I’m sure you remember that Aimee and I also have a website of our own called Dirty Gourmet. A lot of excitement has been revolving around it lately, as we’ve gotten our butts in gear and started forming it into a real live business. We are jumping at every opportunity, and one of the biggest opportunities we’ve had consistently was to get people some fresh baked granola! We’ve attempted to sell lots of our recipes in the past, but the one we constantly sell out of is our granola.

This weekend, we went up to the San Bernardino National Forest to the camp I used to work at so that we could use the industrial kitchen and bake up a big batch of our two popular granola flavors: Almond-Flax and Coconut-Cashew-Black Sesame. We are using it as a fundraiser for bigger granola-related endeavors, and made a few extra bags if anyone is interested in helping us out by purchasing some delicious granola yourself. Do it fast, though. The fresher the better, and its almost all sold. You won’t be sorry!

To purchase, just send us an email at emily@kizmato.com or contact@dirtygourmet.com. stat! Its $8/12 oz. bag

I met my roommate and very good friend John when he was working at our local farmer’s market doing something he called Bike BBQ. It is a small stand where you can take your bicycle and he’ll help you learn to fix it yourself. He operates on donations only, and has gotten a lot of farmer’s market frequenters to start riding their bikes instead of driving there.

John started Bike BBQ as an extension of his previous work with the Sacramento Bicycle Kitchen that he volunteered for the year before when he lived up there. This weekend was the 5th anniversary of the Sacramento Bike Kitchen, and I invited myself to go up there with him to celebrate with him. Most of Saturday was spent doing a huge bike scavenger hunt of the city, where we had to find random objects on our way to local bike-friendly businesses, and also had to participate in challenges such as throwing a kid’s bike a certain distance for points. We didn’t think we’d get as enthusiastic about it as we did, but we ended up circling the city about 20 times trying to hit all the checkpoints. In the end, we were maybe top 10 and were amazed at how bad we were beaten, but it didn’t take away from the fun at all. I couldn’t believe how bike friendly that town was. If you live in Sacramento and don’t ride bikes everywhere, you should start.

The night ended with a big party at the Sacramento Bicycle Kitchen which was sponsored by New Belgium Brewery, a very bike friendly brewery best known for their beer Fat Tire. They had beer and great bands and a huge group of very cool people who were super fun to meet and hang out with. One lady was in charge of helping guests operate a silk screen set up with a cool graphic. People were taking off their shirts right and left to silk screen them. I had a fancy shirt on so I made all my roommates and friends take theirs off, and I got to do one myself.

I hope more bike kitchens and BBQ’s continue to pop up in more cities as people realize how practical, energizing, and fun biking is, especially compared to driving in traffic. If you are interested in starting your own, contact us and we’ll help you with some advice of how to get started.

There is a group of architect students at Harold Washington College in Chicago that are focusing their efforts on building temporary beautiful green walls in obvious parts of their city in order to promote the idea of them. I would like to see more businesses and buildings continue the trend in every city. They have a Kickstarter project started with only a few weeks left to donate, and would love your support! Kickstarter.com is a very cool website, by the way. There are a lot of people out there doing a lot of cool things, and this is a way to find out about local projects going on in your area and support them. Go support the Harold Washington Green Wall, your local community, and build yourself a green wall!

This year we moved into a house with a very large backyard, fully of gardening potential. There were already four raised beds, a few fruit trees, and a greenhouse the size of a barn when we moved in. We broke down big shelves that were in the back of the property and turned them into ten raised beds. We added chickens and planted out the existing beds, plus two of the new ones. Then my gardening partner moved out. And I was on my own. Luckily, I realized I have a lot of friends who are interested in gardening and local organic food. I decided to turn my backyard garden into a community garden.

Last night, I had my first community garden work party. Twelve very cool people showed up and got four more beds filled with dirt, and a lot more seeds planted. We planted corn, pumpkins, more beets, herbs, carrots, and garden beans. The weeds that I’d neglected for a month were fought off and I can maintain them at this level on my own for a while.

Once dusk set in, we transitioned from working the garden to eating it. We made Ginger Peach Juleps, a hearty grilled salad, corn with herb butter, and cilantro butter rice with fresh peas. We sat around the fire for a while enjoying the night, and then all of the hard workers were sent home with some bounty including onions, greens, carrots and peaches. It couldn’t have been a more perfect evening.

I’m excited to have turned the garden into a group project. Its so much more satisfying to eat what you personally work for, and to work together with friends. I’d love to continue to have more little garden parties like this as the seasons go on and new vegetables are available for the sharing. If you’re interested in joining in, let me know and I’ll keep you informed.

I’m really starting to enjoy this local event thing. I’ve always been interested in promoting local communities, but I mainly did so by purchasing local foods and shopping in local stores. I’d occasionally go to festivals or big citywide events, but didn’t do many smaller things.

My friend Nick is the Site Supervisor at Habitat for Humanity in Lawndale, CA. I figured that going there would be fun, but didn’t realize how satisfying and energizing this kind of participation is. You get to meet the motivated people of the world- the people that help and work hard because they truly enjoy it. The positivity that pours out of these people is contagious. I got up at 5 a.m. yesterday and drove through L.A. traffic for close to 3 hours to get to a dumpy area of town and work construction with strangers- I should’ve been cranky. Instead, it was the best day of the week. I worked in a group of 4 people, and we were super efficient and managed to put up 19 roof beams/joists in a garage and a room in the house. I got to perfect my skills in circular sawing and learned to drive nails like Herman Munster.

Everyone was there for a different reason. Some were retired, some were there for school, some were unemployed and opening themselves up for opportunities. I went for Kizmato, and I got some website interest, but secretly I loved it for me. Next time, I’ll probably bring my Dirty Gourmet partners, and we’ll bring snacks to share. I’ll let you know when that will be. Until then, please go if you get a day or even half a day. There are builds all over the place, so just check out the website to find out what is going on in your area.

I work with two other girls (one is Aimee, my Kizmato partner) on a blog called Dirty Gourmet. We focus on gourmet outdoor cooking, but our main purpose is to get people to go outside and play more often. Last weekend, we participated in the Mill Creek Clean Up in the San Bernardino National Forest. It’s a gorgeous little area very close to Redlands where I live, but it’s been trashed by tourists who go out there and play throughout the year. We spent a Saturday with the San Gorgonio Wilderness Association cleaning up the area as much as possible. While there, we provided fresh granola for the participants as well as website coupons for Kizmato. This was the first local event that Kizmato has participated in since deciding to focus on our local communities.

There were a lot of very interesting and enthusiastic people there from my town and it was fun to reconnect as well as meet new people. For instance, I met Chris from FUN Artists who sell some very cool T-shirts and artwork from local artists. I also reconnected with Nate from Wild Goose Coffee who are have participated in several efforts to help out their local community.

The event was a success and was a satisfying and fun way to spend a nice spring Saturday. The San Gorgonio Wilderness Association is planning to do another cleanup at the end of the summer to prepare for the snow that would otherwise cover up the trash until the spring. We’ll keep you posted about that in case you’re interested in coming out and helping while discovering an amazing place close to home.

Hello, and welcome to the Kizmato blog. There’s more to this little website business than meets the eye. We are two girls who are passionate about a lot of things, and we want to incorporate them into this business. Kizmato grew out of a fun project we’d been working on, Dirty Gourmet, and it grew because we saw a need to help out local small businesses. The mission hasn’t changed, and here’s the history and future plans.

Aimee and I (Emily) are cousins. Our families have been close since we were born, taking frequent camping trips together throughout our childhood. Aimee’s little brother Jesse is my age, and I spent most of my time with him. We were total terrors, and didn’t care much about spending time with Aimee. My family eventually moved to Florida, and we saw a lot less of Aimee’s family for years. It took until I graduated college and moved to California for Aimee and I to become close. And it happened fast.

We bonded over the next few years at more family get-togethers and camping trips, and then Aimee went on a bike tour up the coast of California and across Canada! When she came back, she and her cycling partner, Mai-yan, had plans to start an outdoor food blog. She and I realized we shared our love of the outdoors and cooking, and I joined the two girls to start Dirty Gourmet.com. Aimee was already a web developer, and Mai-yan a web designer, so the site kicks ass. I had to learn something quick to keep up, so I learned XHTML/CSS.

Dirty Gourmet continues to grow, and has gotten popular. One of the biggest things that has come out of it is a big response from friends who want us to help them build websites for their businesses. And so Kizmato was born. Neither Aimee nor I had day jobs when we started, and we realized that we could provide affordable websites by starting with customizable themes and building them on WordPress. This is still our main source of business, because it allows our clients to take charge of their site after it’s built. The themes are so customizable that we can usually find a basic layout that will work for a client, and then tweak it to become consistent with their brand. We can do it quickly enough this way to keep it affordable. The small size of our company has allowed us to work with our clients on a very personal basis, however, and we can add as much customization as they want. It has kept us very flexible.

We now realize that we really want to be promoting local businesses in any way that we can, especially the businesses that are built around a cause we believe in. As you might guess from our website’s design, we are very into gardening, which also incorporates the “slow food” movement. If you know of a business that is cool and local (to your area, wherever you are), tell them about us. We’d like to give discounts to those who are helping out their communities, so they can do a better job of it by having an awesome, findable, usable website.

We also want to get out and participate in events when possible. A few plans in the works:

• Habitat for Humanity Workday, Lawndale, CA. Date:TBD
• San Gorgonio Wilderness Association Cleanup, Mill Creek, CA, Date: May 14, 2011

If you show up to help out with us, you’ll get a coupon for a website. It’s transferable, but you only get one. If you’re lucky, we’ll be there representing Dirty Gourmet as well, and will have food to share.

Those are our ideas for now. If you’ve got more ideas for us, shout them out! We’re still in brainstorming mode, and are a very flexible business.