea work: produce what you can, where you are; find most everything else as locally as possible; and be mindful of what else you choose to consume.

We entered the contest because we thought that if we had a creative spirit, a sense for adventure, and a desire to share in community connection, we truly could feed ourselves and those around us. What is more, we could nurture life, be willing to risk, develop resilience through failure, and build connections within our community that would last long past the moment when the feast ended and we walked inside our homes and locked the doors.

As the evening breeze picked up, the coffee’s aroma, heat, and flavor anchored us to our seats, and we didn't want the day to end. Yet this was but one sunset feast. Perhaps success will be measured by the many feasts to come, and the continuing connections made. To this, we toast.

    

 

OUR MENU

Blackberry Stout
Witbier
Strawberry Lemon Verbena Punch
House Chamomile Lavender Mint Iced Tea with Olympia Artesian Well Water
Roasted Sunflower Seeds
Caramelized Oly-Oly Onions
Garlicky Roasted Eggplant Dip

-----

Petite Summer Herb Tomato Quiches
Witbier-Steamed Manila Clams
Butter, Buttermilk Rolls, and Focaccia
Hazelnut Pesto Green beans
Pacific Oysters on the Half Shell served on a bed of Kale
Mixed Green Salad with Handcrafted Raspberry Vinaigrette
Gray Sky Tomato Salad
Cascadian "Zucchini" Canoes with Oven-Dried Tomatoes and Fresh Mozzarella
Grilled Wild Salmon with Horseradish Parsley Sauce or Raspberry Rosemary Sauce

------

Blackberry Galette with Fairhaven Flour Wheat Crust and Honey Lavender Ricotta
Northwest Berry Sorbet
Raspberry Popsicles
Batdorf and Bronson Gray Sky Growers Custom-made Blue Sky Blend French Press Coffee

 

RECIPES FROM THE PARTY

 

Katie Stoll's Hazelnut Pesto Green Beans

We chose hazelnuts because the trees grow like weeds here. These particular nuts, although local, weren't ours, however. We have a large tree outside our kitchen window that produces lots of nuts, but the squirrels start carrying them away in August and strip the tree bare before the nuts are ready for harvest in the fall.

3 large garlic cloves
2/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup hazelnuts
3 cups fresh basil
Sea salt to taste
6-8 cups green beans

1. Press the garlic cloves and mix with olive oil in a food processor. Add nuts, then basil and salt.
2. Blanch green beans and toss with pesto. Serve hot or at room temperature. 

 

Witbier-Steamed Manila Clams

3 dozen wild manila clams
2 cloves pressed garlic
1/4 cup diced sweet onion
2 tbsp. snipped rosemary
1½ cups witbier (wheat beer)

1. Purge clams in seawater to remove sand. Scrub clam shells.
2. Put garlic, onion, rosemary, and beer in stock pot. Bring to simmer and simmer for a couple of minutes to blend flavors. Add clams, cover, and steam for 10 minutes or until shells open. Serve immediately (discard any unopened shells).

 

 

By Michele Senitzer, Team Leader

 

Edited by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

 

Team Found Fruit, based in Oakland, CA, are a group of intrepid foragers, gardeners, and Slow Food enthusiasts. The members live within a five-mile radius of one another, and are also creators and members of FoundFruit.com, a social networking website that helps connect community to local food and sustainable living practices. They entered the One-Block Party contest with all the skill and gusto of their fruit-foraging, crab-and-eel-fishing, livestock-raising East Bay collective. This is their final report, describing their feast in late August. The San Francisco Chronicle came to the party, and wrote a separate story about it. I was there too, and can tell you that the food was ambitious, adventurous, and very delicious, from the escargots in puff pastry to the spit-roasted rabbit and honey-glazed chicken to the berry galette and the homemade liqueurs. 

 

Just a few of the dishes from the feast. Clockwise from left: stuffed charred peppers,
roasted escargots, honey and prickly-pear–glazed grilled chicken, fried surf smelt,
vegetable "pasta", stuffed zucchini blossoms. Photo: Rachel Weill for Sunset

 

It's been quite a summer! We've been going strong since April, when we were announced as finalists in the One-Block Party contest. We have since grown, foraged, raised, and produced a multitude of vegetables, fruits, and food projects.

By late August, all four of our gardens were bursting at the seams—we were growing the same ingredients in some of them, in case something went wrong. This was the right strategy. It ended up taking more than one garden’s harvest to make enough stuffed peppers, plus the beets in my and Jamie’s garden weren't quite ready—but Todd and Kate’s were.  

Our gardens were full of everything we needed: greens, lettuce, arugula, peppers, corn, squash, cucumbers, beets, tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, chives, basil, mint, lemongrass, chamomile, nasturtiums, blueberries, raspberries, and more.

Photos, clockwise from top left: Kim Di Giacomo, Todd Voyageur (x2), Jamie Vasta (x2)

Kim, Jamie, and I foraged for blackberries in Sausal Creek and huckleberries in Joaquin Miller Park. We used the blackberries for the hard cider and the galette, and made a mixed berry compote with the blackberries and huckleberries, plus blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries from the garden.

 

Huckleberries in the park. Photo: Jamie Vasta

We decided to meet the Friday night before our Sunday feast to swap the ingredients we'd need to prepare our dishes. It was amazing how much food we had produced! It was really fun to see it all laid out on the table. Nearly every dish we were making required ingredients from more than one household—it was a real team effort.   

Photos: Michele Senitzer, Todd Voyageur

We sampled each others' pickled products. Collectively we had made zucchini pickles, pickled quail eggs, onions, beets, kimchee, nopales, kraut, and more. We ate deviled eggs from Kitty's ducks, and tasted Kitty's goat cheese. We swapped homemade sea salt, ginger wine and apple cider vinegar, sourdough starter, and honey, plus locally sourced whole-wheat flour.

The pre-party bounty (just a part of it). Photo: Todd Voyageur

Next came the prepping. We cooked and assembled and baked and prepared so many dishes! We tried to do as much as possible in our own kitchens on Saturday and Sunday morning so as not to overwhelm Todd and Kate's house, where the feast would be held.

 

Photos: Todd Voyageur

 

Sunday was a whirlwind. Everybody's kitchens were exploding with food. We were all working hard and fast to get the dishes ready.  Our plan was to meet at 1 pm with whatever we were able to cook and prepare ahead of time, and then we’d take care of the rest onsite. We'd have cocktail hour from 4 to 5 pm and dinner at 5 pm.

 

 

It was a bit hectic at the house, what with everyone trying to maneuver and put their dishes together. I was happy that my job was outside minding the grill. Then the monkey-faced eel came up in conversation—which Kim and I had caught on Friday for the feast—and to my horror I realized I had left it at home in the freezer! I had to run home quickly, bring it back, and thaw it in water. Phew!  We used fig leaves from Todd and Kate's tree to wrap the eel and then steamed it with the ginger wine, some pink limes, and lemongrass. It was a sight to see and very delicious.

 
Photo: Rachel Weill, Sunset

Kitty had raised two chickens and four rabbits, which made our feast amazing. I bbqed the chicken with a honey and prickly pear glaze. It looked great but was really tough. It was brined overnight with sea salt but I was surprised at how different it was even from free-range chicken I buy at the store. [[Editor’s note: My guess is that it was chewy because the hen was a hard-working egg-layer, not a meat chicken. The flavor was great, though.]] The rabbits were the hit of the party. Two were stuffed with wild plums and squash and fire-roasted, and the other two were braised and served with a wild mushroom risotto (the rice was sourced from a farm near Chico).

 

 

Photos: Todd Voyageur

It truly was a feast, from the nasturtium pesto zucchini noodles to the corn-and-eggplant-stuffed peppers to the feta-stuffed squash blossoms. Even the escargots were delicious.

 

The pickle bar (including pickled quail eggs); the feast table. Photos: Rachel Weill for Sunset.

There was no shortage of desserts, either. The blackberry nectarine galette was amazing, and I even loved the goat ice cream—served with rose-infused berry compote. We also had goat yogurt with honeycomb.

 

Photos: Rachel Weill for Sunset

We ate, drank, and were merry. Our bar was well-stocked, with Todd's IPA, Kim's blackberry hard cider and apricot wine, Kim and Michele's blackberry-elderberry wine, two different limoncellos (one by Kim and one by Kitty), arancello by Kim, and kahlua by Michele.  Our non-alcoholic drink was an herbal tisane made from chamomile, mint, and lemongrass.

 

  

Photos: Rachel Weill for Sunset, Lori Eanes

 

We were also lucky enough to receive some incredible beverage donations from friends in Alameda. John Theil contributed some of his locally produced wine, and St. George Spirits gave us some of their brand new Terroir gin for our sauerkraut martinis and grapefruit cocktails. They describe Terroir as a "liquid love song to Mt. Tam," infused with Douglas fir, coastal sage, and California bay laurel.  It tasted like a walk in the woods and found a place in our forager hearts.

We even had some four-legged friends join in on the fun. Having kid goats (only a few weeks old) running around the yard was precious and we all got in some snuggle time.

 

 

Photo: Rachel Weill for Sunset

We partied until dark and felt truly satisfied with our accomplishments. I have a much deeper appreciation now for ingredients that are easy to take for granted. Taking part in this contest has given our summer an edge, and we have all learned a lot. I think we are looking forward to having our gardens back, although I intend to continue some making some of the recipes I have learned from the One Block Party.

 

We did it! Photo: Rachel Weill for Sunset

 

 

A Recipe From the Party

 

Photo: Rachel Weill for Sunset

 

Kate's All of the Beet Napoleons 

 

6 large beets with green leafy tops
8 oz. goat cheese log, chilled
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Arugula flowers
Sea salt

Trim tops from beets and remove ribs from greens. Roughly chop greens and set aside. Wrap beets in aluminum foil and place on a medium-hot grill or in a preheated 400° oven. Roast for 30-50 minutes, depending on size of beets, until tender when pierced with the tip of a knife. Slide beets out of their skins and cut into 1⁄4-in. slices.

Heat olive oil in large pan over medium-high heat. Add beet greens and a pinch of sea salt and sauté until wilted, 3-5 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly. Cut goat cheese into 1⁄4-in.-thick slices.

Arrange beet slices on a platter and top each with a spoonful of sautéed greens and a slice of goat cheese. Garnish with an arugula flower and sprinkle with sea salt.

 

For more recipes from Team Found Fruit, see their blog's post about the party.

By Elizabeth Staton, Team Leader

Posted and edited by Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Organic Donors, so named because the team's dream was to grow enough food to donate to food banks, is based in Aurora, near Denver. At 5,680 feet above sea level, its elevation poses challenges not faced by any of the other teams in this One-Block Party contest—including subzero weather this summer! Among its many members are cheesemakers, beekeepers, vinegar-brewers and chicken-raisers. What follows is the team's final account, from late September, of the culmination of a summer's worth of efforts—their One-Block Party.

 

Harper Edelblute, the youngest team member.
Photo: Elizabeth Staton.

The Organic Donors did it. We created a homemade, homegrown, home-produced meal that was delicious, interesting, and inspiring. We overcame hurdles such as a summer-long kitchen renovation that continues and crazy (although not that unusual) Colorado weather. We enjoyed a feast of vegetable dishes, trout from Colorado lakes, home-fermented dairy products, and an egg dish that crossed over from frittata to pizza. Our whole feast was consumed outdoors on an unseasonably warm Colorado fall evening.