Veggie Burger recipe
The night after my last cook shift, I had a sudden urge to use the aging beets I’d noticed too late to use, and made veggie burgers. Here’s the recipe I came up with:
Grate 3-4 each of beets, potatoes, and carrots
Put in a bowl, big enough to toss everything together after adding the following ingredients:
4 eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup flax meal
1/3 cup wheat flour
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
2 tbsp garam masala
2 tbsp dill
salt and pepper to taste
(but see below re spicing)
I’m guesstimating all these amounts after the fact. I didn’t measure anything, but just put in what seemed right at the time. I think I threw in some soy milk as well.
To bake:
Heat oven to 375
Spread a thin layer of olive oil on a pan, then form patties and lay them out on the pan. Bake for 15 minutes, flip, then bake another 15 minutes.
Obviously you could fry them instead.
I’m surprised how little flavor the burgers had by themselves, but people seem to be enjoying them, and they certainly take condiments well. I enjoyed one on a bun with lettuce, ketchup, mayo, mustard, relish, and one breadless with Yumm sauce and cilantro (and occasional bites of lettuce). To give them more kick or flavor, next time I’ll probably even more of the spices I tried, or maybe hot sauce, smoke flavoring, and molasses.
I may also try blender-ing some of the mix and add it back in. If that works well, I would try skipping or reducing some of the stick-together ingredients: flour or egg.
While scanning the web for thoughts on veggie burgers (that’s how I got sunflower seeds, garam masala & dill), I stumbled across this recipe for tofu burgers, which definitely seems worth trying, maybe next week…
Walnutgiving
There was food. Lots of it. You get the picture.
Walnut Does Halloweeen/Harvest Festival
This year Walnut decided to throw a joyous part for All Hallows Eve…there were pink unicorns, candy apples, partially drowned neighbors, monied men in suites, and lots of glitter.
We had a great turnout of lots of folks from the Northwest Youth Corps and Duma (a fellow intentional community in Eugene) plus some neighbors.
The harvest food was magnificent, including figs from our front yard roasted in balsamic and served with goat cheese, grapes and homemade grape juice from the neighbors, white chocolate turnip soup, vegan turnip cake, candy apples, mulled cider, spiced wine, curries, cakes, custards galore.
House Trip to Spencer Creek Grange Cider Press!
And yes, the cider was made from our very own Walnut backyard apples.
Spencer Creek Grange is just a ways outside Eugene, a remnant of the farming community in which, like many granges, it was built. The farming community changed of course, over time and in the 60′s the area became home to lots of rural intentional communities, and the alternative flavor is most definitely still there. The grange is great, there is a piano and a old fashioned style theater and holds farmers markets throughout the summer and different events throughout the year.
The cider press had lots of music, local crafts, a big meal of local organic produce, a cake walk to the piano, fresh produce for sale and of course, anyone could bring their apples to get pressed. Granges are great community centers and help build community and bring people together, not to mention supporting local organic agriculture and the local craft economy 
We came out with 2 jugs of apple cider and had it for a house brunch the next day with pancakes…mmmmm….
Lawn Happennings…
Lately, with the nice weather and lots of fabulous fresh food from the garden and CSA, we have been having some pot lucks/lawn parties. See below or just imagine lots of beautiful walnut streeters basking on blankets on the front lawn…
Garden party recipe of the summer:
Gazapacho! a recipe of sorts?
Fresh tomatoes
Fresh cilantro
A ton of balsamic
salt/pepper
onions (red?)
garlic cloves
olive oil
Optional: Carrots, watermelon
Blend half of the tomatoes and onion and all of the cilantro, olive oil, balsamic and garlic. Chop up the rest of the tomatoes and onion finely and mix it all together with some s and p. EAT.
Our very first egg!
On April 20th, 2011 five little chicks came into our lives at Walnut St. Coop. Over the past 5 months we’ve spent copious amounts of time tending to their daily needs, building a safe and secure home for them, and (whether we wanted to or not) have grown greatly emotionally attached to our little feathery friends! All of our efforts have been put forth so that one day our care for our chickens would result in love back to us!
Yesterday, on September 25th, approximately 5 months later, we were pleasantly surprised to find that one of our birds had laid their first egg! Hooray! This small token of appreciation comes as a great relief to myself and the household. We were becoming doubtful that we wouldn’t see an egg before next spring. Chickens lay with chicks in mind. In Oregon the fall and wintertime are filled with rainy, chilly days and often times chickens may not lay or greatly reduce their egg production due to their survival instincts. We were becoming worried when we hadn’t seen an egg yet, as we were told by the local chicken expert that our Cinnamon Queen Sex-Link could lay as early as a month ago. However, we became optimistic when we started hearing more commotion from the chickens in the morning and spotted “Sex-link” jumping in and out of the coop throughout the days. Yesterday, Dana spent several hours constructing a door frame, space for their water and feeder, and installing a chicken ramp for coop access. Yesterday was also the first “Oregon downpour” of the season. I was curious how they would respond to the harsh conditions, and to my amusement….. it was after the rain had stopped that I went out to the coop and found the egg. Sigh, I’m still beaming! I like to think that they were happy with Dana’s progress on the coop and wanted to give us a sign of appreciation.
Project Chickens = Success.
We hope that (what we assume came from) Sex-Link’s egg will inspire the other chickens to start laying and soon we will witness the chicken operation in full swing! We anticipate about 25 eggs a week. Five chickens X about 5 eggs a week = 25 eggs! We’re curious to see how the season will affect their egg production and how they adapt to less sunlight and plentiful rain. We’ll keep you updated and wish us luck!
-Katy
Photos of the girls!
A flurry of garden
The Walnut St. Garden has been having its ups and downs, we won’t lie. But in the end it has been pulling through some beautiful food. We have had a TON of fava beans (which are hard to prepare and no one really knows what to do with, but damn are they productive), kale, one carrot , chard, tomatoes, tomatillos, potatoes, mustard greens, leaf lettuce, arugula, peppers, sunflowers, nasturtiums, calendula, lavender, squash and a few snap peas. Plus our cherry and fig tree and raspberry bush out front and apple and pear trees out back have been giving us tons of good fruit.
We have been making some great concoctions with our homegrown delights.
I will detail them here for your viewing pleasure:
Raspberry chocolate oat muffins
Cherry cake
Tomatillo salsa
Fava bean spread
Roasted Figs with goat cheese on italian bread with balsamic
Lavender ice cream (it was vegan and kind of soppy
Fried green tomatoes
Gazpacho
Figs in balsamic and agave
Pumpkin bread pudding
Future plan of attack:
Home made mustard
Apple sauce/pear sauce
Spiced pears/apples
Lots of fermenting!
Don’t worry, we haven’t eaten the chickens yet!
A handful of walnuts and a chicken in the Hundred Hen March!
The Hundred Hen March took place as part of the Eugene Celebration Parade 2011. Local farmers and residents marched with their chickens through the streets of Eugene to raise awareness about urban farming and chicken keeping. We had a great time marching/riding/clucking in the parade and meeting so many lovely people that share our backyard farming passion!
For more photos from the parade visit Katy’s Flickr page!
We have a Hen Nunnery! Bock!
