A Christmas present from Nicole’s sister!

The kids were getting hungry and since Nicole and I have a a lot of free time sans jobs, I opted to try a recipe for Raw Food Pizza from a new cookbook that Nicole got.

Well, let me tell you Lisa Mann, the world is not going raw if we have anything to say about it! To make the crust you’re supposed to sprout the wheat grains. Ok, cool I’ll sprout some wheat grain, it’s kind of fun anyways. So a day later I’ve got my sprouted grain and I’m set to go. What’s next? Oh, just put a cup of flax seed, some veggies, re-hydrated sun dried tomatoes and the grain in a food processor, shape the dough and dehydrate it for 24 hours!

So we don’t have a food processor. We have an off brand magic bullet called the desert cactus! Well, we had an off brand magic bullet. The spinning piece that turned the blade was made of rubber and this raw food crust did it in. Melted the rubber and launched The Tandooris back into the stone age of kitchen utensils: A Knife and some elbow grease.

Day Two: The camp is exhausted but we press on because we’ve gotten this far and can’t turn back now. Above you’ll see a nearly finished raw pizza crust that did fill the house with a pleasant smell and tasted pretty good. Time for the toppings.

Tomato Sauce:

“Cheese” Topping:

A few olives go on top and we’ve got a pizza. 2 days later and change we’ve got a pizza.

I guess it looks convincing, but soooooo not worth it. It called for red bell peppers, but there was already too much imported food in this recipe that The Tandooris just couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

Raw foodists, we apologize and appreciate your fervor. You just use too many exotic, unseasonal, imported foods and consume so much energy with your specialized kitchen equipment. What’s more you people live on nuts and that’s nuts! 

We put the remaining sprouted wheat into a bread dough and I can say that fresh baked bread never smelled better!

happy holidays, The Tandooris

The Tandooris have done it again! Picked up and moved on, the wind in our sails our only guidance.

The story of 229 Amber Street is simple and is as follows: The Tandooris visit Pittsburgh in the fall of 2010, as suggested by Max and Katherine of Backbone Food Farm (Backbone Food Farm Blogs #1 - #3). The Tandooris decide to move to Pittsburgh during the summer, since returning to Reid’s in 2012 is not happening.

This leads to a trip, checking out an apartment in East Liberty. The twist is that 229 Amber Street is not the apartment we came to look at… no… Zeke’s Coffee of Baltimore started a flagship business in East Liberty and Nicole wanted a cup of coffee there. Faster then getting an espresso at Starbucks we’d met Bethany, learned she was moving out in December from her downtown apartment, and set up to see the place that night.

So, 229 Amber Street, brought to you by coffee I suppose.

A cozy little 2 bedroom apartment in East Liberty. One could say The Tandooris are good at starting a clean slate, but we’re thinking this one might stick. At least for the years lease!

Happy spring!! It sure feels like spring in Biglerville today…as in it’s been raining for three days straight.  Not fun.

Fiddle, on the other hand, thinks it’s really fun.

Spring also means lots of babies though.  Baby bunnies and chicks!!!

The Tandooris have had some early mornings lately.  Most farmers markets opened the first week of May.  We go to the ones in Northern Virginia for Reid’s, which means leaving the orchard at 4:30 am.  Except the getting up early thing, it’s kind of fun.

What else have the Tandooris been up to, you might ask??

More boozing…(thats meade and dandylion wine)

Some music…though we need to work on getting a gig.

Plants, lots of plants…

Oh and riding!! Our neighbors have horses…

So untill next time, Happy Spring!

valrie asked: Hi!

My boyfriend and I are planning a trip from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon this summer from the end of May to the end of August. We're going to be riding on a tandem bicycle. :)

We read your posts, and you seem like really cool people- We were wondering whether there is any way we might be able to contact Peggy and John, who you mentioned in one of your post. We thought it was absolutely awesome that they did the same trip we were planning!

On another, unrelated note: Are you Couchsurfing?

Thanks so much!

-Valerie & David

Hopefully you didn’t send your message too long ago!

http://www.warmshowers.org/user/4152

That’s their profile page on warmshowers.org

You might not be able to view it if you’re not a member, but you should sign up if you’re not

That site was invaluable during our tour!

Let me know if you get a hold of them.

Here’s my email too, which I check much more frequently.

evancharlesdiamond@gmail.com

I guess you guys are gearing up to leave, exciting!

Thanks for reading our blog

It’s been awhile, eh. Where were The Tandooris?!? Well let’s play catch-up.

The last you heard from us, things were going swimmingly in Texas I believe. Above are pictured Marion and August (Now engaged (/married?)) who came to Sandholler Farm after Austin and Keely left. We really enjoyed there company and spent a lot of time playing cards, making food and having laughs with them.

Our good friend Stephanie even drove all the way from Westminster, MD just to stay three nights with us in Austin! While she was there, Fiddle showed her his favorite dog park and we stayed in the hostel located just down the river from the city center. It’s a really pretty hostel, but we were there on a rainy night unfortunately.

Then BAM!

That’s not Texas you’re probably saying!

Nope, the climate hasn’t changed that much just yet. We decided, rather suddenly, to leave Texas a couple days after Stephanie left to drive home. It was quite dramatic at the time, but the short hand is that we weren’t getting along with the owners of Sandholler Farm and rather then stay and dwell or cause awkwardness, we left!

We visited our friend Charis in Asheville, NC on the way back to Maryland.

We met her new BF and stayed two nights just relaxing and maybe venting our frustrations a little bit…

She took us out to a nice bar with some funky music playing curteousy of a good DJ. There were lots of people dancing and felt nice to be surorunded by familiar faces again.

Back home in Maryland we gathered ourselves back together and bummed around doing any odd jobs we could piece together. We had a gig lined up with an awesome orchard in Pennsylvania, but it was only February and we weren’t to start until around April.

Dave Reid (The owner of the orchard and main farmer) ended up deciding to take us on part time in March it turned out though, so The Tandooris found a new home in Biglerville, PA. A farmhouse to be exact and a mess of a house to be even more specific. But we did what we do best and made teh place awesome as all get out.

Here are our new farm cats, who still have yet to embrace the outdoors…

On the left is Foxfire and the right is Cat Stevens.

It’s nice still having some free time, because in March we’ll be getting going on the growing season work will full tilt at that point. We’ve been expanding our repertoir of homesteading trades and here are pictures of beer-making!

Farming is tiring work, but we’re loving it and happy to be in a more comfortable situation.

Till next time, healthy living from the apple belt of Pennsylvania.

Nicole on the pedestrian/ bicycle bridge in Austin.

Nicole vs. Willie-Mae. That’s the farm donkey and we trespassed on her grazing area by accident!

The Curious Chicken