ONE and RED celebrate 10 Years of Fighting AIDS

3:46 PM in 10, aids, and, Aqua, celebrate, fighting, of, one, red, years

ONE had an amazing (not a charity) concert at Carnegie Hall in honor of the organizations benefactors and the work ONE activists and (RED) have done over the past ten years to make sure we see an AIDS-free generation.

Stephen Colbert, Bill Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden were among those who spoke, Walking Dead" actress and playwright Danai Gurira performed a riveting monologue from her play- speaking from the perspective of an African mother who discovers that her cheating husband has left her HIV positive- and stars including Jessie J, Miley Cyrus and Bono and the Edge provided the music.  -Excerpts from ONE on ONE weekly newsletter:

Elaine &Jamie Drummond (ONE co-founder)

"Volunteers came from all over - California Washington state, Miami, Canada," said  Elaine VanCleave, a ONE volunteer from Nashville. "They printed our names in the program and Bono did a general shout out to the volunteers. Sting, Stephen Colbert, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden were the presenters. Trevor Noah was the emcee." 

ONE activist Kristi York Wooten wrote about the event and World AIDS Day in The Huffington Post.

In addition to the concert (which was held on World AIDS Day), a handful of ONE and(RED) leaders rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, including Elaine VanCleave. Gives new meaning to "ringing in the holiday."

The actual ringing was led by CEOs Tom Hart of ONE and Deborah Dugan of (RED). "They pressed a button to ring the bell," said VanCleave. "The bell was right behind me. Loud and very big. It was cool. All the traders on the floor were watching us."  (Photos courtesy of Elaine VanCleave)

Read more

A One Year Meal Plan Or What Should We Grow This Year

12:31 AM in a, Aqua, grow, meal, one, or, plan, should, this, we, what, year

This time of year is prime time for garden planning around these parts.  As we were thinking about what we might want to grow this year, we came around to the question of, "Well, what did we eat last year?"  We have a partial record of what we made right here on the blog, so that was a good place to start.  From there, we just had to fill in the things we normally eat for breakfast, lunch, and supper that we dont blog about. There is always a lot of variability depending on whats available (or on sale), the time of the year, how much time were at home, how much snacking on high-sugar dried fruits we do while waiting for the other to come home so we can explosively greet them when they walk in the door (like Hobbes greets Calvin), etc., but as a ballpark figure, could we make an estimate for food intake, assuming three servings per person per day?

The answer is yes!  And the estimate is fascinating. [...says Jake as Katie snores...]  If youve been following this blog for any amount of time, you probably know that a spreadsheet is about to appear.  And so we begin, with three sets of columns: one each for supper, breakfast, and lunch.

Into each set of columns, we enter recipes (copied and pasted from memory or the internet), specify the number of times per year were going to prepare them, and make sure units and ingredient names are consistent (e.g., that we dont say tomato in one recipe and tomatoes in another).

Then we use a pivot table (one each for supper, breakfast, and lunch) to count everything up.  Its a bummer we dont know how to make a pivot table from more than one range at a time (theres probably a way), but thats ok.  The workaround isnt too hard. From each individual pivot table, we create a master pivot table.  From the master pivot table, we can estimate how much of everything we need to acquire during the course of the year.  For example, we learn that we need about 54 dozen eggs, 49 gallons of milk, and 110 loaves of bread (assuming 12 slices per loaf).  If youve been in our kitchen, you know that works out to a surprisingly accurate figure of roughly one dozen eggs, one gallon of milk, and two loaves of bread per week.  And also 23 pounds of mushrooms, which sounds delicious.  Model validated!

More importantly (and to the point), we can estimate how many pounds of vegetables well have to grow and how many pounds of meat well have to catch to be self-sufficient.

Clearly, if we want to keep taking carrots to work for lunch, well need to grow a ton. (Or, a one-fourteenth of a ton, rather).  Similarly, we can see that we ought to devote a lot of our remaining garden space to tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, and greens.  Of course, were going to grow a larger variety of veggies than that, but the quantities we tend to eat (and would need to find storage space for) are instructive.  And honestly, well probably try to grow more winter squash, green beans, and peppers than the chart suggests.

On a similar note, if we want to keep on our current diet, well need to grow another batch of chickens and catch one large deer and a quarter of a pig. (Or raise one deer and catch a flock of wild chickens.  But we dont have space to raise both!)

All things considered, its a pretty balanced diet, not too far from Harvards Healthy Eating Plate.  Were a little heavier on the veggies, but hey!  Maybe well end up being a very localized blue zone.

Its important to keep in mind that these numbers are just guidelines; were not locking ourselves into a whole year of rigidly following recipes.  We substitute veggies and meats in and out of a recipe like a Wall Street bankster swaps stocks (although we hope none of our meals would be considered subprime or toxic assets).  But its nice to have a set of go-to dishes we can pick from and toss together from stuff in the fridge or pantry if weve already spent our creative energy for the day and still need to make supper.  Whatchagotamology at its finest!

We wont vouch for the user friendliness of the spreadsheet, but if you want to play around with it, you can download it here.  Suggestions welcome!


Do you make meal plans?  Whats your planning strategy?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Read more

One Thing for Which Were Thankful Squash Butter

3:31 AM in Aqua, butter, for, one, squash, thankful, thing, were, which

We dont panic often here at the Lab, but last week we had an event that nearly warranted such behavior.  Reaching into the pantry for a new jar of jam, we realized that we were only two jars away from being completely out of homemade jam!  Such an event has not occurred since, well, ever, as far as we can remember.  A lack of homemade jam is a serious situation around here, because it means that Jake, being a strict PBJ-ivore for lunch, would be down to two meals a day until its fixed.

Fortuantely, we stocked up on various flavors of squash and pumpkins earlier this fall.  That fact alone kept us from launching into full-blown panic.  Calm and collectedly, the following conversation ensued:

Jake: We should make pumpkin butter!

Katie: But weve only got two pumpkins, and I was going to stuff those for supper some night soon.  If you make pumpkin butter, we wont be able to eat them for supper!

Jake: But! But! But this is serious!  Were almost out of jam! (contemplative look, followed by light bulb appearing over head) Hey!  I wonder if we could make squash butter instead!

Katie: Yeah!  We have lots of squashes! Lets try that!

(lots of googling)

Jake: Yes!  Lets do that!  Lets start baking the squashes! (opens oven) Youre making biscotti again?

Katie: Yeah, since you ate all of the last batch already.

Jake: Fair enough.  I guess well have to get creative!

20 minutes of research turned up four recipes we liked (specifically here, here, here, and here), so we took our favorite elements from each and, well, squashed them together.

Heres all the ingredients we used: two butternut squashes, 2-3 lbs each, about a teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger, and ground cloves, a half-teaspoon each of ground allspice, and nutmeg, 1 cup brown sugar, half cup maple syrup, butter and fruit.  Various recipes call for adding apple juice or citrus juice to increase the acidity; we didnt have the juice on-hand, but we had the real fruit!  Also, we didnt use the whole stick of butter--just two tablespoons.

We started by slicing the squashes in half and cleaning out the seeds.  Dont throw those seeds in the compost!  Put em in a bowl or something for the time being.  Man, those squashes are orange.  They must have been free-range.

Since the oven is occupied and were short on time, we peeled the squash raw.  First we cut it into pieces along the contours to make the skinning easier--like a watermelon!

Everything goes into the crock pot, along with half a cup of water.  (Peel the orange and core the apples first.)  Well mash it down in a minute (once we set the camera down), then let it cook on high for about 12 hours, or whenever we get to it tomorrow.

Time to roast the seeds!  The best way weve found of cleaning them off is to put them in a screened colander thing under a stream of running water, like so.  With our other hand, as long as its not holding a camera, we swish the seeds around and rub them along the sides, which dislodges the most of the squash boogers from the seeds (you can call them something else if you like).  The smaller bits of squash rinse through, and the bigger ones we just pick out (heh).

Then we put them on a cookie sheet (or some other kind of flat plate thing if Katie has filled all the cookie sheets with biscotti), sprinkle with salt, and bake at 300 °F for 20-30 min.  We used to do it at 400 °F, but a lot of the seeds would explode like popcorn.  That doesnt seem to happen as much at 300 °F.

When the squash and everything else got tender, we hit it with a stick blender and puree everything.  We also added a tablespoon or so of vanilla extract.  If necessary, wed adjust the seasonings and add water to get the desired consistency, then pour into hot sterilized jars, wipe the rim, and seal with a lid per the manufacturers instructions.  When weve canned pumpkin butter in the past, weve used the inversion method, which evidently is not recommended these days. (A boiling water bath is preferred instead).  So, given that we wont be able to heat it up to the botulism-killing temperature anyway (see next paragraph), a boiling water bath for 16 minutes it is!

 Home canning of pumpkin/squash butter is actually not recommended at all because the high viscosity (which in this case accompanies a low heat transfer coefficient) makes it very difficult to get the center of the jars up to the 240 °F needed to kill botulism spores. At normal canning temperatures/pressures, the process is limited by heat transfer through the pumpkin.  Any engineer will tell you that if you keep the pressure canner, which completely surrounds the jars, above 240 °F long enough, the whole jar will eventually get to the required temp.  But it might take a really long time.  Keeping the canner at a higher temperature can speed things up, but the consistency and flavor of the pumpkin/squash butter might change as the stuff closer to the outside of the jar reaches a higher temperature and starts to break down. We dont know for sure how much things would change (weve never tried it), but hey, maybe well do an experiment sometime.  In any case, to keep botulism from growing (if its present), the jars contents must be below 38 °F (i.e., in a cold fridge or freezer), above 122 °F (i.e., hotter than wed ever want to store it) or below pH 4.6*.  The acid in the apple and citrus juice in many recipes helps with regards to the pH, but apparently the natural acidity of squash/pumpkins varies too much for the authorities to be able to make a solid recommendation on how much acid to add to a batch.

We optimistically sterilized twelve half-pint jars...

...only to find out that our recipe only makes seven.  Oh well. That should keep us in the sandwiches for at least three months, at which point...well...well cross that bridge when we come to it.  Just like Congress!

The finished squash butter.  Sure looks good!

Now if only we had a way to test the pH of a representative sample...yikes! The pH is 5.4!  Looks like well be storing this batch in the fridge. (The pH might actually be lower than that since we had to dilute the leftover squash butter with water (at pH > 6) to fill the jar, but hey...safety first!)

The final test: does it make a good sandwich with peanut butter?  Happily, yes.  We were a full three bites in before we remembered to take a picture.  Coincidentally, its also good on biscotti.  Fun fact: if you dont wait for the squash butter to fully cool before making a sandwich with it, it will melt the peanut butter and ooze out onto the plate.  In any case, squash butter passes the sandwich test with flying colors.  Crisis averted.

*Note that even if the bulk pH is in the correct range, any bacteria, mold, or yeast that may have survived our sterilization procedure (cleaning with soap and water, then boiling in the canner) can alter a small part of the pumpkin/squash butter right around them (i.e., their microenvironment) in a way that increases the pH to a level that botulism can grow.  To be completely safe, store the stuff in the fridge or freezer.  For us, if this batch would have been below pH 4.6, wed be taking a calculated risk by storing it in the pantry at room temp.  Good sanitation + low pH + low risk of botulism to begin with = very very low risk of getting botulism.  However, if it happens sometime in the future, well have our next-of-kin update this post.


Also, Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

EDIT: Cant believe we forgot to put the recipe at the bottom!  Here it is...

Recipe:
Two butternut squashes, 2-3 lbs each
1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger, and ground cloves
0.5 teaspoons ground allspice, and nutmeg
1 cup brown sugar
0.5 cup maple syrup
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Granny smith apples
1 medium orange

Skin the squashes, peel the oranges, and core the apple.  Save the squash seeds for later.  Add the good parts, along with everything else, to a 4-quart or larger crock pot, put the lid on, and cook on high for 12 h or so, until the squash is very soft.  Blend with stick blender, regular blender, or if ambitions and energy are running high, an old-fashioned egg beater.  Can in a boiling water bath for 11 minutes, plus 1 min for every 1000 feet of altitude above sea level.  Dont count on the canning process guaranteeing the squash butters safety (see the note in the post above)--store the jars below 38 °F to be completely safe.

Clean the seeds and spread them out on a cookie sheet, pie plate, or some other oven-safe dish.  Sprinkle lightly with salt and bake at 300 °F for 20-30 min until lightly browned.

Have you made pumpkin or squash butter before?  Whats your favorite recipe?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Read more