Firebreathing Daylily & Violet One-Pot Noodles… With Zoning.

Spring arrives! Daylily shoots, dandelions, speedwell, and violets emerge and enter my meals. Most creasy greens are still low to the ground, so I’ll wait a week before generously picking. As usual, I am thinking on zoning in the city and the country. As I thought things over, I rustled up a quick one-pot meal on the camp stove, as it’s way too hot to start a fire. I use propane very sparingly, preferring to solar cook… but sometimes, you just need to quickly eat.

Firebreathing Daylily & Violet One-Pot Noodles:
In a pot, add a little broth, enough to barely cover your noodles. Scoop in some Amish habanero relish (phew that’s HOT!), some peanut butter, and mix it in well as it heats. Most of you won’t have Amish hot relish on hand, so dash in your favorite super spicy sauce. You’re creating fire broth to cook your food in! Add noodles so they’re just covered, then glugs of ACV and tamari to taste. Add sliced onion, mushrooms, and whatever you foraged - daylily shoots, violet leaves… dash lots of garlic powder (or add garlic, earlier), toss so everything is cooked & coated. Cook with the lid on, stirring occasionally, adding more seasonings if you like.

Once done, top your meal with violet and speedwell blossoms!

Violets are extremely high in vitamins C and A, their flavonoids and alkaloids lower blood pressure, and their leaves contain salicylic acid, which is anti-inflammatory. Daylily shoots provide protein, carbohydrates, iron, and vitamin A. Speedwell (Veronica) has anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial properties. Learn more via this NIH article!

Meal made, my zoning musings begin. I am not anti-municipal, anti-utility, anti-make-a-buck-when-you-can. But there are goals (does it better the community?), and that’s where zoning comes in. Why is zoning allowed to be so influenced by outsider interests? Why do SUPs/CUPs not need to prove their benefit BEFORE an application to that local community?

In the country, happily living off-grid for years, I consider the already-felt impacts of large-scale solar farms on our rural community.

These not-by-right projects, SUPs shoved through by supervisors despite much community opposition, benefit a very few property owners (including themselves), breaking generations of community-sourced zoning. Adjoining Amish neighbors left. These same neighbors began the revitalization of our area over 20 years ago, built friendships, shared skills, and thrived with our community. Solely because of solar farms, neighbors are gone. For what? 70% of Virginia solar projects have incurred water quality violations that resulted in DEQ consent decrees. Is that improving our community? Does that better the natural resources we and future generations depend upon?

Not yet built, these industrial solar projects have already permanently hurt us - beautiful, restored farmhouses now sit empty, abandoned, quiet. These farms bustled with children and activity, they were happy homesteads with farmstands selling fresh produce and eggs to locals. Solar should not destroy forests, farmland, and communities; large-scale solar should be sited on brownfields or better, at the power draw, on the property of those most consuming it: industry.

My thoughts turn to the city, where urban communities and cultures are being erased by illegal AirBnBs. As Richmond implements its first code rewrite since the 1970s, I wonder how many of the new, by-right duplexes and ADUs they propose will fill local, affordable housing needs or… will they overwhelmingly be purposeful, illegal AirBnBs?

Communities don’t have to endure them. Neighbors can save taxpayer money, relieve overworked urban planners, and eliminate large chunks of bad elements quickly: revoke their license. Wait, how does that hurt them? They’re already operating illegally! No, not that non-effectual license…

Illegal AirBnB owners don’t live in the community, thus can not manage listings on their own, so hire local property managers who 100% know what they’re doing is illegal, and overwhelmingly… work in real estate! Hit them where it hurts while also removing the burden from city planning and zoning: urban neighbors can report (suspected) illegal hosts to the real estate board and demand their licenses for unethical, purposely illegal behavior. Non-primary residence owner on an AirBnB listing? That’s an illegal host. Multiple listings? Illegal. File the illegal activity with screenshots to the real estate board and make it a problem of their profession. 

Culling real estate professionals (with their marketing, staff, and property knowledge) from the illegal STR gold rush makes listings much harder for absentee owners to manage profitably, thus hopefully making STRs “not worth it,” thus converting back to traditional leases for a lower price.

What do you think? Will reporting illegal realtor hosts to real estate boards, instead of making them a time-consuming problem for city staff (and a community tax burden), help quickly eliminate fraud/illegal businesses in your city?

So there ya have it: spicy, firebreathing, one-pot meals made while musing on zoning! What do you think?

P.s. Here’s another version I made with shrimp:

My work here today is done: I made some food, and (MAYBE) gave some unconsidered tools to communities. What’s next?