The thing that stresses me out in the kitchen is measuring, so I try to avoid it. Over the winter, I made my version of the conversion chart/art "(ch)art?" I saw on The Kitchn, and that helps with some of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But there are other measurements that I keep having to Google*. As I mentioned when I first posted that (ch)art - and I'm going to have to trademark that word and make it my own - I often have to Google the conversion from packet of yeast to jar of yeast (it's 2.25 teaspoons).

Here are links to some nifty online conversion tools and printables that you can tack up on the inside of your cabinet door.The one that really hangs me up is the butter. I don't buy my butter in sticks, so I have to weigh it. I have no idea what a stick, or a cup, or three tablespoons of butter is.

I'm never going to have a brick oven, or need brick oven cooking advice, but I've bookmarked TraditionalOven.com (and it's exactly that) because of their awesome butter converter. I could convert ounces to teaspoons, or grams to cups, or cups to grams, or sticks to fathoms. Ok, not fathoms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the right side of that website there are more than 30 other converters, for everything from flour to temperature to precious metals. But whoa do I use that butter converter.

Similarly, Convert-me.com has everything from ounces/spoons/liters to measures of radioactivity and fuel economy.

These online converters are great if you have a tablet in the kitchen or your hands aren't so dough-covered that you can't run to the computer. When online tools just aren't the answer, it's handy to have something printed and within easy reach.

Cookbook People has a downloadable PDF that looks a bit busy because it has everything - pan dimensions to volume, how much solid cheese you need to start with in order to end up with the right amount of grated cheese, and cooking time for hardboiled eggs.

I wouldn't usually link to this but I keep seeing references to it - Martha Stewart has some downloadable measurement tools... everything from ounces and cups to candy-making temperatures.

If Martha's not your type, Remodelaholics has a pretty printable that includes metric conversions, so we can cook like the rest of the world**.

One more like that - ishouldbemoppingthefloor has a nice downloadable printable conversation chart that includes bushels to pecks as well as safe meat temperatures.

TipNut has a full page of substitutions. Sure, I've clabbered milk before to sub for buttermilk, but I've never made faux soy sauce with molasses, ginger, worcestershire and flour. Seriously? Where's the salt?

If you have an old-timey, classic cookbook, the back pages often have conversions and substitutions.  These are much handier than the tables of random numbers you'll find in the back of your old statistics text.

This is cross-posted at Saturday’s Mouse, where I’m working on making food out of food.

*Conversions remind me of the old Saturday Night Live commercial - series of commercials, actually- for First CityWide Change Bank. There are three of them. They're 25 years old and still entirely hilarious.

**We're one of three countries that isn't metric.

Photographers Needed When: Saturday, September 8th, 1pm to 5pm We need 3 people to help photograph the event - each person will be assigned a group of gardens to visit and capture on film. If photography and urban gardens excite you, this is the volunteer opportunity for you. Hang Balloons at Participating Gardens When: Saturday, September 8th, 9 - 10:30 am Where: TBD We need 5 volunteers to hang balloons at host gardens on morning of the Garden Tour. You'll be asked to deliver balloons to four Garden Tour sites to help participants easily identify host gardens. Garden Tour Check-In When: Saturday, September 8th, two shifts: 12 - 2pm and 1:45 - 3:45 pm Where: Urban Jungle (1526 East Passyunk Avenue) We need 1 committee member and 3 volunteers for each shift to help check people in for the tour. You will be selling tickets, taking tickets, handing out Guide Books, taking Member-Owner applications, and providing informational material about the Co-op. Staff the After-Party at the Cantina When: Saturday, September 8th, 5 - 7 pm Where: Cantina Los Caballitos (1651 East Passyunk Avenue) We need 1 committee member and 1 volunteer to table at the Cantina After-Party. You will be collecting Garden Voting Ballots, tallying up votes, and providing informational material about the Co-op. Email us at [email protected] to let us know when you can help out. Thanks! Volunteering at these events is a great way to help the Co-op advance its main goal of the moment: getting to 400 members! If you are currently a member-owner, volunteering at any of these events will count toward your household’s annual 8 hour volunteer commitment. For those who haven’t become members yet but are interested in volunteering, your hours are being tracked and will be applied to your account when you join.

Hello Co-op members and volunteers! The Co-op's biggest fundraiser of the year, the Garden Tour, is fast approaching on Saturday, September 8th. To make this a successful event, we need volunteer help on a number of fronts. Flyering for the Garden Tour When: The last two weeks in August (dates and times flexible) Where: All over South Philly We need 1-2 volunteers to hang flyers advertising the Garden Tour for each zip code 19145, 19146, 19147, 19148. A committee member will coordinate with you to arrange a time to get you the posters you will be distributing. We only ask that you provide the tape/staples for hanging them. Help get the word out in your neighborhood! We're looking to hit poles and community bulletin boards throughout the area. We'll also be looking for volunteers to help us be good neighbors and remove the posters after the Tour is over. Email us at [email protected] to let us know when you can help out. Thanks! Volunteering at these events is a great way to help the Co-op advance its main goal of the moment: getting to 400 members! If you are currently a member-owner, volunteering at any of these events will count toward your household's annual 8 hour volunteer commitment. For those who haven't become members yet but are interested in volunteering, your hours are being tracked and will be applied to your account when you join.

Last time I touched on the fact that I was, um, struggling with some invasive plants that go by the name of Wild Morning Glory (Convolvulus arvensis), not to be confused with the nice, non-wild Morning Glory (Ipomoea tricolor or Convolvulus tricolor.)  Regular Morning Glory is nice and not invasive at all:  it grows and flowers and then dies and it's gone.  Normal plant stuff.  BUT.  This wild one is different.  Check out the roots on this little one I just pulled up:

WHAT

You can see by my handy thumb-scale that the part of the plant that was above the ground was very, very small.  But those roots, especially those two fat ones, are HUGE.  Those fatties are also the ones that release this odd, peppery, skunky smell when you break them, which is always accompanied by much cursing that you broke the root instead of pulling the whole thing out.  At least, uh, in my case.  But you know what?  You can't pull the whole thing out because it grows ANYWHERE.  Case in point:

mephisto's nightmare

That little one is growing through concrete.  Concrete!  There is a tiny crack there and somehow this little thing found its way out through it.  With some quick Googling I found lots of people complaining incredulously that they tried to dig the roots of these devilish things out only to find they went all the way under their houses.  Yikes.

The issue isn't that it's an ugly plant; it has nice flowers like Morning Glories and it certainly grows fast which is usually a good thing in my book.  Here it is covering the fence on one side of my yard when I first bought my house:

can't even tell there's a fence under there, right?

So that's cool.  The problem is that it strangles other plants - I had to pull it off the tomatoes and the little Japanese maple that were struggling for their lives.  It will actually choke plants and kill them and  you know what?  That's not very nice.  I normally like vines - ivy and honeysuckle in particular - but those are not so vicious as to actually kill many plants, at least not, you know, overnight.  Seriously, if you let this thing go for more than a couple of days you'll have a big problem on your hands.

I'm still committed to getting rid of it without chemicals and I have read a few things that say that if you pull out the top growth repeatedly - like every other day - it will cut off the plant's food production system and maybe in a few years it'll all die.  I kid, but it is actually tough to kill it that way and you have to keep at it, or the parts of the plant that sprout will give the roots enough food to continue living.  It doesn't really help to pull out the roots (although it is extremely satisfying to rip out foot after foot of these horrible, smelly roots) because if you control the top foot or so of the plant you'll kill the food supply, which will in turn kill the rest of the plant.  Apparently the roots can go down 20 feet or more so it is actually pretty futile to try to get them all - basically you never will so you'd better just give up now.  It's a good thing this isn't a metaphor for anything because that would be depressing.

After all that, I think we should end on a positive note.  My pepper plants are literally bursting with baby peppers and I have lots of green tomatoes on their way to ripening.  Let's end with this strange and slightly phallic baby Jersey Giant tomato, and I apologize for using the words "phallic" and "baby" in such close proximity:

Jersey Giants not yet giant

So I continue to struggle to control the voracious weed while delighting in my soon-to-be bounty.  Onward and upward, indeed.

Hello Co-op members and volunteers! The Co-op's biggest fundraiser of the year, the Garden Tour, is fast approaching on Saturday, September 8th. To make this a successful event, we need volunteer help on a number of fronts. Garden Tour Ticket Sales at Passyunk Farmers' Market When: August 22nd, 4 - 7 pm (start time flexible) August 29th, 4 - 7 pm (start time flexible) September 5th, 4 - 7 pm (start time flexible) Where: Passyunk Square Fountain (East Passyunk Avenue and Tasker Street) We are in need of some volunteers to staff the Co-op table at the Farmers' Market. You'll be working with a committee member and passing out materials, taking member applications and selling Garden Tour tickets. If you can help with one or more of these dates, please let us know. Email us at [email protected] to let us know when you can help out. Thanks! Volunteering at these events is a great way to help the Co-op advance its main goal of the moment: getting to 400 members! If you are currently a member-owner, volunteering at any of these events will count toward your household's annual 8 hour volunteer commitment. For those who haven't become members yet but are interested in volunteering, your hours are being tracked and will be applied to your account when you join.

As the end of summer draws nigh, we will gather tonight for one more Gold Star Music in The Park event. Come out and enjoy a beautiful August night with the music of East Coastamite, a good-time, get-down, instrumental four-piece preaching the word of 60s-inspired, soul, surf, and organ jazz. Of course food is part of the deal -- the Co-op is celebrating with a a potluck. Bring your favorite dish made with at least one local ingredient to share and don't forget to BYOB(lanket). Event begins at 7pm at Gold Star Park on Wharton between 6th and 7th. Sign up to become a member-owner that night and you'll receive $15 in gift cards for the Farm to City farmers markets. And if that's not enough of an incentive, the first 40 people who stop by our table will get a free Little Baby’s ice cream sandwich. Though we can't promise that you'll get to meet Little Baby's viral video sensation (which is perhaps for the best if you're bringing small children). See you there!

Okay, so let's say you're not reeeaaallly convinced that you're ready to step up your support for the South Philly Food Coop to the next level.  Or maybe you're game, but you're partner's a skeptic.  Well, here's  a tip that can tip a skeptic over the tipping point:  National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) has put together a 21-page super-credible and highly-readable report about the impact of food coops on their local communities.  It's amazing.

Don't have the time to pore over an amazing 21-page document?  No problem.  Check out the 2-minute video synopsis.  It's conciousness-raising on speed.  You gotta try it.

Sick of doing laundry, but don't know how to explain it to your mom?  Our friends at Wash Cycle Laundry have sweetened their offer for coop members.  Check them out on the Shop South Philly page  or catch up with them between gardens during the second annual Garden Tour on September 8!

Hi, friends.  In the midst of all my packing and unpacking and painting I have still found time to procrastinate with tend to the garden at my new house.  The bathtub is moving along nicely:

little green things

That green stake on the left in the bathtub (am I ever going to not cringe when I type that??) is a metal tomato stake that is awesome:  there are three prongs so it's sturdy and you can keep adding more on the top as your plants grow.  Although looking at this one, I think I put it in upside down.  Oh well, still works!  Tomatoes are heavy and I always underestimate how many stakes I will need to hold the plants up.  In fact I only got three of the metal ones - on the left are two stacked and one is already being engulfed by plants on the right - because I couldn't imagine needing more than that when I ordered these in December.  Maybe someday I will learn.

And look!  Tomatoes!

The inside of my house is entirely this shade of blue and unfortunately it extends to the back steps as well[/caption]

These are Dr. Walters that I chose solely based on the name.  And...they were not so tasty.  They weren't sweet; in fact, they were almost sour.  Since when are tomatoes sour?  I don't know if sour is the right word, but when I tasted a slice my mouth kind of automatically puckered so sour it is.  My first thought was bitter or acrid but I think acrid is too strong a word.  They still tasted like tomatoes, just not sweet ones.  Anyway, these are both from the same plant, one that has had a hard time of being moved around and gotten quite dry - I'm actually surprised it survived the multiple moves.  All that to say that with my very unscientific method I'm not sure if the sourness is due to poor conditions or if that's just what Dr. Walters taste like.  I still have some Dr. Walters in the tub and also at my other garden in the ground and those plants are a lot healthier.  Once those ripen I'll have to see if they have the same pseudo-sour taste.

Bear with me while I pat myself on the back for planting things that are not vegetables.  On the other side of the broken concrete that I call my yard I planted some flowers.  Yes, flowers!  And not even edible ones!  Greensgrow is having their big summer sale - as are a lot of garden centers as they clear out the summer stock to make way for fall - and so I grabbed some pretty things for my garden.  I plan on planting fall vegetables like chard, kale, spinach and arugula and some bulbs for the spring but I'm still in the process of cleaning out all the overgrown foliage back here and wanted something nice to look at in the meantime.  Here they are!

mini flower garden

From left to right we have:  hibiscus, sunflowers that I started allllll the way back in May at the container garden workshop but just put in the ground a few weeks ago, daises, a butterfly bush, black-eyed susans and a little harebell.  The honeysuckle on the fence is my neighbors' but I'd like to plant some of my own, too.

This thing that I am battling with to clean out is wild morning glory, and I've dug up the little bed above at least three times pulling out morning glory's thick roots.  Wild morning glory is very different from the nice climbing morning glory:  the wild one is a horribly invasive weed.  It is TOUGH and the roots go on forever and have a horrible smell that I can now smell in my sleep I've spent so much time pulling them out.  Everything I've read says to just use a weed killer because THAT IS THE ONLY WAY but I'll battle the roots a bit more before I resort to that.  Maybe I'll take a picture of the huge pile of roots I pull out every other day if I'm not too defeated by the whole thing.

Mike Kaiser, Marketing and Communications Committee Member Contact: [email protected], 267-879-5318 Tuesday, August 7, 2012 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA ADVISORY SOUTH PHILLY FOOD CO-OP ANNOUNCES SECOND ANNUAL FALL GARDEN TOUR FUNDRAISER WHO: The South Philly Food Co-op WHAT: The Second Annual South Philly Garden Tour – a self-guided ticketed event, featuring a new sampling of community and home gardens throughout South Philadelphia - a total of 20 gardens will be open for the tour. Ticket holders are invited to the Cantina (1651 East Passyunk Avenue) for an after-party with 20% off beverages. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 on the day of the tour. All funds raised through this event will support the South Philly Food Co-op’s efforts to bring a member-owned grocery store where high-quality food and products, including locally sourced and organic, can be found for a fair price. WHERE: Gardens throughout South Philadelphia including private homes, public gardens, and community plots. Tickets are currently on sale at:

• Urban Jungle, 1526 E. Passyunk Avenue
• Grindcore House, 1515 S. 4th Street
• Ultimo Coffee Bar, 1900 S. 15th Street
• Online at: http://southphillygardentour.eventbrite.com/

WHEN: Saturday, September 8, 2012, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm, check-in begins at Urban Jungle at 12:30 pm (Rain date: September 9) MORE INFO: http://southphillyfoodcoop.org/events/garden-tour/ About the South Philly Food Co-op: The South Philly Food Co-op initiative was started by a group of South Philadelphia community members dedicated to establishing a place where high-quality food and products, including locally sourced and organic, can be found for a fair price. We believe that it is vital that we choose food sources that are sustainable and support the local economy. We are also committed to building community and educating the community about making good food choices. Website: http://www.southphillyfoodcoop.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SouthPhillyFoodCoop Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SPFoodCoop