Author Archives: xiaoqing

Smorgasburg Reaction Blog –Xiaoqing Wu

1 Reply

          On October 29th, I went to the Smorgasburg food market located at 90 Kent Ave, Brooklyn. It was a sunny day, and I felt very excited because there were about 100 vendors selling their food there. It was a good place for friends gathering.

I chose the “Ramen Burger” as my first meal, because I was curious about how it tasted like. I saw there were many people waiting there, and it seemed they were all interested in this creative burger. I spent twenty minutes to get my ramen burger. And, the burger costed ten dollars for each. I saw the workers cooked the ramen and beef separately. Actually, the ramen was already cooked in a little square size, and then the workers just fried the ramen until it became a little crispy on both side.  Once the ramen and the beef were done, they would put into two separate tray. Then, they put the ramen and beef together. They offered original flavor and cheese flavor. And I decided to try the cheese flavor burger with ramen, ground beef, cheese, green onion and a little arugula. When I taste the burger, I felt nothing special and it just a burger with a sweet soy sauce on it. However, the ramen was not enough crispy on both side and the ground beef was dry. Thus, I wasn’t enjoyed my first meal.

The second dishes I tried was “Mofongo”, which was a Puerto Rican dish. I usually eat Asian food in my daily, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai food, but I never tried this special food before. So, I was very attracted by this Puerto Rican dish. This vendor offered two different kind of mofongo, one with fried pork on the top, and the another one with some little piece of stew beef on the top. I only could choose the stew beef one, because they already sold out the fried pork one. And, this dish costed me ten dollars. This Mofongo was made with plantain, garlic, little piece of stew beef, a soup made with special spices. It was very interesting to try a dish which was made by banana. I sipped the soup first, but it tastes a little bit salty. Then, I ate from bottom through the top. The bottom was mofongo, which mixed the fried plantain and garlic together, and it tasted very soft and full of garlicky. The stew beef was very yummy, and it tasted a little bit tender and sweet. Comparing to my first meal, I liked my second meal much more.

At that day, I spent twenty dollars on these two dishes. The ramen burger was not as good as many people said and it was not worth for ten dollars, because it was smaller than the regular burger size, and the quality of the beef was tasted the same as the normal ground beef. Fortunately, the Mofongo surprised me a lot. You would be full, if you finish the whole mofongo. Because the mofongo was made with banana, and banana had enough nutrition to comfort your stomach. In conclusion, it was a wonderful experience for me to explore different culture food in Smorgasburg.

img_5483img_5477img_5480img_5484img_5496

Field Trip Blog – Xiaoqing Wu

1 Reply

On October 17th, Professor Krondl brought us to Brooklyn Grange. It was a place has established rooftop farming since 2010. The Brooklyn Grange rooftop farming plants many kind of organic vegetables, such as, carrots, lettuces, tomatoes, etc. They have very good soil from Pennsylvania, and they recycle all the dead plants as natural fertilizers. They also have a wonderful automatic watering system to water plants. And, those are the reason why Brooklyn Grange can produce about 50,000 lbs of vegetables each year. Throughout the trip, I learnt how they run their farming in an environmental-friendly way.

However, this sort of rooftop farming is very different from the conventional farming. First, the size of this rooftop faming is much smaller than the conventional farming, which their output must less than the conventional farming. According to the article from the New York Time, Supersize, “Tanimura & Antle produced 740,000 tons of produce in 2015.”  Obviously, it is a huge different output between Tanimura & Antle and Brooklyn Grange.  Furthermore, this sort of rooftop farming is more focusing on organic planting. However, some big conventional farming like Tanimura & Antle are still using pesticides and chemical fertilizers to plant their foods healthier.

In United State, the sustainability of agriculture is decreasing, because president Obama didn’t release any new valuable acts to help the industry grow, and he didn’t fulfill his promise on further developing modern agriculture. In addition, the sustainability of agriculture is effected by the oligopolies, food concern, and climate. To solve these problems, the U.S government should help the small farming to extend their producing size which to provide low-interested loan for the small farming business. Furthermore, the food producer should use less pesticides and chemical fertilizers to keep their food safe. Reducing pollution can improve global warming. So, we should work together to reduce environmental pollution from our dairy use.