Perfect Summer Sunday

• Mountain View farmers' market
• Family Caltrain ride to San Carlos to have brunch at The Depot Cafe w/ Margaret, walk around Laurel St. with a long stop at The Reading Bug
• Afternoon nap
• Bike with Kaiya to the garden to graze on cherry tomatoes and raspberries
• Make some salsa with our tomatoes from our garden
• Wrap potstickers at home and have Wendy pan fry them for dinner
• Evening family stroll with Kaiya in the wagon and Cooper in tow
• Sipping boba in bed

City Dirt: Adventures in Urban Gardening

I forget how I got turned onto the City Dirt email newsletter ("The Bay Area Weekly Garden Newsletter for Foodies, Foragers, Tree-Huggers and Beauty Lovers"), but however it happened I'm glad we did. Every week's newsletter includes interesting looks at different aspects of sustainable food, such as pieces on a local chef foraging for mushrooms, an edible gardens landscaping business, a book by a local urban homesteader in Oakland (Farm City), and an upcoming class on Sat, 6/12 in SF on how to grow your own shiitake mushroom log at home (I wish we could go!).

Maria Finn maintains the City Dirt website and has written her own book, a little piece of earth: how to grow your own food in small spaces. So inspiring to read about all the cool stuff that people are doing around sustainable food.

Finding Sustainable Food While Traveling

I was pleasantly surprised to find a touch of sustainable food on our recent visit to Las Vegas of all places. We visited 2 restaurants in particular, Enoteca San Marco (Mario Batali owned restaurant in the Venetian) and Bradley Ogden in Caesar's (who also owns Parcel 104 in Santa Clara), that highlighted sustainable, locally grown food on their menus. Since we're just visitors, we will likely never have the opportunity to know the farmers or visit the local farms where these restaurants get their food. But just to read their names on the menu, know that they were supplying some of the food that I was eating, and that the restaurants were making an effort to make that connection for me was satisfying enough.

Although there is definitely a PR grab that factors into this, reading the various articles (here and here) about Mario Batali raising the profile of a farmers' markets and local farms in Las Vegas is still interesting nonetheless.

Exploring New Places: Alameda

It never ceases to amaze us how many communities and neighborhoods make up the San Francisco Bay Area - we can spend every weekend exploring new places and only see a fraction of what is here.

We spent the afternoon today exploring Alameda - starting with a couple fun stops on the Alameda Backyard Chicken Coop Tour where Kaiya pet some chickens, followed by a quick stop at the Alameda Marketplace where we picked up some tasty fried chicken, roasted beets and garlic noodles from Culina and a baguette and cookies from Feel Good Bakery, a drive down Park Street where it looks like the most interesting restaurants and shops in Alameda are (including Dan's Fresh Produce that Opportunity Fund just made a loan to), and then a stroll along the Alameda beach enjoying the view of San Francisco and watching people play in the water and fly kites.

Farmers Market Chatter

[Kaiya at farmer's market next to 4-5 yr old girl holding a head of fennel]

Kaiya [yells and pointing]: Fennel!

Girl [smiling and nodding]: My parents used to grow fennel in our garden.

Kaiya [matter of factly]: My dada does grow fennel in our garden!

[Anthony smiling and all sorts of amused.]

Drive Less Challenge Is On!

For the next 2 weeks (Thurs, 4/22 through Wed, 5/6), we will be participating in the Drive Less Challenge, sponsored by the cities of Mountain View, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Burlingame. It's an opportunity for people to win prizes and engage in friendly competition around walking, biking, and taking public transit more - and driving less.

Although we already walk/bike/train to lots of places (work, garden, to restaurants on Castro St), it's an opportunity to think about other opportunities to travel in an eco-friendly manner. The biggest opportunities might be biking to Kaiya to daycare (2 miles roundtrip everyday) and other errands around town (Whole Foods, etc.).

We Can Save Deer Hollow Farm!

We went to a farm tour at Deer Hollow Farm today. Located in the Rancho San Antonio Preserve in the Cupertino/Los Altos/Palo Alto foothills, it is a wonderful little educational farm with animals and a small garden. We pet the sheep and goats, fed the chickens and ducks, saw the baby pigs sleeping, stared at the big cows, and wandered around the garden full of fennel, leeks, radishes and carrots.

Unfortunately, Deer Hollow Farm is facing potential drastic funding cuts from the City of Mountain View. We hope that as many supporters of the farm as possible can contact the city to express their support and keep the farm open!

Inspirational Story - New Roots Community Farm

This is a quick, inspiring read in the LA Times about New Roots Community Farm - community gardening, sustainable food, immigrants from war-torn countries building community and gaining access to healthy food.

Too Many (Good) Choices

So much cool stuff going on next Saturday, April 17, and not enough time to do it all!

First, we really want to go to the Deer Hollow Farm tour. Deer Hollow is an educational working farm at Rancho San Antonio Park park in the Los Altos/Mountain View/Palo Alto foothills. It would be a great way to see, pet and learn about the pigs, cows, goats and other animals on the farm. Here are pics from their last farm tour in March.

We also just learned that Morris Grassfed Beef is having a Field Day that same day - and a BBQ and picnic with delicious grass fed beef and learning about more about the ranch sounds great.

Our neighbors are having a birthday party for their 2 yr old daughter, Fausta, at Foothills Park in Palo Alto, which sounds like a great place for a fun kiddie birthday party.

Hidden Villa is hosting a mozzarella and chevre making class in the afternoon from 4-6pm!

And Pie Ranch has their 3rd Saturday of the month volunteer work day and barnyard dance.

What to do?

Planting Blueberry Plants

We planted blueberry plants this weekend! Along with our existing raspberry and strawberry plants, we're looking forward to a summer munching on yummy berries.

Thanks Ollie and Melanie for the inspiration and help to plant our blueberry plants!

Full Circle Farm - Chickens, Farm Stand, Earth Day Fest

Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale is a great place for a quick Saturday or Sunday visit. You can pick up some fresh, local and sustainable veggies, watch the hens hunt and peck, and walk the fields to see what's coming up next.

Full Circle Farm recently invited us to have brunch on the farm as a thank you for our donation to support new tree planting for their orchard. It was neat to see meet other supporters of the farm, read their tree dedication signs, and feel part of a community of people that care about a place like this.

On Sunday, April 18, Full Circle Farm is hosting an Earth Day Fest that will feature farm tours, a petting zoo, entertainment and a lot of positive energy around sustainable food and community.

Oakland Zoo!

We went to the Oakland Zoo with Uncle Ener and baby Vivien on Saturday. Earlier in the week, our friend Jenny posted a great coupon for Oakland Zoo membership on Savvy Source - $85 membership for just $40! So we bought a membership and made a day of it in Oakland. Donuts and hot chocolate at Pizziaolo, cookies from Bakesale Betty, hanging out at the park and Lake Merritt farmer's market with uncle Mike, and then a short 1.5 hour trip to the Oakland Zoo with Uncle Ener and baby Vivien.

We had never been to the Oakland Zoo before and we were pleasantly surprised. It wasn't too crowded and had plenty of fun exhibits. We saw giraffes, baboons, elephants, zebras, camels and lions. Next time, we can hopefully check out the children's zoo section and ride the steam train through the zoo.

Here's baby Vivien checkin' out the zebras.

Slow Food USA & Sustainable Meat Tasting Extravaganza!

We've been Slow Food USA members for a little while now, but we have not had a chance to go to any local events... until now. On Sunday, March 14, we're headed to a Sustainable Meat Tasting Extravaganza at someone's house in Palo Alto. Below is a description of the event:

Our host, Slow Food South Bay member Daniel Lilienstein, is collaborating with Marin Sun Farms to choose a selection of their meats, including beef, pork, lamb and goat. Marin Sun Farm raises only 100% grass-fed and pasture-raised livestock. Daniel will introduce us to each course, telling us about the animal was raised and why we should be eating it.

Udo Prambs, Slow Food South Bay member and certified master chef, will be leading the cooking, assisted by Slow Food volunteers in the kitchen. He has created a five-course tasting menu, including:

• Barbecued pork belly with apple sauce and Brussel sprouts
• Goat chop with crispy quinoa with tamarind sauce and stewed leek
• Lamb shoulder stewed with dry apricots and lavender or thyme, and tabouleh
• Grilled chili rubbed flank steak, potato pancake and hollandaise sauce
• Poached beef shoulder clod, golden beets, boiler onions, braised kale and fresh creamed horseradish

Stan's Donuts

Kaiya had her first glazed donut from Stan's Donuts today. If you have not enjoyed a hot glazed donut at the counter at Stan's, you should go. It's quite a treat - as Kaiya can now attest to.

Other than the fact that we were patronizing a local business (which does mean something in our book), there was nothing green or sustainable about our adventure this morning. We drove our car the 9.5 miles to Stan's, for this singular purpose of having glazed donuts - no public transit, didn't combine trips with anything else, and the activity was not remotely eco-friendly.

If we are aiming to be as environmentally sustainable as possible, do we cut these activities out of our lives? Or do we allow ourselves a few guilty pleasures (hmmm... glazed donuts) once in a while?

Waiting for the train

This is Kaiya waiting for the Caltrain Saturday morning.

We took an impromptu trip to the Sunnyvale farmer's market this morning after our friend Oliver sent us a text a little before 9am. We vaguely talked about making this trip the night before, but this often amounts to nothing depending on how late Kaiya wakes up, how motivated we are, etc. But when Kaiya woke up at 8am and we got the text from Ollie to meet him and his twins at the market, we rushed out the door to catch the 9:29am train (since the trains only run every hour on the weekend). It was well worth it - hanging out with the kiddies at the market, falafel from The Flying Falafel, crunchy sticks and pretzels from Esther's German Bakery, local and sustainably harvested black cod from the fishmonger, salad mix from Happy Boy farms, and lots more goodies.

Home Schooled Chickens

We went to see baby chickens on Thursday night! Our new friend Amberlin lives in the neighborhood and has a blog about raising chickens in our suburban town. With her latest chicks hatching recently, we took a quick visit to her house so Kaiya could see baby chicks. Kaiya was a little shy, but it was a treat nonetheless.

Slow Saturday Morning

We like to get out of the house a lot to play and explore, but sometimes it's just really nice to have a slow Saturday morning. This morning Kaiya just wanted to hang out in her crib with Cooper. And then we had a nice relaxing breakfast. It was a nice reminder of what I read in the book In Praise of Slowness.

As far as breakfast goes, we did pretty well on knowing where our breakfast came from:

• Eggs from TLC Ranch in Watsonville
• Italian sausage made from pork from Shasta Valley Farms
• Pears from Paul at the Mountain View farmers market
• White toast from 365 brand of Whole Foods

Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From...

... Because we realized that we don't. Just started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. And although books like Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Plenty are on our bookshelf, we never have given much thought to knowing where all of our food comes from, or how much of our food we actually know where it comes from. Yes, we are conscious of where we shop and buy our food (as much as possible from farmers at our local farmers market with a conscious effort to buy local, sustainable and organic from Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, etc. when we go there). But started thinking about our dinner tonight (Italian sausage and fennel pizza) and realized that we don't know much about where our food actually comes from.

Here is the ingredient list from dinner tonight:

• Herb slab from Acme Bread, purchased at farmer's market: Ingredients - unbleached organic wheat flour, water, EVOO, sea salt, yeast, malted barley flour. We know that Acme baked it, but we've never thought about how we don't know where any of the ingredients come from.
• Creamy marinara pasta sauce from Napa Valley Bistro, purchased at Whole Foods: Ingredients - interestingly enough, the Italian plum tomatoes are imported from the San Marzano region of Italy but don't know where the rest of the ingredients come from.
• Organic mild white cheddar cheese from 365 (Whole Foods brand): Ingredients - from organic milk but no idea from where.
• Italian sausage made from heritage breed pigs from Shasta Valley Farm, purchased via pork CSA: We actually know where the pork came from, but interesting that we have never been to the farm nor know much of anything about them.
• Organic fennel, grown in our community garden plot: This is the only thing where actually know where it came from.

Now, we're intrigued. The results will surely change daily depending on what we are eating, but it will be interesting to track how much of the food we eat do we actually know where it came from. And there are definitely things we could to better understand where our food comes from. Simple steps like eating more vegetables and less processed foods, and buying cheese from one of the farmers market stands (preferably one that we know and have visited their farm); intermediate steps like buying tomatoes, garlic and basil from the farmers market and making our pasta sauce; and bigger steps like making our pasta dough (though this would still beg the question of where the flour and other ingredients have come from). All in all, an interesting experiment to undertake.

I Love Dirt - New Year's Resolution Check

So we made a new year's resolution to get outside and play more. The unexpected torrent of rain has caused a couple things - to get outside as much as possible and take advantage of the rare sunny days when it's dry, and to re-think how we may want to play outside (surely, there are fun and safe ways that we can enjoy the outside and rain without catching a cold).

Here's a quick rundown of where we're at:

• Visit the park more often: Yikes! O-fer here.
• Take more walks around the neighborhood: Yup, every weekend, including walking around with the little red wagon this morning delivering the Old Mountain View Neighborhood Association newsletter.
• More regular visits to the garden: Okay - yesterday was the first sunny day we could visit the garden.
• Bike rides to daycare and around town: Okay - too cold to ride to daycare (still need to buy Kaiya a ski mask), but took our bike to the garden yesterday.
• Go camping (Angel Island in July is booked!): TBD
• Play at the beach: Not yet! Would love to go to Santa Cruz or Half Moon Bay sometime in February.
• Hit the hiking trails at Rancho San Antonio: Not yet!
• Visit the farms where we buy food from like TLC Ranch: Need to make plans for this, perhaps in March!
• Use our Monterey Bay Aquarium membership: Yup, went MLK weekend!

To help us get inspired with all this, we picked up the following book at The Reading Bug last week. Lots of great tips to help us get outside more!

Saturday Morning Caltrain Adventures

We have seemingly started a new tradition in the last couple weeks by taking the Caltrain places to have Saturday brunch.

Two Saturdays ago, we took Caltrain to Laurel St in downtown San Carlos. We jumped on the 11:19am train, watched the world go by on the 25 min train ride, had a nice leisurely brunch at Town, stopped by Vanilla Moon Bakery for some delicious cupcakes, played a bit at this great, independent children's bookstore called The Reading Bug, had a little time at the train station to do some yoga (see pic), and then jumped on the 2:01pm train back to Mountain View. A 3 1/2 hr trip altogether - and a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning / afternoon.

Then, this past Saturday, we took the train to Menlo Park. While we hopped on the 11:19am train again and rode 15 min to Menlo Park, Wendy drove to Stanford Shopping Center to run a quick errand and met us for brunch at Ann's Coffee Shop, an old-school, inexpensive greasy spoon in the middle of posh Santa Cruz Ave.

After brunch, we met up briefly with our friends Joyce and Eddie to meet their new baby Diego at Cafe Borrone down the street. And then we drove home together. In hindsight, we could have easily taken the train home after that (the next train would have come in 15 min at 1:14pm), but it worked out well nevertheless.

This new "tradition" has been a lot of fun for us, and something we might try to do a couple times per month. We can have fun riding the trains and explore new restaurants and towns, all without having to get in a car!

More potential Saturday morning Caltrain stops:

• Downtown Sunnyvale: farmer's market on Saturdays, brunch (Palace Cafe)
• California Ave: brunch (Cafe Brioche, Joanie's Cafe, Printer's Inc. Cafe, Palo Alto Baking Company), shopping (Country Sun Natural Foods, Common Ground, farmer's market on Sundays)
• Downtown Palo Alto: brunch (Bistro Maxine, Coupa Cafe, St. Michael's Alley)
• Menlo Park: brunch (Cafe Borrone, Stacks, Ann's Coffee Shop), shopping (Cheeky Monkey Toys, Le Cirque Des Enfants, Bubble)
• Redwood City: breakfast/brunch (Pamplemousse, Alana's Cafe), shopping (farmer's market on Saturdays)
• San Carlos: brunch (Depot Cafe, Vanilla Moon Bakery), shopping (The Reading Bug)
• Belmont: brunch (Good Bites Cafe)

Our Threshold for Taking Public Transit

We try to take public transit as much as possible instead of driving - not only because it's friendly to the environment, but also because Kaiya loves riding the bus and train! For trips within ~ 15 miles of our home, it works out well especially since we have such great access to public transit in downtown Mountain View. Beyond that, it sometimes works out and sometimes doesn't.

Here is the thought process we went through a couple Saturdays ago when contemplating a trip up to Oakland:

• Saturday morning plans: meet our friend Marna at 10am near Lake Merritt (where she lives) for a stroll around the lake + farmer's market, roll over to Fenton's in nearby Piedmont for baby Vivien's first birthday party from around 11:30am til 1:30pm or so, and then back home with either a nap in transit back home or when we got home
• Public transit options: From our general knowledge of Bay Area public transit, we knew that I had two options - 1. Caltrain to BART (Mountain View to Millbrae) , BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont; 2. Drive to Fremont, BART to Oakland, bus from Lake Merritt to Piedmont. With Google Maps very cool public transit option, we could figure out if either of these options were feasible.
• Option #1: We knew that we would have to deal with the infrequency (only 1 per hr) and slowness (no express trains) of the Caltrain on the weekends. What we didn't anticipate was challenging connections in Oakland - the closest BART station (19th St) was 1.5 miles from the Lake Merritt farmer's market, which would mean a 30 min walk or waiting for a bus (also ~ 30 min). Total trip time to get Lake Merritt: 2.5 hrs. We could either leave at 7:10am and arrive at 9:30am, or leave at 8:10am and arrive 10:30am. Yikes!
• Option #2: On the positive side, driving to the BART station in Fremont on the front end and walking from the 19th St BART station would eliminate the hassle of transfers. On the negative side, the 21 miles to the Fremont BART from our home in Mountain View is almost 1/2 the distance to Lake Merritt. 30 min drive to BART + 10 min to get tickets + 40 min BART ride + 30 min walk = 1 hr, 50 min total trip time. A significant improvement over the Caltrain/BART option and probably would have been okay on the way there (we both have lots of energy and the novelty of the BART and walk), but probably would have been a disaster on the way back (both of us too exhausted to handle a 2 hr trip home).
• Conclusion: Feel a tad guilty for driving all over the Bay Area, but feel better that we at least considered our options and gladly trade the convenience of a 50 min drive to/from Oakland (not to mention getting from Lake Merritt to Fenton's).
• For future reference: Getting to SF on the weekends is hard enough (1 hr 15 min to SF from Mountain View) via public transit - getting to the East Bay is nearly impossible. Best just try to make sure we take advantage of our time in the Oakland/Berkeley and combine visits (see multiple friends and/or make multiple stops).

We Can Save Millions of Trees...

... By using cloth napkins at home instead of paper napkins. One stat (from the Natural Resources Defense Council) is that if every American household replaced one package of 250-count virgin fiber napkins with cloth napkins, 1 million trees would be saved from the chopping block. For more info, here is TreeHugger's analysis and a run-down of green/greener options from Care2.

At home, we have been using cloth napkins for a few years and now it feels totally normal. We have ~ 20 napkins that we use for a few meals and then just throw them in the laundry. Less garbage, fewer trees cut down, and no hassle on our part.

We were recently looking to buy some cloth napkins for Grandma, and finding super eco-friendly cloth napkin options (i.e. bamboo, hemp, organic cotton or otherwise sustainable fabric) is not that easy. We eventually narrowed it down to these choices:

• Litter Free Lunch: organic cotton cloth napkins
• World of Good: Bali cotton napkins made in Indoneisa through Fair Trade Winds

Kaiya & Daddy New Year's Resolutions

New Year's Resolution: get outside and play more!

• Visit the park more often
• Take more walks around the neighborhood
• More regular visits to the garden
• Bike rides to daycare and around town
• Go camping (Angel Island in July is booked!)
• Play at the beach
• Hit the hiking trails at Rancho San Antonio
• Visit the farms where we buy food from like TLC Ranch
• Use our Monterey Bay Aquarium membership