First spring semester meeting today! 1/27

Join us in Phillips 119 for our first meeting of the semester! We will be planning out our semester, so come to pitch in some great ideas.

This semester will consist largely of garden planning, honey bees, and a few other exciting things as well!

Pizza Party

Friday evening, April 29th, after a long-awaited, garden-work meeting, the Foodlums will be unwinding with a  

Pizza Party. 

In Foodlums Fashion, the crust will be handmade with ethical, local ingredients and perspective pizza eaters will be asked to bring the toppings.

Things that you might consider bringing for toppings :

Cheese

Your favorite secret and delicious sauce

Vegetables

Eggs

Herbs

Meat

Also bring: Your own plate and silverware

The post-gardening party will go down at Tehya and Erin's house (720 Broadway) after we are done in the garden. From the garden, a bike brigade will mosey on over to the pizza house, singing earth-loving songs and sporting dirt-caked hands. 

If you come to the garden and no one is there, the Pizza Party has started and you should go to 720 Broadway.

Progressive Film Festival Food Fanatics Fun Film Picks

Here are some Foodlum inspired films being shown at the 5th Annual Eau Claire Progressive Film Festival. Check them out and all of the other great films if you get a chance:

Saturday, April 2nd 2011

12:00 P.M: "Tapped" Hibbard 321

"a behind-the-scenes look into the unregulated and unseen world of the bottled water industry, an industry that aims to privatize and sell back the one resource that ought never to become a commodity: our water."

2:30 P.M.: "The End of the Line" Hibbard 321

Exploring the tragic collapse of the cod fishery in Newfoundland in the 1990s, the imminent extinction of the prized blueefin tuna, and the devastation caused by illegal catches and surpassed fishing quotas, this film uncovers the dark ecological story behind our love affair with fish as food."

Monday, April 4th 2011

7:30 P.M.: "Bananas!*" Hibbard 102

"On behalf of twelve Nicaraguan banana workers, he is tackling Dole Food in a ground-breaking legal battle for their use of a banned pesticide that was known by the company to cause sterility"

Homemade Crackers

Hey Foodlums-
Since we were talking about home made crackers a few meetings ago, I ended up making them last week (and brought some to the meeting-- for those who were there).
This is the recipe I used. Super easy and so good to have power over the contents of your crackers!
1 1/4 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 T. sugar (or honey)
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. paprika
4 T. butter
1/4 c. water
1/4 t. vanilla
salt for topping

the recipe says to cut the butter in with the dry ingredients until the lumps of butter are pea-sized and then add the rest of the ingredients.
I ended up making a few batches of crackers and tweaking them a little along the way. For one of my batches I substituted some of the butter with olive oil. I also expriemented with different herbs that I rolled into the dough when it was rolled out to the thinness I wanted. My favorite version was dried rosemary (collected from Chris's Graham St. free clinic garden), although ginger chunks were interesting too!
I just rolled the dough out directly onto a greased cookie sheet and cut the rolled-out dough into small triangle pieces pre-baking. Baked the crackers at 400 degrees. This recipe I followed said to let them bake for 5-10 min.. I didn't time them, just watched them carefully. As soon as some of them start to brown, the rest of them brown really quickly, so watch out lest you have a sheet of burnt crackers. I used a metal spatula to get them off the cookie sheet.
Check out the link in the title for the recipe I used online.
Let me know if someone else tries this recipe and finds new ways to tweak the recipe!
-Briana