by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Image: Kelly Knight

From the Kitchen

Tortilla Espanol or Spanish tortilla is one of Spain's most popular national dishes, and it is pretty much eggs, potatoes and onions cooked gently in olive oil. It’s basically an omelette, but denser, and used as an appetizer or snack.

I ate it fresh out of the pan, but I’m told it’s even better at room temperature. I’d have it with a side green salad, or breakfast meat if you want a heartier meal.

SPANISH TORTILLA
Recipe adapted from The Mediterranean Dish

INGREDIENTS
10 medium eggs
Salt
1 teaspoon sweet Spanish paprika, optional
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 ½ lb russet potatoes (or 2 to 3 russet potatoes), peeled, halved and sliced cross-wise
1 large yellow onion, peeled, halved and sliced cross-wise
4 scallions, trimmed, chopped (both white and green portions)
Optional: a handful of greens like baby spinach or baby kale

DIRECTIONS

1. In a big bowl, whisk together the eggs, salt, and paprika. Set aside for now.

2. Prepare a 10-inch oven-proof nonstick skillet or a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. Heat the olive oil in the skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering but not smoking.

3. Add the potatoes, onions, and scallions to the oil (at first, they won't all seem to fit, but with a little stirring, they'll compress as they cook). Lower the heat immediately to medium-low and watch to control the heat and make sure it continues to gently bubble. Cook for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are very tender.

4. Use a heat-safe strainer over a heat-safe bowl to drain the olive oil (reserve the oil aside for now).

5. Season the potatoes well with kosher salt and add them to the egg mixture in the bowl.

6. Turn the oven broiler on.

7. In the skillet, heat 3 tablespoons of the reserved olive oil over medium heat. Pour in the egg and potato mixture, and gently press to even out the top. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook until you see the edges of the omelet begin to set and firm up then put the pan under the broiler to finish cooking. Broil for about 5 minutes, watching carefully until the eggs are cooked through and the top of the omelet browns slightly (see notes if you prefer to finish cooking on stovetop).

8. Allow the tortilla a few minutes before serving.

9. To serve, invert the tortilla onto a large serving platter (you may need to loosen the edges using a spatula). Cut into 6 slices and serve.

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Community

One of my favorite things these days is Substack, a platform for journalists and writers to distribute and get paid directly for their writing. It takes out the middleman, and allows that community to benefit from the folks who’d like to support them.

In honor of this, I’d like to share some of my favorite posts on social justice and community from the last couple months. I’m hoping you’ll discover some writers you like, and some communities or movements that are new to you.

Link roundup:
How to Build a Rugged, Resilient Society, by Anne Helen Petersen
It’s Time to Stop Panic Giving, by Virginia Sole-Smith
The Antidote is Always Turning Deeper Towards Each Other, by Garrett Bucks
"I had been hating my body like it was a job for years and I wasn’t happier, healthier, or thinner. I was just…tired." , an interview with Regan Chastain
"Our collective courage is flagging and there is no time for that”, by Chris LaTray (this is from 2020, but it’s still really good.)

From the Kitchen

In our spiritual - and soon our café community - we have a strong commitment to serve foods that are delicious and nutritious, but also meet the various allergy limitations of some members. Of course, one of the most difficult and challenging items on our menu is bread.

Bread is an ancient human food that has significant liturgical significance in Jewish and Christian communities, but it is now a challenging food to offer when so many folks have developed gluten intolerance or are choosing to eat vegan, paleo, or keto.

Amongst clergy colleagues, we’ve had a lot of conversations about how to provide a single loaf that most, if not all, could share together for communion. Here’s my favorite that I regularly bake for our Good Table church community that I found on the blog:  An Edible Mosaic.

It’s basically an egg bread made with almond flower, arrowroot, tapioca starch, and flaxseed meal. It is leavened with salt and apple cider vinegar. You can use coconut oil or ghee, almond milk or cow’s milk if you want to make it vegan. While you may not have all these ingredients in your pantry, they are easily sourced in bulk in natural groceries and may even be readily available through some chain stores. But best of all, it is easy and delicious! And unlike many gluten-free breads, it isn’t “crumbly” or dry and holds together well, making it versatile for many uses.

Image courtesy An Edible Mosaic

Best Paleo Sandwich Bread
by An Edible Mosaic

Prep Time: 10 mins. 

Cook Time: 40-45 mins 

Yield: 1 (8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch) loaf or 1 8” round, or 4 mini-loaves

Ingredients:

2 cups almond flour

6 tablespoons arrowroot starch

4 tablespoons golden flax seed meal

2 tablespoons tapioca starch

3/4 teaspoon fine salt

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

4 tablespoons ghee or coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly, plus more to grease the baking pan

4 eggs lightly beaten

1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk or cow’s milk

1 1/2 teaspoons apple sider vinegar

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, generously grease baking pan

2. Whisk together the almond flour, arrowroot, tapioca starch, flaxseed meal, salt and baking soda in a large bowl

3.  Whisk together the slightly cooled ghee or coconut oil, eggs, “milk”, and vinegar in a medium bowl or large measuring cup. (I melt the ghee in the microwave)

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients all at once and stir until combined, but do not over-mix (if you stir it too much, it will not rise)

5. Immediately pour batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes our clean, about 40-45 minutes (depending on the pan.)

6. Cool on a wire rack before slicing and serving. Freezes well and keeps in the fridge for up to five days.

Enjoy!

by Rev. Dr. Melinda V. McLain

“Isolation” by Fabio Barbato

Spiritual Touchstone

During my 25+ years as a pastor, one of the most common worries I hear from parents with regard to their children (no matter what age!) is about friendship. Will my child make friends? Will those friends be a good influence? And, of course, what can I do as a parent to help my child make good friends?

There are no easy strategies for parents confronting this problem on behalf of their children. And the problem of loneliness and a lack of friends is certainly not limited to children. We recently learned from The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, the book our Mindfulness Circle is reading that at least 10% of Americans say that they don’t have any close friends at all.

Not surprisingly, as we move into the third year of a global pandemic, loneliness appears to be on the rise. A new report from Harvard states that: “36% of all Americans—including 61% of young adults (18-25) and 51% of mothers with young children—feel ‘serious loneliness’.” And not surprisingly, loneliness appears to have increased substantially since the outbreak of the global pandemic, although a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study in 2019 found that at least 1 in 5 Americans reported feeling lonely or socially isolated.

Rising loneliness and social isolation are serious health problems with real world consequences. Human beings are social animals like all primates, and we are meant to be in relationship. But somehow, we’ve lost the art of being in community. It might be that we honor rugged individualism too much. Or that we are distracted by media and technology. Or it could be that we’ve just forgotten (or never really learned) how important it is to take time for friendship and to be in community.

The Harvard report suggest three immediate strategies including “raising awareness”, such this blog post or by simply thinking about your friendships or lack thereof. Their second recommendation is to “increase and improve our social infrastructure”. The Good Table is designed to do that for folks in El Sobrante, but we can all take advantage of existing social infrastructure such as volunteering with a local organization or becoming part of a spiritual community such as a temple, gurdwara, church, mosque or synagogue. And the third recommendation is to work “to restore our commitments to each other and the common good”.

From a spiritual perspective, the best antidote to loneliness is to develop a warm and compassionate heart toward others. There are many meditation and prayer practices that can help anyone to become more aware and connected to one another. These practices also help us turn away from focusing on our problems and become more compassionate. This “turning” then helps us to make new friends and strengthen our existing community connections.

My own view is that the fastest way to decrease our own loneliness and self-centeredness is to actively choose to becoming a helper and volunteer. This can be hard for young adults and parents trying to juggle a challenging schedule, but the results can be miraculous.

Try doing one new thing “out in the world” once a month such as participating in a community work day. Here in El Sobrante, there are many opportunities including our monthly “clean-up the town day” every 3rd Saturday (including this Saturday, Feb. 19) from 10a-12n (meet at the library) or come to our site (5166 Sobrante Avenue) on the last Saturday (Feb. 26) from 12n-3p.

Here is some final wisdom to ponder from Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the subject of loneliness.

“Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.”

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

May we all find happiness and friendship.

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Plum blossom season!

Spiritual Touchstone

Depending on where you live, it may be the first breath of spring. Where we are, in the East Bay, it’s been in the windy, sunny 70s the last week — nearly summer. (Thanks global warming. Okay not really, rain please?) In any case, it’s a good time of year to fertilize your garden. If you’d like a primer on how to fertilize, here you go: Garden Fertilizer Basics

To be honest, fertilizing intimidates me. I have this weird aversion to it. I wasn’t really sure why; it is, after all, good for the plants, good for the ecosystem. I know I should be fertilizing my own garden, but I can’t seem to drum up any enthusiasm for it, when really all it is is feeding your plants.

And then I realized: I am terrible at remembering to feed myself, so why should it be any different for my plants?

My life is really busy — I have two kids, work, friends, community. It feels like everyone needs something from me all the time. If the kids aren’t shouting, the cats are. And if everyone’s quiet, a friend is texting or my mom is calling. I love my community, but wow, does it consume my time and resources. As a consequence of that, self care can sometimes (often) go out the window.

The old adage of “Put your own mask on first” comes up a lot for me, but it feels trite when so many other peoples’ needs are greater than mine. My therapist admonished me this week though and reminded me that if I burn out, I’m actually going to be less available, less able to care for those who need it. So the question becomes: what next?

“How can we fertilize our own experience so that our future becomes sustainable?”

How do we take care of ourselves so that we can continue to sustainably show up for our communities?

For me, that looks like:

• Saying no a lot more often. I am quick to raise my hand for things, without thinking about the true cost associated with it. I need to carefully tend my own resources with an eye to sustainability.

• Rest. I often get frustrated when I want to just nap or read or watch something of no substance, but those activities replenish me.

• Spend my time with folks that uplift me, rather than drain me. Everyone’s going through it and certainly, I want to be helpful to people I care about, but I can’t continue to have folks suck me dry with their unmanaged drama.

“What does fertilizing your future look like? How will you tend to your garden of self in 2022?”

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

From the Kitchen

I love a biscuit. Flaky, buttery, warm from the oven… there’s nothing better than a fresh biscuit. My partner though is gluten-free, and that makes biscuiting rather tricky. Until I discovered this amazing, one-bowl recipe from Zen Belly! The biscuits are denser than a wheat flour biscuit, but really delightful as a base for eggs benedict, or even just butter and jam. If you’re gluten-free or paleo, I’d recommend giving these a try. I made some today, and it was a lovely treat!

Paleo biscuit with butter and jam

Rainy Day Biscuits
by Simone Miller of Zen Belly

Yield: 6 large biscuits/12 small biscuits

INGREDIENTS
2 1/2 cups almond flour
3/4 cup arrowroot flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons cold butter (frozen if possible)
2 tablespoons honey
2 eggs

Ready to go into the oven!

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk to combine the almond flour, arrowroot, salt and baking soda. 

3. Cut the butter into 4-5 pieces and cut into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter or 2 knives. You’ll want the result to look like coarse crumbs, no larger than pea sized. (Kelly’s tip: I freeze the butter, then grate it with a box grater. It’s fun and easy, and I get great results.)

4. In a small bowl, whisk together the honey and eggs.

5. Gently mix into the dry ingredients, but try not to over mix. You want it just to come together.

6. Drop the batter onto your prepared sheet with a large spoon. It helps to dampen your hands to shape them a bit- the dough is sticky. 

7. Bake for about 15 minutes, until golden brown and done in the center.

Yum!

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Raised planters with drip irrigation (black tubes)

In the Garden

It’s been a pretty dry couple of weeks, and I was just thinking about turning on my drip irrigation again. If you don’t have drip irrigation installed yet, it’s a pretty straightforward thing to do and it has many benefits:

1. You save water — drip irrigation uses lots less water than sprinklers or watering with a hose. It also prevents evaporation. You can save 30-50% water using drip irrigation over conventional watering systems.

2. Much more focused watering — since drip irrigation aims water at the roots, your plants get a longer, more concentrated watering time. The water goes where it needs to go, without getting on leaves (risk of burning in the sun, or getting a fungal disease) or around the plant (more risk of weeds taking water, not your plant).

3. Very adaptable — more conventional systems are hard to move around. Drip irrigation can be moved easily and customized to whatever plant system you’ve got.

According to this guide from Green Thumb Nursery, there are a couple types of drip irrigation components:

• Porous Soaker Hose: these are made from recycled car tires, and are great because all the water goes right into the soil. They’re especially suited to plant beds and rows of shrubs.

• Raindrip Drip System: “The beauty of the Raindrip Drip System is that you just have to set it up and forget it. You simply attach the timer to the faucet, connect the supply line, lay it around your garden, and let the automated system do the rest. It distributes water more efficiently than traditional watering and saves water, time, and money. It is a great method to use to water your plants during a drought, and when there are watering restrictions.”

• Micro-sprinklers: these can mist or be run to specific plants, and they use much less water than conventional sprinklers.

Main line hose (black), with drip hose (brown)

You can get drip irrigation systems at all major home improvement stores. My system is from Dripworks and I really recommend them — it was an easy setup and has been very straightforward to maintain over the years.

Happy dripping!

by Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

From the Kitchen

Something I’ve been thinking about this week is about how rude New Year’s resolutions are. After the indulgence and coziness of December, the expectation that we’ll all just jump into goal-setting and capitalistic productivity just seems like a vast disconnect. No disrespect if that’s your vibe, but it’s always just seemed so weird to me that we’ve collectively decided, somewhat arbitrarily, that January is the time to optimize for our best selves.

It’s winter. Winter is a time for hibernation, for rest, for nestling ourselves in blanket forts with good books. One of my favorite writers, Helena Fitzgerald of Griefbacon, writes:

Winter … offers permission to turn away, to nest, to build forts and climb into the imagined worlds within them.

In winter I remember all the movies I always mean to get around to watching. It’s a good time for sitting down with multi-part epics and three-hour grand undertakings. I make up little thematic film festivals in my own home and drown the day in them. It’s easier to focus on a screen or a page indoors when outdoors is a cold, blank void. The sense of waiting that winter offers is sometimes a comfort. This is a time to plant and plan and not yet expect anything from the frozen ground. Here, work and love can be interior and unseen, burrowing through a long night, keeping warm and making plans for when springtime comes. Winter is comforting in a perverse way, but it’s still comforting all the same, huddled up in small spaces, making blanket forts and cooking a spicy heavy stew so that the house smells like an embrace, and then watching all the Matrix movies in one day without even feeling a little bit guilty. 

Instead of hopping right back into an exercise routine, a diet, or a bunch of habits I’ll probably leave behind by March, I’m going to embrace the concept of Gentle January.

I’ve seen this term around Instagram. It’s best encapsulated by this post:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Karlee Sisler Flores (@oliveandartisan)

My own Gentle January project is making toast. Toast is my coziest food - when I’m sick or sad, I reach for toast. But to make it interesting, I’ve been exploring toppings. As it turns out, toast is the perfect vehicle for pretty much anything! (Open secret: it’s basically an open-faced sandwich.)

Here are some of the toasts I’ve made during Gentle January:

From left to right, in rows, from the top:
1. Boursin garlic & herb cheese spread, homemade pickled red onions, manzanita olives, skipjack tuna
2. Cream cheese, roasted red peppers from a jar, crispy chickpeas
3. Cucumber, cream cheese, Trader Joe’s “Everything But the Bagel” seasoning
4. NuttZo nut butter, raspberries, hemp hearts
5. Goat cheese, beluga lentils, chives
6. Avocado, homemade pickled red onions, crispy chickpeas
7. Boursin garlic & herb cheese spread, homemade pickled carrots, fresh dill
8. Cream cheese, Fig & Apple tart cherry & white tea preserves
9. NuttZo nut butter, banana, shaved chocolate

There are endless variations, and it’s a pretty low barrier to entry to try this. You probably have a bunch of things on-hand to try. So if you’re looking for a snack or easy meal, try toast. Also, keep your twinkle lights up for January, if you haven’t taken them down already. Why not?

Have a great Gentle January everyone!

In Our Community

For those of you new to the blog, Planting Justice is our sister organization.

• They’re a 501(c)3 non-profit benefiting local Bay area communities

• They have local, organic nursery with rare and heirloom varieties

• Programs include food justice education, holistic re-entry from prison, permaculture landscaping team, urban farms and training centers

• They provide living-wage jobs for formerly incarcerated people

They’ll have an organic plant nursery at the site, as well as a commercial kitchen that will sell jams, jellies, and other products sourced from fruit from their orchard.

Image courtesy of Planting Justice

Wrapping up 2021 and moving into 2022, they’ve got a lot going on! (All excerpts from the Planting Justice Newsletter, which you can sign up for on their site.)

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Expanding to Sacramento

We're moving into The Old City Nursery!

The old city nursery building

Our newest project will revitalize a long-vacant City-owned property by transforming it into a nationally significant center for urban agricultural training, entrepreneurship, multi-faceted bio-diversity, youth mentorship and education.

In addition to housing a Planting Justice plant nursery that features dense and climate-resilient plants, we'll be establishing mentorship and urban agricultural programs led by community partners Three Sisters Gardens and Yisrael Family Farm at the 5-acre former City Tree Nursery in Sacramento. 

Our site plans include roughly 1.2 acres of outdoor field production, 7,000 sq ft of indoor greenhouse production, and more than ¼ acre of nursery retail. We'll be using the space to sell products produced on site as well as products made by local crafts-makers and artisans utilizing natural and nontoxic materials, such as Sacramento-made soaps, essential oils, jam, and honey.

We'll also be creating a beautiful 1-acre production farm growing nutrient dense, medicinal vegetables and herbs. Produce will be distributed not only to restaurants and CSA members paying full price, but also to low-income elders, adults, and youth for free/sliding scale.

We're super excited to see this dream project come true! Our dear Victor was instrumental in bringing PJ to Sacramento, finding the perfect site and pushing through to make it happen. We're honored to open this site in his honor and to play a hand in training a generation of Sacramento community farmers.

Image courtesy of Planting Justice

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Under Construction: Planting Justice Aquaponics Farm
How do you grow healthy food where there is no healthy soil to plant in?

Earlier this year we closed escrow on a 3 acre piece of land in East Oakland that will help us answer that exact question. Just a few doors down from our nursery at 319 105th Avenue, once opened, the aquaponics farm will produce over 200,000 lbs of fresh, organic produce per year. All grown using aquaponics technology!

Image collage courtesy of Planting Justice

top: Gordon (l) & Jon (r) clearing away leftover materials, bottom left: Otis and Yenni working together like Jordan and Pippen, bottom right: nursery team getting it done!

We're taking the site of a historical plant nursery and turning it into a new food production site for local communities, starting in East Oakland! Our team has been hard at work for MONTHS, tearing down old structures and making way for the new! We plan to open in 2022. This will be the first site of its kind and we hope it will set the foundation for many more to come.

Community News

Want to make a positive impact this holiday season? Have you done well with investments this year? Have inherited wealth? Have a fossil fuel stock you'd love to unload in a way it will make a positive difference? Consider donating to our project to bring a pay-as-you-can community cafe + organic plant nursery to El Sobrante!

We'll have community yoga, movie nights, live music, plus great coffee, food, and a marketplace devoted to local artisans. Donate below or get in touch with us at info@the-good-table.org. All donations are tax-deductible.