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Inspire Me Thursday - Whimsy

Inspire Me Thursday

I've been sitting out on my porch watching the wind catch the dandelion seeds and blow them into the air today.

I thought about wishes and enjoyed the way the individual seeds glistened as they floated up, up and away.  I tried not to think about future weeds to pull or about how lazy I was being.

Made me think of one of my favorite books, Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.  I thought I'd save some of that magic for another day when I might need to be reminded:

“Dandelion Wine.  The words were summer on the tongue.   The wine was summer caught and stoppered.   And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive….”

Ray Bradbury

What's on the March bookshelf

I've been thinking about gathering together whatever I'm reading once a month in some way.  I think at least once a month I'm going to post a picture of my current stack of books and maybe a few of my favorite passages.   

The top of my pile is my book for the bus stop.  I'll probably be reading it for awhile.  It's The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett.  It's actually a perfect book for stopping and starting because there isn't much plot (at least not yet).  It seems to be mostly a character study.  There are many beautiful passages. 

Next up is  Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.  There were many passages in the book that captured my imagination.  Here's one of them, which is really a quote from another author:

"Virginia Woolf wrote, 'Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword."  On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where 'all is correct.'  But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion.  Nothing follows a regular course."  Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous." 

Hmm...that leads to some interesting thinking.

And then there is In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.   I  really enjoyed the last part the best, which is about what he feels is best to eat and how to eat it.  The rest seems to be a continuation of Omnivore's Dilemma, which I really found interesting.  In general, Pollan's writing really confirms my desires to eat local, even over certified organic.  I've also become even more convinced that processed foods are not a healthy choice.  I loved his advice to not eat any foods that your great grandmother wouldn't recognize.  I'm happy to say I think everything in my 'fridge would be identified by my great grandmothers.   

The rest are what I checked out from the library.  Interesting things in all, but glad I checked them out rather than bought them....

 

Local and Very Local

Just finished reading Omnivore's Dilemma by  Michael Pollan.  It's convinced me even more that eating local, or even better growing my own, is the best option for feeding myself.

Also been looking at Path to Freedom's challenge to eat what is home grown.  It's another call to plant a Victory Garden. 

What's really been on my mind as I think about what I've been reading, is how I can eat local this time of year.  I went to get local carrots at the co-op on Saturday  and they were all gone for the year....  I'm down to being able to buy apples, pears, mushrooms, turnips and potatoes.  And what I've preserved.

 

This year has given me a really good sense of how much I need to preserve if I want to be able to eat local year round.  I need to be able to pull from what I've stored for choices in January, February, and probably the beginning of March.  I'm making plans to can more applesauce and to dry more corn and cherries.  I'm thinking about what crops to plant more of so that I can preserve the excess. I probably could have used a few more tomatoes-since my canned supply will need to get me to July. 

Here's my breakfast of applesauce (apples from my tree), locally made bread with locally ground flour, honey, and butter I made with local cream.  No compromises here- it's all organic too. The next thing I'm reading is In Defense of Food by Pollan.  It's another very interesting book.

On the menu -week of February 10th

Apple cake anyone?  Today I used the last of the apples that I had from my Mom and Dad's trees.  I made a yummy cake from Chocolate and Zucchini (from the cook book).  Made me think about portion size a lot-it's super rich and a small piece was all I wanted at one time. 

I'm also reading Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  That made me think about portion size plus a whole lot of other things!  If I hadn't already been going down the "buy local" and "grow your own" road, reading this book would have convinced me.

Funnily enough, this is the week I bought my first non-local vegetable since last spring.  I bought some organic kale from California.  There were no local greens to be found and I forgot I still have some broccoli pesto in the freezer that I had made.  Darn!  Ah well, it's a good reminder to stick to the grocery list.  At least the other impulse item was local, a baking potato.  I was picking out a few smaller 'Yukon' potatoes while the clerk was putting out potatoes and the idea of a baked potato just seemed so yummy.  Since I knew I was going to do some baking, I decided to get one.  It's amazing how different the texture of potatoes can be, depending on the variety. 

The rest of my purchases for the week:  nuts, dried fruit, milk, cream for butter, ground pork (not local),  canned salmon (locally produced, caught by a local fisher, but Alaskan salmon), oranges, carrots, beef (almost local) and some spices.

From the pantry:  stewed chicken, onions, pickles, tortillas, beans, tomatoes, eggs, dried corn, apples, flour, and sugar.   

Here's my  menu for the week:

Sunday:  Chicken cacciatore (chicken from the freezer)
Monday:  Burrito (potato that I baked Sunday, plus beans from the freezer, and kale)
Tuesday: Cassoulet (chicken from Sunday, plus beans, plus sausage)
Wednesday: Frittata (last of the potato, and kale)
Thursday:  Pasta with sausage
Friday:  Salmon cakes

I'm overlapping ingredients a lot this week.  The potato is large enough to be part of three meals.  The chicken will be a part of two meals, possibly three if I decide to add some to the burrito.  Because I've already froze it once, I'm going to try to use this batch of chicken up this week.  I used the pork I bought to make sausage.  I had it for lunch today (with a bit of the baked potato) and will use it in two of the other dishes.  I'll also freeze some of it for later.   The salmon is a  bit of an experiment.   I tend to mostly get previously frozen or fresh, but I wanted to try the canned to see if it would be a good possibly for stocking up.  I think this summer I need to get my parents to show me/help me can some salmon.  What they've done in the past has been very, very good.

I did also make desert this week-chocolate cookies.  It will be a challenge to use portion control with those! 

 

On the bookshelf

Spending a lot of time dreaming, thinking about, and planning what I want to do in the garden this next year. When it’s too cold and wet to do much gardening, the next best thing is reading about it! 

Two of the books I’ve recently read (which were checked out from the library) are The Contrary Farmer’s Invitation to Gardening by Gene Logsdon and The Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey.  I really enjoyed both books and think they are great resources. 

The Bountiful Container would be super for anyone with limited space to grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs and who is new to gardening.  Very nice descriptions of individual vegetables and what they need.  If I were only able to container garden I’d want this book in my permanent library.  What I found helpful was thinking about what would be best to plant in my whiskey barrels.  I’m taking my maple tree out of one and my bamboo out of the other so that I can grow vegetables on my deck in the whiskey barrels.  My goal is to have a few of my vegetables close enough to the kitchen to make watering with rinse water from the dishes easy to do.  First crop in one barrel will be lettuces and a few radishes and in the other peas.  Probably a few calendulas and pansies too.  In May I’ll be replacing these crops with squash and tomatoes.  Just need to decide where the maple tree will go and have a warmer dry day to move it and then prep the barrels. 

I loved reading Gene Logsdon’s book!  I want to see if I can find more of his books and would like to add them to my own library.  I’m going to try his suggestions for growing grains at some point.  I’m also planning on trying a mulch bed for my tomatoes as a result of reading this book.  And it made me want to have my own chickens again!  I keep talking myself out of chickens because I can get eggs from my parents and if I have chickens I’ll have to fight with the raccoons and the skunks in the neighborhood. 

The other book on my pile was Affluenza.  I read it for a book club at Crunchy Chicken.   Interesting book.  Mostly made me think about how I spend my time….  Glad that I spend a lot of it gardening.

Lotions and potions

Thought I'd share some of my favorite books with recipes for homemade lotions, potions, and other things for body care.

Most of the recipes I've tried have come from Natural Beauty at Home by Janet Cox or The Herbal Beauty Book by Stephanie Tourles.  Both of these authors books are available at my library, so they should be pretty easy to find.  I've also found various recipes in back issues of The Herb Companion.  These have been great resources for shampoo (I really like the recipe in Tourles's book that uses a herbal infusion that is mixed with water and a liquid soap), hand salves, lip balms, and many other things. 

What I really like about using these recipes is that I know exactly what is going into what I'm making. I can also get the ingredients bulk, much easier to avoid plastics.  Some ingredients I can get from the garden.  Right now I'm steeping calendula flowers in almond oil for a hand salve recipe.  I've saved a lot of money doing this too.  I could probably make 5 to 6 batches of hand salve for the same price as one container from the farmers market!

I've been very happy with my homemade products.  I do have one recommendation/recipe I don't need to try again though-egg for a hair conditioner.  It's really pretty icky feeling.

Wanted to add that I didn't include recipes as the recipes are from a copyrighted book.  If I understand copyright laws correctly-I don't think a recipe can be posted unless it's one you've created personally....

 

A Little reflecting on what I'm reading-Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I’ve had the thought that I need to reassess how I’m approaching my sustainability goals.  I want to look at one aspect of my life style each month and see how I can make it more sustainable.   I decided to start with food   It’s the easiest for me and since I’m reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, it seemed an appropriate place to start.

Last weekend  I cleaned my refrigerator and considered the contents of my pantry.  I was happy to see that over 85% of what I have is local or bulk (wet and dry) and organic.  The other 15% is organic but not local.  There are some things in this mix that I won’t replace when I run out (catsup for example), but there are a few things that I think I will continue to get:  the occasional citrus or avocado from California (as close as I can get); balsamic vinegar, olives (sometimes can get bulk), and shortening.   Also Italian cheeses (Parmesan to be precise)-but I’m going to get that from the deli where they don’t wrap it in plastic.  Six items that are on the not local list, but six things that are worth it to me on a cultural level. 

Regarding my reading, I think I’ve read my favorite chapter yet in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, “Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast.”   What did I find thought provoking? 

“Cooking is a dying art in this country.”  This scares me because I think it is true on a societal level.  All that has to be considered is the amount of restaurants and fast foods there are to know that people don’t cook as much any more.   All that has to be considered is the lack of time at the end of the day that so many people have for all that they want to do or have to do and it becomes easy to give in to the seduction of prepared food. 

"Approaching mealtimes as a creative opportunity, rather than a chore, is an option."

I love her discussion on the process and importance of cooking and of eating together.  I do believe that cooking is a creative process.  One of my favorite things to do is to start with a few ingredients and toss things together.   And I do believe that it can be fast, healthy and creative, even on a weeknight.

Like many people I know who enjoy cooking, and as Kingsolver describes her own process being, I do save more involved recipes for weekends.  And I do make an effort to make enough that I can save what I cook for the rest of the week.  That’s one reason why the environmental experiment of living without a refrigerator or freezer doesn’t really work for me.  I want to be able to stock up for the week ahead or put that extra serving of split pea soup in the freezer for 2 weeks from now. 

I also appreciated her comments on family meals.  This was a huge part of my childhood.  We almost always ate together.  And I think it forms a core piece of what I consider a family and a community- a group of people who sit down together on a regular basis to eat together. 

And then there was the discussion on cheese making.  This made me smile.  I really could identify with her passage on the magic of watching the curds and whey separate.  I could also identify with her comment about sharing cheese-making experiments with grandma and then coming to find out that grandma had stories of making cheese at home too.  And while it made me smile, it also brings home again how disconnected we are with our food.  Making cheese, yogurt, bread, sausage, raisins, wine, crackers, and whatever else we can think of at home shouldn’t be such a mysterious process.   And yes, I did have a “Hey I can make my own crackers!” discovery at home.   

Time to go make yogurt and plot my next steps! 

Eating local again and a few other 90% projects

Lots of good stuff hiding in this basket of supplies from the farmer's market (plus a little posy that caught my eye and a dahlia that was a gift from one of the vendors).  With this, plus some things from my garden, my parents garden and some spices from the co-op I made:

*Tomato sauce
*Tomatillio Salsa
*Three fruit jam (sour cherries from a friend, strawberries, and raspberries)

I have peppers to roast and freeze as well but I didn't get that far....

I also did some sewing this weekend-finally decided to make a shirt with a hemp-blend fabric that I have.  I've decided I really like hemp fabrics.  Easy to sew and comfortable to wear. 

Still reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and really loving it.  I've been thinking a lot about what it means to eat seasonally, and what that would look like in January.  Digging out something  I've preserved won't be an in-season choice,  unless we consider it the "season of canned goods!"  I do think that it would be a better choice than buying fruit from out of state though.  I'll confess right now, I will buy oranges at least once.  It wouldn't be December without candied orange peel! 

I'm still a bit amazed at the statistic that she gives about the benefits of eating locally once a week.  I'm doing pretty good at consistently eating 90% local each week.   I've decided I'm going to try to post one meal each week that is local and seasonal.  So here's one for this week:

Veggie Taco!  I need to come  up with a  better name I think.  It's got potatoes (garden), cauliflower (market), tomatoes (garden), peppers (market), cheese (locally made, bought at locally owned grocery store), yogurt (made by me with local milk) and the tomatillio salsa I made.   Oh, and the tortillas (locally made, bought at co-op).  I really love doing tacos/burritos/wraps.  It's very easy to be creative with them.

   

Eating local

Well, I might darn well have the whole book read before the book club discussion starts at Crunchy Chicken, but I’ve started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  She is such a eloquent writer.

I’ve read the first 5 or 6 pages and was really struck by the passage about the impact of food and petroleum.  All stuff I knew, but the actual statistics and the way she framed the information was very impacting.  She wrote, “ If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.”  Wow!

So glad I’m managing to buy 90% of my food locally and organically.  Dinner tonight was local cheese, locally made bread (with local ingredients) and blueberries from my parent’s garden.  Yum!  In general, this week I managed to buy almost all my food at the farmer’s market.  The only non-local from the grocery store items I got were chocolate chips and sugar (both organic).  Darn sweet tooth!   

The chocolate chips are for making mochas.  I melt 1 tablespoon of chocolate chips in about a half-cup of milk (use the microwave for the least amount of electricity usage) and then pour in espresso.  I make espresso on my stove top with a little Italian perk type pot.  Better than just about any mocha you can buy at a much lower cost.  All organic, all fair-trade.  I know, I should give it up and just drink water but I’m not ready for that yet….

Other food experiments have been going well.  The cider is fizzing away and it’s all I can do to leave it alone.  I’m dehydrating corn at the moment.  I think it’s going to be a great way to store corn so I’m going to get serious about growing corn next year  (the slugs ate what I planted this year).  I bought a teeny-tiny sample of dried blueberries to see if it would be worth dehydrating blue berries and decided that I might as well buy raisins if I want a dried fruit to store.  I’ll figure out something else to do with any blueberries that come my way.

Which brings me to another thought.  I’ve been thinking about how one school of thought is to only eat what’s in season.  If I were able to follow that closely, there really wouldn’t be a need for stored foods.  Yet I do think preserving foods is an important thing to do.  For one thing, it makes sense to do something with surplus crops that are home grown.  It’s one of the things that make gardening economical I think.  Another good reason is just plain old emergency preparedness.  I want something to eat if something happens in the middle of January!  Local foods that are in season are pretty slim at that time.