The Foodist: Zingy Peas and Great Northern Bean Bowl
This soup is a delightful, tasty, and filling surprise. It is full of nutrients and flavor, and the tile is right on with the zing! supplied with fresh peas, ginger, and lemon. The leeks, garlic, miso, and butter beans create a rich, crunchy, and flavorful broth that makes for a delicious and luxurious mouthfeel.
The Foodist: Mezzacello Tortilla, Egg, Chives, Cheese, and Salsa Frittata
This was a fun experiment in sustainability and frugality! For $1.60 (including electricity to run the oven for 15 minutes, I made this delicious frittata this morning. It is very tasty and feeds a lot of people.
The Foodist: Oatmeal With Blueberry, Nutmeg, and Cinnamon Compote
Wake up to a yummy morning with this simple oatmeal, blueberry, and cinnamon baked compote. The combination of hearty oats and baked sachets of compote filling is a home run. The sachets can be baked ahead of time and frozen until needed.
The Foodist: Mezzacello Sausage and CheeseTortellini Soup
On cold windy winter nights we love to experiment with old standards in new ways. Rick merged the sausage balls from his version of wedding soup with a version of cheese tortellini soup. What’s more is that this recipe is comprised of 70% leftover veggies from other meals and sealed vegetables harvested last summer. Leftovers after this go to the rabbits.
A Machine for Life and a Molecule Meet on a Farm
On LinkedIn today, I shared a post about how Mezzacello Urban Farm is a machine for life. I went on to elaborate that the potager gardens looked like a Chlorophyll molecule. Here, I have superimposed a diagram of the atom over the potager, through the pond, embracing the biodome and the Narnia outdoor lab, and ending up at the mouth of the pollinator garden. This is the story of how A Machine for Life and a Molecule Meet on a Farm.
The Foodist: Sustainable Spare Fruits and Veggies Smoothy
This is a secondary recipe from Rick’s Sausage and Cheese Tortellini Soup. The beauty of this is that it uses just five ingredients, a strainer, a blender, some epsom salt, drywall dust, and niacin tablets and Voila! Freeze the leftover ground tailings mix in the salt, gypsum, and niacin and freeze them into cubes. Then you have rabbit treats for the Rabbits. ZERO Waste and a very healthy drink.
The Sustainability Tax
Sustainability is not cheap or easy. It requires innovation, commitment, passion and sacrifice. That last one is what I call the Sustainability Tax. We paid it and are willing to teach or consult.
Mezzacello Sustainable Infrastructure Models
This is Mezzacello Urban Farm’s love letter to sustainability. This map is blank because we build our infrastructure atop these ecologies. In this blog we will be looking at the ecologies and advanced systems that all blend together to make Mezzacello Urban Farm systemically and ecologically sustainable.
Environmental and Climate Justice Outreach at Pickerington North HS
Today I was able to visit with Mr. Philpott’s AP Biology and Environmental Science classes and the Roots Environmental Club. We reviewed the way we can use environmental testing tools to conduct a survey of their school. It was chilly, but the data was hot!
The Mezzacello MENTERNS Tetrahedron of Character
This week is session two of my training regimen for the 2025 Mezzacello Urban Farm MENTERNS program. The MenTern (Mentor + Intern) program is a training camp that teaches young students innovative ways to build character, confidence, and mastery of their actions, intentions, and impacts. This is one tool I use to achieve that.
Language and the Power of Reframing
This lesson started out as a lesson in learning how to look at data and systems from new perspectives and turned into a mad lib of data synthesis. This was actually a great deal of fun and it is a new tool I will be using with students. The game is called “Coin Purse” for maximum absurdity and permission to be creative with language and the power of reframing.
Sustainability In Nature
In this class we gave each DNA strand (table) a beneficial mutation that would benefit the entire species (class). But one table’s mutation was bad for the other. The challenge was to optimize and use reason and democracy to decide what represented optimal sustainability in nature.
Recycle, Reuse, Reduce In Action
We worked today on a design challenge to encourage kids working with animals to be more aware of the necessity for hand washing, cleaning gloves, and being aware of potential pathogen vectors. Eight teams worked over four periods to design a solution that would help us all be better prepared and protected as we continue to explore sustainability and livestock. See what happened when kids put Recycle, Reuse, Reduce in Action.
The Rules For Engagement
This is a hybrid blogpost and slide entry for my proposed roundtable on my “Sustainability in Nature” class at Metro Schools this January. I have nine days to teach about sustainability, science, technology, engineering, math, farming, economics, discipline, and computer science. No big deal! This is the Rules for Engagement.
Did Dinosaurs Crow?
Today I brought in my rooster from Mezzacello Urban Farm as part of my sustainability in nature class at Metro Schools this week. To say they were mesmerized is an understatement. The look on their faces when that rooster crowed inside its cage - out of sight - was priceless. The kids had so many good questions and created some GREAT ideas for inventions that will make rooster-saurus safer!
Engineered Feed and Sustainability
This is a blog about molecular nutrition and biological markers for different species of animals. Students were tasked to research what the nutritional footprint of each species required and then pull different grasses, grains, fruits, and liquids. Then they built a matrix that could be dehydrated and stored for use later. This is engineered feed and sustainability.
DNA and the Internet
This is a blogpost of a presentation I gave to a group of middle school kids about the ways that DNA, data, information theory, and the internet are related. This was a surprising one!
My Friend, Gregor Mendel
I brought in three rabbits to Metro School today. The plan is to discuss genetics and epigenetics with students in the Sustainability in Nature program. We discussed how we imagined Greg Mendel discovered how the pea flowers could pass on color instructions via some mysterious mechanism.
Don’t Be Afraid, It’s a Chicken!
I brought in a chicken to discuss how animals and ecologies interact at Mezzacello Urban Farm. I brought in chicken #23 so they could get used to holding an animal and gaining confidence and competence in holding animals. Don’t be afraid, It’s a chicken!
The Foodist: Blueberry, Nutmeg, Cinnamon Fruit Sachets
In this recipe we decided to reframe the classic blueberry galette recipe to something far more versatile. Rick made a filling for an extra galette that wasn’t used. Rather than feed it to the chickens, I decided to package it into The Foodist: Blueberry, Nutmeg, Cinnamon Fruit Sachets. Delight!