Thank you kids and thank you Erika Tucker for such an great Farm to Fork workshop! We can’t wait to see what you will be making on our next Farm to Fork workshop on June 2nd. Grown ups… don’t feel too left out, you can taste Erika’s culinary delights at The Cellar in San Clemente. Date night, perhaps?
Have you ever asked a child what part of the chicken is the nugget? I can guarantee there would be some very clever responses from our little ones. In a society full of choices, food should be a simple one. Farm to Fork is a program at The Ecology Center that is a perfect opportunity to bring awareness to kids and empower them in the kitchen. Even better- it is fun, messy and always tasty! With that said, it is with great pleasure that we introduce our new instructor, Head Chef Erika Tucker of The Cellar in San Clemente. Just to get better acquainted, we asked Erika a few silly and general questions…
Favorite meal of the day?
Breakfast! More specifically crepes with French brie and orange butter.
Why did you choose to be a chef?
It was either professional race car driver or chef. I chose the latter but still pretend I’m both.
What brings you to The Ecology Center other than your love of food and children?
My dear friend Jeff was the one to bring me over.. immediately I fell in love with the entire concept of the center and wanted to be a part of it. I would come here as a kid when it was an empty lot for pumpkin patches and produce stands. Very special to see what it has evolved into today.
Why do you feel that it is so important to buy local/fresh?
Where do I start? The concept of buying local is all too underappreciated in my opinion. Though obvious that transporting food long distances uses a tremendous amount of energy, why must there be such a strong demand for it? By adding processing and transportation to the equation we are adding a significant and unnecessary amount of stress to the environment. The fewer steps it takes to get your food from the farm to your table the better. Not to mention the fact that local food tastes better! The crops are picked at their peak and are much fresher and nutrient packed.
If you could teach the kids of Farm to Fork one thing…what would it be?
Not to be intimidated to cook at home! To be able to use kitchen tools, knives and equipment safely and effectively. After they get that, the possibilities are endless as to what they can make.
Say I was headed out for date night at The Cellar…Any new creations at The Cellar we shouldn’t miss?
Yes! Chocolate filled beniets with cherry jam.
What clever way would you get kids to eat their vegetables?
I think bringing them here to the farm or any local garden and having them interact with the produce will give them a better appreciation and less negative outlook on vegetables. Having them pull a carrot out of the ground and making carrot bread with it. That’s special. Some fun seasonal recipes with vegetables that I’m making in my kitchen now include carrot and zucchini bread, carrot soup with mango honey, fresh basil and thyme infused lemonade, and a spring vegetable quiche.
Thank you Erika! We can’t wait to see what you will be creating in the months to come.
There is still time! Be sure to join us this weekend for Farm to Fork, Saturday, May 5th from 10:30-12. On the menu: Homemade Bagels and Strawberry Jam. Mmmm.
Farm to Fork: Beginning with an exploration of The Ecology Center's veggie garden and ending with the preparation of small-plate meals alongside professional local chef, this children's program emphasizes the real food journey from "Farm to Fork" .
Join us, May 5th, 10:30-12noon for another month of Farm to Fork
This month's featured menu: Homemade Bagels and Strawberry Jam
with special guest, Chef Erika Tucker of The Cellar in San Clemente
Cost: Members- $15, Non-Members- $20
Ages 6-12 (younger children are welcome, but must be assisted by parent
for the entire duration of class)
Are you coming? Reserve your spot now.
You bring the kids- We will provide you with the morning brew.
Water. We wash our hands in it. Shower our plants with it. Bathe ourselves and our clothes in it. We drink it all day long. But, do you know that the majority of the world does not have access to clean, drinkable water, let alone have it coming from every spigot in their home?
The lack of this basic need in the world has been such a concern for the UN that they designated March 22 as “International World Water Day” back in 1993. Since then, countries all over the world have focused energy and advocacy in March to raise awareness about freshwater and water stewardship. This year, The Ecology Center is bringing World Water Day to Orange County along with our partners at Hurley International, and we want you to join in.
“When somebody dies from lack of clean water, it’s so senseless because there are solutions… water is life” – Jon Rose, founder of Waves for Water.
We will start our day at Hurley HQ for a Water Summit with global clean water advocates Waves for Water, whose mission is to get clean water to every person who needs it. The Ecology Center will have The Water Shed on-site at Hurley, and we are thrilled to get to present and again share our interactive, educational exhibit with the sponsor who made it possible. Employees from Hurley, Waves for Water, and TEC will participate in a skill-share series to cross train each other in water advocacy and ecologically-sustainable practices such as container gardening. We’re grateful to our friends at Andrei’s Conscious Cuisine of Irvine, Sambazon of San Clemente, and Kean Coffee of Newport Beach for their participation with us!
From there, we and The Water Shed head to Huntington Beach High School from noon-1pm to engage the student body there with what they can do for World Water Day. Students will have the chance to see how much water their everyday actions consume, and then learn skills and simple choices that can make a huge impact on their water consumption. We’ll also be encouraging students to make a pledge to take their water usage seriously by choosing a specific action that they can do to make every day World Water Day.
After that, we are excited to bring World Water Day to YOU at the Nike/Hurley/Converse concept store 225 Forest in Laguna Beach from 4-7pm for The Water Shed demo’s and participation with Hurley’s H2O program. Everyone is welcome to join us to learn about water stewardship and also to Print Your Own Hurley Tee in honor of World Water Day. (A nominal fee will be charged for the tees – all sales will go toward good water efforts.)
So mark your calendars for next Thursday, March 22, from 6-8pm. Join us in the evening for functional fun and entertaining education, and think about what YOU can do about your water consumption. Need a place to start? Visit our Water Resources page to learn about water safety and good stewardship.
Pledge online or in person to make every day World Water Day, and we’ll help you stick to your pledge with information, encouragement, and next steps!
Calling all Ages, Young and Old! Join us this Saturday, February 25th at 1pm for Tools of the Trade at The Ecology Center for an hour of nature stories designed to enthrall, educate, and entertain you and your family. Free Event
Diane Wyzga, our resident beekeeper, is also professional storyteller. Diane has been telling stories since 1997; unless you count her childhood years. Her parents said she was fibbing, but she says she was perfecting her craft.
What a great weekend we had here at The Ecology Center! Pastry chef Elyssa Fournier, of Andrei’s Conscious Cuisine, joined us in the kitchen along with 11 kids for Farm to Fork. The smell of fresh strawberry jam wafted through the house as the kids made a fresh batch of currant scones. The best part (other than eating the ones Elyssa made ahead of time) was the kids were able to take their own batch home to bake and share Sunday morning. Genius!!! Thank you Chef Elyssa for such a great workshop. We really appreciate all you have done and continue to do.
We spent this last Saturday at Center for Living Peace making dream catchers! Thank you to everyone who attended – it was a wonderful group!
According to the lore of the Native Americans who invented them, the dream catcher filters out any bad thoughts and dreams, allowing only good dreams to pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper. Dream catchers have been used for over a thousand years, with relics found in the archaeological record dating as far back as 700 AD. Common to all stories and legends about the dream catcher, its web-shaped design symbolizes power of the spider and its web, which catches things that fly into it. According to some, dream catchers work better when you make them yourself as opposed to buying them. Once you learn how fun and easy they are to make, you won’t want to stop!
Materials:
-flexible twig/vine (willow, apple, etc.)
-rope or string
-beads
-feathers
Process:
1. Carefully bend the twig so that it is as close to a circle as possible; tie the two ends together with string.
2. Using a separate piece of string, knot a loop and tie it to where the twig is tied together (you will use this loop to hang the dream catcher when it’s finished).
3. You will repeat the same stitch from start to finish. To start, hold the string and place it loosely over the top of the hoop. Move the string around to the back of the hoop (forming a hole) and pull the string back through the hole you just made.
4. Pull each stitch taught but not too tight or it will warp the twig and will not lay flat when it’s done.
5. Continue the same stitch for the first round, spacing them evenly.
6. On the second, and subsequent stitching rounds, place the string around the center of each stitch from the previous round (rather than the hoop).
7. As you pull each stitch tight, you should start to see a spider web forming.
8. On the third round, place a bead at the center to represent the spider.
9. As the stitches become smaller and smaller, be sure to leave a hole in the center of the dream catcher.
10. Stop stitching at the bottom of the hole in the center of the dream catcher. End by stitching twice in the same place, forming a knot, and pull tight.
11. Tie on 1 feather, which will dangle from the center of the dream catcher.
12. Tie on 2 additional feathers.
13. Wrap 1 in. square of fabric around the knot of string and over the base of the feather. Tie string around the fabric and pull tight.
14. Hang over your bed. Sweet Dreams!
(directions from nativetech.org)
Our next Backyard Skills workshop at Center for Living Peace will be Homemade Cleaning Products on Saturday, March 3rd at 1pm- we hope to see you there!
Even if you do not consider yourself a particular expert in Native American culture, you could probably identify a dream catcher. They dangle from rearview mirrors of cars and their image graces the front of t-shirts and posters. A chosen few still inhabit the space for which they were originally intended: hanging just above the bed.
The first time I saw a dream catcher, as an East Coast high school student visiting the home of a California friend, the beauty of its simple form captured me instantly. I also loved the idea behind it: According to the lore of the Native Americans who invented them, the dream catcher filters out any bad thoughts and dreams, allowing only good dreams to pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper.
Since then, I have wondered, “Were dream catchers actually common objects in the households of our Native American ancestors and forbears?” If so, who invented them and what were they used for exactly? Did everyone have one, or just certain people?
It turns out that dream catchers are indeed quite old. They have definitively been used for over a thousand years, with relics found in the archaeological record dating as far back as 700 AD. Some authors attribute the creation of dream catchers to the Ojibwe (Chippewa) tribe of the Great Lakes region, while others credit the first dream catchers to the Sioux Nation of the Great Plains. Regardless of who made them first, many First Nations cultures adopted the practice and the craft of making them has spread far and wide among people of both Native and non-native American descent.
Common to all stories and legends about the dream catcher, its web-shaped design symbolizes power of the spider and its web, which catches things that fly into it. One of the Ojibwe words for dream catcher, “asabikeshiinh,” is also the inanimate form of the word for “spider.” The Lakota legend of how the dream catcher originated tells of Iktomi, the Spider, who visits an old shaman in his vision and spins a web in his sacred hoop of willow, horsehair, beads, and feathers. The spider tells the shaman that the web is to help people follow and use the good ideas that come to them during their journey through the circle of life, and the hole in the middle is to allow the bad thoughts to fall through.
In old times the web was woven of cordage made from nettle fiber, and the hoop was often made from the flexible twigs of the willow tree. American ethnographer Frances Densmore observed in the late 1970’s that Ojibwe parents protected their infants by hanging dream catchers on the hoop of their cradleboards. The dream catchers were made of small wooden hoops filled with an imitation of a spider’s web made of fine yarn, usually dyed red. Two spider webs were usually hung on the hoop, and it was said that they “caught any harm that might be in the air as a spider’s web catches and holds whatever comes in contact with it.”
So, do dream catchers really work? While some nay-say dream catchers as superstition, other experience suggests that it is quite possible. Several members of an online message board report bad dreams stopping with the use of dream catchers. One mother reports, “Yes they work (they stopped my daughter’s bad dreams).” And, she advises, “a proper one should have a ‘spider’ on the web somewhere to ‘eat’ the nightmares and keep the web clean.”
According to several others, dream catchers work better when you make them yourself as opposed to buying them, “Even if they turn out …’not as good’ as one you’d buy they still work better because you are concentrating on what it is for and that energy is going into the construction of it. I have used purchased dream catchers that were basically just pretty things that hung around my room. When I made my own I felt that it actually worked. It wasn’t as professional looking but it seemed to work much better.”
So are you interested in making your own dream catcher or making one as a gift for a friend of loved one? As part of its Backyard Skills Series at Center for Living Peace, The Ecology Center is hosting a Dream Catcher making workshop on Saturday, February 4th at 1:00pm. For more information and to sign up, visit Center for Living Peace.
Written by Meg Hiesinger
Resources
For Children:
Here are some titles of children’s books about dream catchers, including how to make them and the legends and practices surrounding them:
Dream Catchers by Sylvia and Donald Tso. Troll Communications. Bk&Kit edition (August 10, 1996). This Illustrated instruction kit by a Navajo couple teaches children some of the lore behind dream catchers and instructions on how to build them.
Dream Catcher by Audrey Osofsky and Ed Young. Orchard Books; 1st edition (March 1, 1992) This beautiful picture book depicts in an impressionistic and dreamlike way the story of an Ojibwa baby’s first dream catcher.
Grandmother’s Dreamcatcher by Becky Ray McKain and Stacey Schuett. Albert Whitman & Company (January 1, 1998).
This picture book tells the story of a contemporary Chippewa girl learning the dream-catcher tradition.
Sources:
“Dreamcatchers.” http://www.native-languages.org/dreamcatchers.htm. Accessed 1/24/12.
Terri J. Andrews, “Living by the Dream”, World & I, Nov. 1998, p. 204.
Frances Densmore Chippewa Customs (Smithsonain Institutuin Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin) [Hardcover]. Kessinger Publishing, LLC (June 13, 2008).
“The Legend of the Dreamcatcher.” http://www.dreamcatchers.org/dcat16.html. Accessed 1/24/12.
Yahoo Answers “Does a Dream Catcher Really Catch Your Bad Dream?” http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070901200127AA6haUI
http://www.ask.com/answers/52481401/do-dream-catchers-work
Calling all future chefs! Join us February 11th from 10:30am to 12:00pm for our children’s cooking class, Farm to Fork. Pastry chef Elyssa Fournier, of Andrei’s Conscious Cuisine, will be teaching the kids how to make scones and fresh jam. Space is limited, so please sign up in advance. $15 members, $20 non-members.Parents may choose to stay through the duration of class or drop students off. Recommended for children ages 6 to 12.
Tools For Change is The Ecology Center’s new interactive exhibition that explores the myriad instruments—literal and figurative—that can be used to achieve positive ecological change and a culture of sustainability at the household and community level.
Healthy Home, Sustainable Community.
Tools For Change promotes healthy homes and a sustainable community by connecting people, products, ideas, and resources in five areas:
Tools For Kids
The Kids’ Zone is a play area and learning space for young people that encourages creativity, curiosity and ecological awareness. The space features a robust library of children’s books, videos, and other educational resources that celebrate sustainability and impart simple things kids can do to make a difference.
Pledge. Do. Share.
Tools For Change is a highly interactive experience that offers opportunities for anyone to make a difference, big or small. The exhibition challenges visitors to:
In addition to being interactive and educational, Tools For Change is a self-sustaining social enterprise venture. The sales of featured household tools, products, and books will directly benefit The Center’s expansive portfolio of unique eco-educational programming.
Tools For Change is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays (starting December 3rd), from 11 AM – 5 PM, and by reservation for school groups Monday through Friday.
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