Author Archives: Allison Coffin

About Allison Coffin

Mother, runner, fighter, home cook, gardener, urban planner, and all around crazy lady.
Jun1

Wilted Rainbow Chard and Lentils

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Wilted Rainbow Chard and Lentils

I served this up as is, but you could serve it over brown rice or quinoa or with a side of crusty bread for a more substantial meal.

Last night I made our first meal from the CSA produce. The kids, who are not fans of chard, were over and a friend’s house, and since rainbow chard looked like it wasn’t going to last long in the fridge anyway, I decided to use it first. It was already looking a wee bit wilted, so using it raw seemed unappetizing. I decided to wilt it the rest of the way and serve it up with lentils. If you like fair, a little goat’s cheese or feta would be great mixed in here, but it’s not necessary.

Wilted Rainbow Chard and Lentils
serves 2-4

  • 1/2 cup dried green lentils, cooked in boiling water until soft but not mushy, drained, and rinsed with cold water
  • 1 big bunch chard, washed and coarsely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 cup or so sliced, quartered red onion
  • 1 pint grape tomatoes
  • 1 tsp coconut oil (or other oil of your choice)
  • 1/4 cup white wine
  • juice of 1 lemon
  1. Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add garlic, and stir fry for a few seconds until fragrant. Add red onion and stir fry for another minute or so.
  2. Add tomatoes, and cook, stirring frequently, just until tomatoes start to split.
  3. Add wine, and once it starts to boil, add in chard, tossing with hot veggies and wine until just wilted.
  4. Stir in lentils and lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.
May31

Book Review–The Nature Principle by Richard Louv

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Book Review–The Nature Principle by Richard Louv

A male rose-breasted grosbeak visits our new bird feeder, bringing a bit of wonder into our small suburban yard.

I just finished reading The Nature Principle by Richard Louv, a follow up to his book, The Last Child in the Woods. Louv writes about our growing disconnect with the natural world and how restoring that connection benefits our health, both physical and mental, our families, and our communities. I find his work inspirational and very, very accurate. We humans forget that we are part of nature to our own detriment.

A few years ago, I accompanied my son on a Cub Scout campout when my husband was too ill to go. I hadn’t been camping in decades, and my own connection with the woods had long ago been discarded. I didn’t really want to do. I went into the weekend anxious, expecting to be uncomfortable, cold, and maybe even a little bit bored. I was uncomfortable (the scouts popped my air bed using it as a trampoline), and I was cold despite sleeping in two layers, gloves, and a ski cap, but I was never even a little bored. Rather, I was more relaxed and more genuinely myself than I had been in a decade. I learned that weekend that I NEED to camp, and it surprised me.

We humans tend to forget that we didn’t evolve in air-conditioned homes, lounging on upholstered furniture and watching tv. We are wired for woodlands and prairies, rivers and lakes, mountains and deserts. Our minds and bodies need to hear birdsong, feel breezes, and smell the rich soil of the forest floor. I experienced this connection on that weekend away, and since then I’ve chased the nature high in a number of ways, including hiking in the mountains of upstate New York, trekking through the dunes of Cape Cod, and bird watching in the jungles of Costa Rica.

The central point of The Nature Principle, though, is that I should not need to travel to the ends of the world to get my fix. I can find nature in my daily life here in suburban New Jersey if I take the time to look. The recent addition of bird feeders to our yard is a good start, and the whole family is working to learn to identify the daily visitors to our home. We even have several species nesting in our landscaping, and I have taken to getting my daily dose of birdsong by doing my morning reading out on my porch, sitting in the hammock beneath the house wrens’ nests.

Beyond my own yard, my community has many opportunities to get in touch with nature. There is a huge park with more than 4 miles of running paths a short walk from my home, and it is home to a growing herd of deer, foxes, and coyotes as well as smaller mammals, frogs, turtles, snakes and birds. I usually run there with my headphones on for my training, but taking them off for some of my runs would allow me to have a deeper experience there. There is a county park nearby as well, where the paths aren’t paved and the woods are just slightly more wild. This might be a good spot to take my children on weekly hikes.

Even further out, there is a network of county, state, and national parks that would offer a variety of places to hike, fish, and explore. Perhaps I can make a point of taking my family on a monthly trip to explore a new place, hike a trail they’ve never seen before, and fish a spot they’ve never seen (yes, we fish, but it’s all catch and release). Maybe I’ll even invite other families in our community to join us, forming a little family nature club much like the ones described in the book. Anyone interested in joining in?

May30

Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 1

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Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 1

My family joined a CSA several years ago. A CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a program where you buy a share of a farm’s produce at the start of the season and then get boxes of goodies (a share of the harvest) throughout the season. If the farm has a good season, so do you; but if the farm has a bad season, so do you. I love the idea of supporting a local farm this way, but our first attempt didn’t work out. The program had started out strong, with a month of solid produce, beautiful cut flowers, and some fun family time visiting and working on the farm. We tried a lot of veggies that we had never heard of before and learned a bit about how a farm operates. But then the couple running the place ran out of steam and stopped caring for their fields entirely. By August, our weekly box of treasures was replaced with a wave of the hand and an invitation to go take whatever we could find in the field among the weeds and tomatoes rotting on the vine. This was not how a CSA should function.

Despite this previous negative experience, I remained hopeful that we would someday find a more professional farm that ran a CSA program with pickups close enough to home to work. Then a few months ago my local health food store, Dean’s, announced that they were partnering with Honey Brook Organic Farm to provide CSA pickup and their store. This was an announcement I had been hoping to hear for years, so I jumped on it, sending in an application that very day.

Today I picked up my first box, and it is beautiful:

Image

In there we have rainbow chard, spinach, kale, red leaf lettuce, garlic scapes, leeks, and Hakurei turnips. I’m not sure what those last ones are about yet, but the rest I’ve worked with before and look forward to playing with this week. As I cook these goodies up this week, I’ll share the results here! So far I’m thinking about a lentil soup with the turnips and leeks, a raw salad with the chard, and a pesto with the scapes.

To find a CSA near you, visit Local Harvest.

May11

Down the Rabbit Hole, Again

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Down the Rabbit Hole, Again

Dear Reader,

I have been a very bad blogger in the last several months. I hope you will forgive me. I should have been sharing what I’ve been up to since my last post in March, but I didn’t. I have no excuse. I’m sorry.

In March, my cousin invited me to run another half marathon in May. That left me just 2 months to take my injured knee and get it fit for a grueling 13.1 miles. Most of my free time went to training. I have not brewed a single batch of beer. I have eaten too much take out. My home is a mess. But last Sunday, I ran the Long Branch Half Marathon with a finish time of 2:05:21, which is not too bad considering that I am still dealing with lingering knee issues. Here I am just a quarter-mile from the finish line, waving to my family through the pain:

Boy, did I hurt at this point. But a little knee pain wasn’t going to stop me from going that last .25 miles.

My next project here will be to chronicle training for my next half-marathon. I have registered to run the Rock N Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon on September 16—–with Thing 1. She had asked me last year after I finished the race if she could run it this year with me. In my post-race delirium I may have said not only yes, but also agreed to run it in tutus. I don’t remember this, but tutus it shall be.

Thing 1 will be turning 12 shortly, which is the minimum age to participate in that event. She has been running, with a maximum distance of 3 miles, but there is a long way between 3 and 13. I don’t know if she fully understands what she has asked to do. We will be training together over the summer and eating a vegan diet for athletes. Training started this week, with a trip to the running store for new kicks and a two 1-mile runs. This weekend, we’ll start the long-runs at 3 miles and just build them up gradually from there.

I am considering having her write her thoughts on the process as we go along and post them here, turning this from a one-woman barely updated blog into a mother-daughter deal. Does that sound good to you guys and gals?

 

Mar3

From SHEI Magazine–Ethical or Cheap? The Problem with Forever 21 and Modern Shopping

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From SHEI Magazine–Ethical or Cheap? The Problem with Forever 21 and Modern Shopping

Thing 1 wants a new skirt. Specifically, she wants a black fitted stretchy skirt sold at Forever 21, so while we were at the mall today picking up some foundation that I needed, I let her take me into the nearby Forever 21 store to show it to me.

They had it. The price was only $8.50, which sent up a red flag rather than making me whip out my wallet. How can a store produce a quality product and pay its workers a fair wage for a garment that is priced so low? The answer is simple–they can’t, so they don’t. They produce practically disposable trendy garments at rock bottom prices by stealing designs and treating their workers poorly, as summed up nicely here:

SHEI Magazine » Ethical or Cheap? The Problem with Forever 21 and Modern Shopping.

But here is where my problem lies.  Anthropologie and Diane von Furstenberg are way over my budget, as they are for many college students.  And even if I had endless money, I wouldn’t necessarily abandon cheap knockoffs for high-end designers, as many of the companies suing Forever 21 have themselves violated numerous labor standards and intellectual property rights.  Furthermore, while buying from green and fair trade companies is certainly the ideal, it’s often not the most convenient option, price or location-wise (many times these companies are solely online, adding in shipping costs, sizing uncertainties, etc.).  And although I am a diehard vintage fan myself, I understand that thrift stores are hit-or-miss for many people (only one item of everything means it either fits or it doesn’t).

So what is an ethical consumer to do? I find myself wondering if buying a cheap knock off made by workers who are virtually slaves any worse than buying a department store brand manufactured by workers who are virtually slaves. It’s not like there is a clear good option, where good design meets sweatshop-free manufacture at a price a mere mortal can afford. Fair Trade is not a concept that has been adopted by the fashion industry. The best I can do is make mindful purchases of items that will at least last, avoiding swiftly ending trends, and trying to do with quality over quantity.

That is a hard for an 11-year old girl to absorb, when what she really wants is to wear the same trendy skirt that many of her friends are wearing this month. We talked about it a little and left the store without the skirt, but her desire to dress like her friends, most of whom aren’t bothered by the ethical impact of their wardrobes, is still strong. I remember being that age and having the desire to fit in through fashion–when I was in sixth grade I begged and pleaded with my parents for a stupidly expensive pair of Guess jeans that looked like they had been attacked by piranha just so that I would fit in. I feel guilty for not letting her get her $8.50 skirt, and I know that I would feel a different guilty if I had let her get it. I guess that the best I can do is ask her to look into it and make her own decision consciously and carefully, because in the current fashion market that is the best any of us can do.