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A bit on the plum side: Plum pepper chutney
Create a pantry full of summer
Chutney is a staple around here – a complement to sausages, cheese and biscuits, charcuterie, grilled cheese sandwiches, boiled and scotch eggs, poppadoms and curry. The sheer variety of flavours, ingredients and colours is a great incentive to get creative when contemplating what to do with your next wheelbarrow of fruit and vegetables. From spicy to fruity, chunky or smooth – it’s easy to create a pantry full of summer to enjoy all winter.
What to do with mountains of orchard fruit?
Inspired by the more than 40 varieties of chutney being displayed at last week’s Trout and About festival in Stockbridge, Hampshire, we decided it was time to fire up the chutney caldron. As Chance would have it, I harvested (rescued) hundreds of organic orchard fruits from the groaning limbs of trees resident in my daughter’s urban oasis (Cambridge, UK).
After packing the cornucopia into the car, it was transported to The Shire where it sat for 24 hours attracting a steady stream of early wasps. Highly motivated to clear the burgeoning trays before getting stung, we got cracking on destoning the perfectly ripe plums. Before we knew it, we were well on the way to turning the kitchen into a chilli jam fest.
In the end we really did need a caldron as we had amassed a whopping four kilograms of sliced fruit, a bulb of chopped garlic plus a mountain of onions.
Recipe: Plum Pepper Chutney (Jam)
In the beginning there were plums, peaches, apples and apricots. Then onion came along with garlic and mustard seed. Soon the spice crew heard there was to be a gathering and ginger, cinnamon, star anise and cumin appeared. The party had started, but it needed a kick.
Smoky paprika and chilli flake were called in along with their buddies, the sultanas. As the red wine vinegar heated up, and sweet muscovado melted into the scene, the whole place bubbled like a caldron over a low flame. As the evening ticked over and everyone began to chill, the poppadoms appeared. Naturally, they wanted to take a dip.
The spicy bit on the side (of a razor-sharp cheddar)
When the pot finished simmering, we decanted the spiced chutney into an eclectic array of recycled jam and Ball jars. We tasted our first sample of the concoction with a razor-sharp farmhouse cheddar served on bog-standard Jacobs biscuits. Of course we gave it full marks – even as fresh as it was. By Christmas it will be out of this world.
We decanted our chutney into an eclectic collection of jars.
Next up We’ll be trying our hand at a smooth green tomato chutney and bread and butter pickles. Stay tuned.
The beauty of the broadfork
In the first paragraph of the landmark 1943 book Plowman’s Folly, Edward H. Faulkner said, “The truth is that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing.” Nonetheless, 40 years after that publication cracked the foundations of agricultural science, most farmers still plow. Why?
The rational is that soil is tilled to loosen it in order allow oxygen and water to reach the roots. Loose earth enables roots to spread evenly as they grow. However, plowing fields leaves a broken-structured soil lying on top of an undisturbed, compacted layer that is too deep for a plow to reach. The top soil layer – now broken up, can become hard and compacted when it rains. Feet, wheels and trailers can further compact the soil. In its original, untilled state, soil is not compressed – and it stays this way.
What is no-till farming?
At a time when fertile topsoil is being worn away by wind and water at rates that are figured in tons per acre per year, a drastic new soil-conservation measure is certainly in order. No-till farming might more appropriately be called no-till/chemical agriculture. No-till farming is a way of growing crops or pasture from year to year without disturbing the soil through tillage. In conventional tillage, the earth is turned to a depth of 8 to 12 inches with a plow. In no-till farming, planting is done right through the residues of previous plantings and weeds with a device that cuts a slot a few inches wide, followed by equipment that places the seeds and closes the trench.
What is a broadfork?
Broadforks are the perfect tool to help you adopt the no-tillage method in your vegetable patch. No-till farming is a better way to grow crops from year to year without disturbing the soil. If you want to increase the amount of water that infiltrates the soil, increase organic matter retention, and leave more nutrients for your produce, the broadfork is your tool.
The broadfork is a simple yet powerful gardening tool that serves the purpose of efficiently loosening soil without flipping it upside down. The broadfork can trace its origins back to the grelinette, a tool invented in France by André Grelinin the 1960s. The broadfork was Introduced in the U.S. in the early 1990’s by Eliot Coleman, master grower and author of The New Organic Grower.
Here’s how the broadfork promotes healthy soil
Soil is composed of layers that actually accomplish important purposes. Bacteria, fungi and earthworms working below the surface are all actively creating tunnels that give the soil structure. This lively structure develops in different soil depths that have the right moisture and aeration conditions. Turning the soil over using a rototiller or by double-digging disrupts ecology – destroys those benefits.
Maintaining soil structure — and the soil food web it supports — is an important component of successful vegetable production. Using a broadfork you simply lift the soil up a bit without inverting it. The long tines break up any compacted layers below. This allows more air to penetrate and create the right conditions for the bacteria and other soil organisms plants need to take up nutrients. The ecology of the soil is disturbed very little. A final shallow cultivation on the top 3-4 inches is all that’s needed to finish the process. Additionally, working soil with a broadfork will not allow dormant weed seeds hidden in the depth of soil to germinate.
How to use a broadfork
The broadfork is a human-powered tool which requires a minimal effort or energy, relative to the work it produces. It’s a terrific aerobic workout with tremendous benefits.
Working in already loose, but not necessarily prepared soil, the grower stands on the crossbar with his or her full body weight and sinks the tines deep into the bed – about a foot. Then, using the tremendous leverage of the long handlebars, the soil is loosened by working the handles back and forth in a kind of rowing motion. Finally, the broadfork is moved back about a foot, and sunk back into the soil again.
Interested in buying a broadfork? We can help. Contact us.
Think salads are boring? Think again.
Make your summer sizzle with imaginative salad combinations – mix up flavors, and add greens with a twist of fruit and herbs, or seeds and nuts. Hold the mayo, and use healthier options like yogurt.
Sweet, crunchy, bold.
We love salads. Crunchy, soft, zesty, sweet, you name it, we love it. Salads offer so many possibilities for unusual pairings. To kick your summer barbecue off on the right foot, try a hydrating cucumber salad with strawberries, juicy red tomatoes and mint. Drizzle a bit of balsamic vinegar over your strawberries. On the side, a lovely yogurt-based dressing offers a tangy complement.
How about coleslaw?
Not keen on all that mayo? Again, yogurt is a terrific way to reduce the mayo and add some flavor to traditional slaw. Cut up a few pieces of apple, grate carrot, slice up your green cabbage and toss. For contrasting color (and goodness) consider adding a cup of blanched kale. Yes, kale is packed with vitamins, but it can taste a little bitter, especially raw. Blanching or steaming lightly keeps it tender while making it more palatable.
If kale is too radical, then try baby leaf spinach.
We love spinach, although it can be hard to eat in mixed company – something is always falling off the fork. Here’s a tip to making the most of spinach without turning it to mush. Place two cups of baby leaf spinach in a colander. Rinse well. Then pour a kettle’s worth of boiling water over the leaves (with the colander in the sink). It blanches the leaves, but saves the goodness. Mix your greens in with your slaw, add the yogurt with seasoning (a shake of smoky paprika adds flavor without calories). For nutty households, throw some pecans and sunflower seeds on top. Go Popeye.
Mange. Mange. Mange.
Contact us to order fresh ingredients to fuel your culinary creativity.
Fitly’s SmartPlate takes cognitive to heart with Watson IoT
Fitly is a two-time Digital Health award winner with a proven track record for vetted technological innovation. Backed by medical, research, and financial institutions in the U.S. such as Penn Medicine, University City Science Center, and Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Fitly is creating a new category in healthcare aptly called “Culinary Medicine.”
Fitly was first conceived after Anthony Ortiz’s father went through triple bypass surgery. The ordeal proved to be extremely stressful and worrying for all concerned – for his father and the entire family. The realization that such a dangerous condition could have been prevented through simple diet changes inspired Anthony Ortiz, Fitly Founder and CEO, to take action.
Tackling a problem faced by millions of people
Anthony’s family isn’t alone. There are millions of people like Anthony’s father. Individuals who need to lead a healthier lifestyle, lose a few pounds, and manage a dietary condition, but who find current solutions to be time-consuming, frustrating and worst of all – inaccurate. Fitly offers an easy to use solution that can make a lasting impact on millions of lives.
Taking on ‘portion distortion’
Studies show even health-conscious eaters struggle with estimating portion sizes. People underestimate their overall food intake by an average of 30 percent and sometimes as much as 40 percent for some groups, including women and people struggling with obesity. For people working towards fitness and performance goals, the “portion distortion” is made even worse when viewed through the psychological and metabolic effects of exercise and sports training on food intake.
Connected devices are disrupting people from all walks of life in extremely positive ways by allowing them to track and analyze just about any kind of activity. By providing insight to help people make smarter food choices, the Fitly SmartPlate is poised to do the same for nutrition, effectively removing obstacles which could prevent people from changing their lifestyle.
The world’s most intelligent plate
The Fitly team designed and created SmartPlate, the world’s first intelligent nutrition platform that instantly analyzes a user’s entire meal with the highest degree of accuracy. It’s like a wearable, but for food.
Fitly’s patent-pending technology relies on advanced image recognition and weight sensors to identify and weigh everything from single foods to prepared meals within seconds. First, food is identified through a proprietary image recognition system. Second, the load sensors weigh the known food, and then the app sends both the image and weight data to a proprietary cloud for analysis. Finally, nutritional information is relayed back to the user’s mobile device application.
The premium app allows a user to select one of five goal-specific programs (or create a custom plan), pair with the countertop device for precision image recognition, analysis, and tracking of macro and micronutrients, access a database of hundreds of thousands of packaged and restaurant items for tracking on-the-go, and get helpful tips and feedback to stay on track.
The SmartPlate also includes alerts and notifications which can be tailored to remind consumers when to eat, hydrate, and much more.
Taking a cognitive approach to heart
SmartPlate’s secret sauce is hardware assisted artificial intelligence. The team has built the most accurate food classifier on the market, one which has been tested and validated by an independent party. Fitly holds three issued patents (two utility and one design), plus four non-provisional patents-pending. The SmartPlate experience is designed to help the user achieve their health goals much faster.
An entrepreneur’s dream team: Indiegogo, Arrow, and IBM
The Internet of Things involves copious amounts of data. Fitly’s goal is to find patterns and insights into user behavior. The biggest challenge for Fitly is the ability to reach the right conclusions from the tons of available data. This is where Watson IoT and machine learning really come into their own. Fitly leverages IBM’s powerful cloud service to build and test our technology.
By working together with Indiegogo, Fitly was able to successfully raise the necessary capital to bring their innovative solution to market. Arrow has also been instrumental in helping Fitly to take the product from a prototype with limited functions, to the versatile product available today.
What does the future hold?
Passion and a great team are the two things which have sustained and supported the company’s vision. Fitly is working on additional products and will be introducing them to the market shortly. SmartPlate TopView is one product which will be finding its way into the healthcare world very soon.
Get a taste of SmartPlate
Fitly invites users to get a taste of SmartPlate’s industry-leading image recognition by downloading the SmartPlate app for free. While an app alone can never deliver the same precision analysis available by pairing with the data collected by the SmartPlate countertop device, it will make tracking a breeze with one-snap access and predictive searching of the same expansive database of foods. It features photo recognition of 1,000+ foods, text searching of hundreds of thousands more, simple macronutrient tracking, and expert prompts to guide users towards weight management goal.
WaterBot: How to know if your water is safe to drink
How can you tell if your water is safe to drink?
Most Americans worry about their drinking water, with good reason. News reports regularly expose high levels of PFCs, PFASs and other contaminants found around the nation. In 2014, we heard that the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, was discolored with dangerous contamination. Over the next two years, investigations unearthed a scandal and charged nine officials with hiding evidence of contaminants and the resulting spike in lead poisoning among children.
In the aftermath, I served on a project for the Water Quality Association of Wisconsin addressing similar lead concerns. But I realized that our project was only going to check the water once or twice a week. I wanted to go further. While weekly tests can identify slow trends, they might not alert people to the immediate effects of an industrial spill, local system breach or other failure. I thought there had to be a faster way to check water quality. That’s where WaterBot began.
A data revelation
I worked with a partner, Edgar Duarte, to build a small device that monitored the water quality in a home. That’s important, and we developed incredibly accurate monitors.
But then, Edgar had an idea. Looking at the water quality data, he said, “We’re sitting on incredibly powerful information… if we crowdsource it.” He envisioned users anonymously sending their data into a central system that would effectively track water quality across the nation. The system could help catch a crisis by providing real-time analysis and absolute transparency apart from any utility or government body.
That was the moment when we were both inspired by the project—and terrified about the massive quantity of data to be collected.
Remembering the allegations in Flint, we also realized that some people might want to stop this information. Our data needed to be transparent. We needed to crowdsource it to an open source database in the public domain.
That was a revelation for the project.
Connecting the water
Initially, we connected our devices into a Google cloud with a NoSQL framework. We started to see results, like an alert that came in when a waterline’s debris level jumped by 40 percent within minutes—we later found that there was a breach at a nearby construction site. But we needed more scale, more data and more analysis to diagnose problems remotely.
I was at a conference in Reno when I received an alert about the municipal water system in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I knew there was a problem, but I didn’t have enough information to diagnose it. About 20 minutes after the alert, I received a call about the IBM Watson IoT platform. It was the perfect moment.
The Watson IoT platform gave us the power of scale, and our vision for a transparent water quality database was on the horizon. Watson allows us to quickly build a robust, real-time algorithm and update it as needed. To scale up our device production, we connected to the partnership between Indiegogo crowdfunding and Arrow manufacturing.
The people at Indiegogo were a valuable source of support for us. And the community there helped give us validation and confidence about our vision. Just to have that social proof—that validation—made those nights of trying to get everything off the ground seem a little less long.
Clear confidence
Now, we’re about to see this vision become a reality in the next 30 days as these first devices ship. The Open Water Quality Project, owq.org, will stream that data. To keep the data completely secure, we will be using blockchain technology. People often associate blockchain with financial transactions—for us, it helps to ensure that water quality results cannot be intercepted and changed by anyone.
I think blockchain is absolutely critical to the process of restoring trust, particularly in the public sector.
A joint venture between the public sector and the private sector, combining resources with secure transparency, could be a huge step towards restoring some of the trust that’s been eroded.
Ultimately, we want to unify civic and private water quality monitors. We hope to use IBM Smarter Cities technology to assemble citywide grids of civic and private sensors into early warning systems that could forecast changes, generate alerts, locate problems and diagnose causes. It could keep citizens safer and save cities from tearing up roads to find an issue. I believe we can radically alter our approach and help ensure that we can intercept the next incident like the one in Flint.
The groundswell of support that WaterBot has seen has already been so rewarding. It’s exciting to see the genuine feedback from people who are willing to crowdsource data to help provide a safer water-management grid for everyone.
We need to continue to shine more light on this problem. We need greater transparency. We must make sure that the future of our water is clear.
Discover the secret of Dinosaur Island with the Watson IoT Platform
Watch how a life size T-REX springs into life using Watson IoT Platform, Node-RED and IBM Bluemix.
Credits:
Created with images by boristrost - "water glass drip"