Michelle Ott join Tanja and Anni on the Sustainable Living Show to discuss foraging, vegan cooking and preservation. Michelle is a wild forager and nature enthusiast. She holds a degree in health promotion and nutrition, is a professional chef with her business, Simply Naked- a gluten and dairy free bakery, and has authored 9 recipe books focused on allergen friendly, plant based foods.
Topics discussed:
-When and where to forage
-What and when to forage in Tampa Bay
-How to preserve your harvest
-vegan cooking
-edible and medicinal plants/herbs
-Michelle’s bakery – Simply Naked
and more!
To find out more about Michelle, visit her Instagram @michelle_deboraw or on her website www.michelledeboraw.com, and if you’d like to receive a copy of her book “Preserving Your Wild Harvests,” you can email her at [email protected]
“God Moves Furniture”- Denzel Johnson-Green
My friend Taylor calls me from New York
and asks me how Florida’s been lately,
tell me what it’s like again?
checking in on her old Tropicana nanny that raised her,
Well as you know, we have a hot season, which seems to be all the time
and a rainy season that starts when the heat can’t take itself anymore
Right now, it’s the time of year for afternoon thunderstorms
it starts everyday around 5, you hear god rearranging
furniture upstairs, skkkkkrrrrr rooooooooo coooooggghh moving dressers, and beds, scooting couches to see how they look over here and there
thunderclouds rip across the sky like a kid dragging thick socks on a carpet, gathering static and turning the sky a deep cobalt blue grey,
shotgunned through with webs of lightning
and crashing sounds that could only be god
dropping the good china by accident or maybe on purpose.
Ughhhh I miss the afternoon thunderstorms, Taylor says
Haha right? I guess y’all don’t get em up in New York.
That’s crazy to think about. The rains came late this year.
So much so that the trees had less mangoes than usual
and they took longer to ripen
but I saw the clouds gather their strength and herd together,
their migration had come to a surge, and one day coming home from work,
I saw them piled up like a wall in the sky, they stood swinging their tails
mooing or cooing, mosying on the pink pasture of the air, it was June 21st when the grey curtain came, the veil of sweet rain.
Plants grew, mangoes fattened and laughed with nectar, people got a little nicer to one another
and anybody that had some sense would say
“we sure needed that rain”
A hurricane made an appearance at our barbecue but only stayed long enough for a plate of food that nobody offered. Some homes flooded but most folks were okay
Around Christmas comes the cool season.
Winter doesn’t properly exist here, but it gets breezy and crisp enough
to light campfires in backyards. Smoke fills the air,
but also apple cider, peach cider, some people make more
soups and stews, cinnamon brooms make homes smell good for a time, people dust off their light jackets they save for this time of year,
but eventually it warms up again in late April and early May.
Summer seems to come a little earlier every year and stays longer
than is welcomed. Call it whatever makes you happy or don’t,
but we yearn for a few more weeks of cool weather
before everyone goes back inside for the hot season.
Sigh. I miss Florida, Taylor says.
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