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I want to link you to a fascinating post I read. It’s very detailed, very thoroughly researched and quite disturbing. The upshot is that the “wax” we have come to expect on produce hasn’t been “wax” for many years, but is now an edible (?) plastic applied to both organic and conventional produce to protect it from damage during shipping and microbial contamination.
Here is the post: Dude, That Isn’t Wax On Your Apple!
You might not be up to reading the entire thing, it is long and contains numerous links, especially to FDA articles which can be a real nightmare to decipher.
But the upshot is this: If you don’t grow it yourself, and you can’t get face-to-face with the farmer who grew it, you don’t know what is being applied to “protect you.” It might or might not wash off in veggie wash and it might or might not prove to be safe and health-supporting.
The number one goal of Local Nourishment is to encourage you to grow what you can, to source your food as close to your front door as possible, and to personally acquaint yourself with your food producers for what you purchase. I challenge you to take a list of the names of the films listed in realityblogger’s outstanding post to the produce manager of the stores you frequent and try to find out what is applied to your food. It may be he or she has no idea and has to do some research for him or herself. Take the same list to your farmers market (and by that I mean enforced producers market) and ask your farmer. I’ll bet he knows what he applies to your food, and I’ll double down that he or she will be happy to discuss it with you!
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday.
A view of the carrots
Spring has its bountiful early greens, summer its fast growth and ripe, red tomatoes, but the autumn garden has joys to share as well.
The lack of hungry flea beetles is the first joy I notice right away. The hungry critters that were munching my plants right down to the ground in July have all gone, lulled to sleep by the first frost. I can work in the garden in mid-afternoon without breaking a sweat, and what a joy that is! Tasting the intense sweetness that a frosty morning has brought to the stevia leaves is a pleasant surprise, as are the gentle rains this time of year brings. Most mornings the dew is so heavy that I don’t water but once a week. Most of the weeds have died out, so weeding is a quick job. And once established, the carrots, lettuce, mustard, spinach and kale grow so quickly it can be a challenge to keep them from taking over the backyard.
So, if you think the gardening season ends when the last tomato is picked, I want to encourage you to try growing some of your own autumn foods next year.
And to entice you to use what’s already in the garden or at the market, here’s an unusual recipe based on the premise that foods that grow together belong together! People don’t usually eat the greens of carrots, but they are edible and have the same zingy bitterness that dandelion has. If you like dandelion in your salad, give carrot tops a try as well. And if you find your diet deficient in potassium or vitamin C, don’t toss the carrot tops as they are rich in both as well as a host of other nutrients.
Eat Your Carrot Greens Salad
Serves 2 to 4, depending on how large the carrots have grown
3 carrots with their leaves
a stem or two of fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup raisins
2 tablespoons olive oil
the juice of 1/2 lemon, freshly squeezed
Scrub the carrots clean and rinse the greens. Chop the carrots in very thin rounds and place in a bowl. Chop the carrot leaves finely, like you would parsley, removing any hard stems. Add to the bowl with the carrots, and mix in the raisins and chopped mint leaves. Season to taste with lemon juice, olive oil and salt.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, hosted by the inimitable Food Renegade.
I built these trellises with the help of my 11-year old Rose (and the guy from Lowe’s). I sketched out the idea: six feet tall, a variable width to adjust to the different sized boxes in my container garden, with twine hanging from the crossbar for my vining fruits and veggies to climb. The guy at Lowe’s helped me with the math (do your math, kids, you’ll need it) and gave me some good pointers.
The PVC is half-inch wide. Rose was able to cut it herself with a ratcheting scissors. Ells and Tees were used on the legs and to connect the uprights to the crossbar. Our patio doesn’t get a lot of strong wind, thanks to the house in the background of the photo and besides, I didn’t want to be tripping over the leg supports, so I made the legs short, about two feet long, and used zip ties to hold the trellis to the patio railing. One of the great things about this system is that twine can be added when my heirloom tomatoes need trellising on more than one central stem.
Another benefit is the cost. Each 10-foot section of PVC cost just about a dollar, and two sections were all that was needed to make an entire trellis (with a little pipe left over). I like the clean, white look of it, too. I do not like that I purchased plastic to make them. Hopefully I will be able to use them for several years before investing in a different system (metal, perhaps?) I know PVC will eventually break down in the sunlight, but I hear it takes several years for that to happen.
So, the tomatoes, peppers, beans and cucumbers are staked and ready to go! I have blooms starting on several tomato plants, so next time, I’ll share what I use for fertilizer!
Being in the learning stages, my method of food storage is kind of simplistic. I like to store what I eat and eat what I store. In April, that means buying two quarts of strawberries a week at the farmers market. We eat from one quart daily as raw whole snacks when a sweet tooth hits. No, I still can’t bring myself to cook with strawberries. They’re just too rare and precious to water down with other flavors!
The second quart is cleaned and hulled and dried or made into preserves. Dried strawberries can be reconstituted for smoothies in the dead of winter or sprinkled onto a bowl of homemade granola or yogurt. Dried fruit takes up very little space, is shelf stable, (not requiring refrigerator or freezer space both of which are at a great premium at my house) and can be stored in unbreakable containers if you’re into the plastic thing. Home canned preserves are wonderful on toast or stirred into kefir. Even mixed with peanut butter, strawberry preserves are a taste of April on a snowy winter day.
It is my short-term goal to have a rotating stock of dried and home canned foods year-round to choose from. This goal is two-fold. First, the nutrients and flavors of seasonal foods would be available year-round without requiring massive container ships to carry food to me from countries halfway around the globe. Second, my emergency preparedness food supply would benefit from some perking up to avoid dreariness. Sure, one could live on plain beans and rice for a time, but would you really want to? Wouldn’t some home canned sweet potato mixed in add just a touch of sweetness and flavor to perk up that meal?
My long-term goal is to eventually home can all the tomatoes we use over the course of the year. Since we stopped using canned tomatoes due to BPA (and other endoctrine disruptors in the plastic lining of cans) concerns, I find we use one or two glass quart jars of spaghetti sauce a week. I can sometimes find coupons and store specials, but when I can’t, the organic variety often costs nearly $4 a quart. Canning my own would save our budget upward of $200 a year, a sizable chunk.
Achieving this goal, though, will require most of the 64 square foot garden I am preparing for next spring and perhaps more. Of course, I’ll still grow other vegetables and herbs in my container garden on the patio, but for now that’s the plan.
So, my dehydrated strawberries are on the shelf next to winter’s dried kale and fall’s dried sweet potatoes. It’s becoming quite a lovely rainbow in my basement!
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop and Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.
Spring seems very far away, indeed.
I have the patio garden all planned for this year. I would LOVE to branch out and try some different veggies, but I’m sticking with the multi-harvest veggies I know we will eat. No point in planting zucchini, for example, since it is plentiful at the farmers market at very good prices in season. We only eat it four or five times through the summer anyway. Also no point in putting in onions or cabbage or watermelon or pumpkins that take up a lot of room, require months before harvest and have single harvests when space is so limited.
One day I want to put in fruits. I’ve been dreaming of a berry hedge along one property line and possibly some dwarf fruit trees here and there. I sure would love to grow grapes eventually. But, the fruit production has to wait for the budget to make that leap.
No flowers this year. The great flood of ’10 wiped out my shade flower garden in the front yard. I’m looking into possibly planting some herbs there. Maybe. Once burned and all that.
Hubby has granted me permission to dig up some of the backyard for food production. I’m undertaking that very gradually. Back in September I started a 4-foot square lasagna garden in a spot I know to have excellent sun exposure. I’ll start another 4-foot square in September of this year and the first 4-foot will be ready for planting next spring. Supposedly, this will be the last growing season I’ll have “only” a patio garden! Very excited! So, here are the plans.
2011 vegetable garden:
Maxibel green beans
Armenian (Heirloom) cucumbers
Bendigo bell peppers
Zapotec pleated (Rare) tomatoes
San Marzano (Heirloom) paste tomatoes
Peacevine cherry tomatoes
2011 salad garden:
Magenta Spreen (Heirloom)
Golden Purslane
Garden Sorrel
Beet Berry
Roxy Red Butterhead lettuce
2011 pet garden:
Catnip
Cutting mix of Waldmann’s, Redina, Dark Lolla Rossa, Emerald Oak, Outredgeous, Barcarole, Simpson Black-seeded and Red Salad Bowl lettuces
2011 herb garden:
Poppy Joe’s Genovese basil
Lemon (Heirloom) basil
Thai basil
Santo cilantro
Greek (Heirloom) oregano
English (Heirloom) thyme
2011 medicinal garden:
Lavender bergamot
Orange Zinger Calendula
Purple Coneflower echinacea
Stinging nettle
Possibilities for 2011 shade herb garden:
Sweet woodruff
Anise hyssop (also medicinal)
Wild Ginger
Italian flat-leaf Parsley
Shiso
Lemon balm
Spicebush
What are your plans?
No, it’s not the casserole that’s gigantic, it’s the zucchini! I don’t grow zucchini or summer squash because my family just isn’t that wild about it. Plus, one plant would provide more squash than we could eat in a month! But we’re still not safe from the zucchini avalanche that happens this time of year. A retired couple with a garden up the street found a gigantic squash in their garden yesterday and brought it to us. The wife said she loves zucchini but her husband doesn’t, and she couldn’t bear to slice off a piece and throw the rest out. This thing was monstrous: imagine a zucchini the size of a mega roll of paper towels!
I managed to use half of it in a recipe in place of the called-for noodles. It was so simple that Kate made the casserole. Everyone raved about it, even the kids who wouldn’t touch zucchini with a pair of gardening gloves! I made some homemade cottage cheese, homemade yo-cheese and creme fraiche to go in it, so this was a very, very local, seasonal dish! (Please forgive the horrible photography. When I went back for a second shot, the dish was EMPTY!)
Gigantic Zucchini Casserole
Half of one three-pound zucchini (or three to four normal-sized ones), julienne cut
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 organic yellow onion
1 pound grassfed ground beef
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
8 ounces tomato sauce
1 cup homemade cottage cheese
1 cup homemade yo-cheese
3 tablespoons creme fraiche*
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper (any color)
2 green onions, green part chopped
Preheat the oven to 350°. Heat coconut oil in skillet and brown chopped onion and ground beef, stirring occasionally until the beef has browned. Add salt, pepper and tomato sauce, allow to simmer while preparing cheese.
Mix together cottage cheese, cream cheese, creme fraiche, bell pepper and green onion in a bowl. Lightly rub a 9×13 pan with coconut oil. Layer half the julienned zucchini in the dish, the cover with all the cheese mixture. Add the rest of the zucchini, then the meat mixture. Bake, uncovered for 30 minutes.
Note on ingredients: Creme fraiche is another easy-to-make ingredient. Add two tablespoons of cultured buttermilk to a pint of fresh (NOT ultrapasteurized) cream and mix it up. Leave it on the counter overnight, refrigerate in the morning. Use it instead of sour cream, especially when your food will not be heated to preserve the good bacteria it contains!
This post is part of Tuesday Twister, hosted by GNOWFLGINS.
March 18, ready for planting!
It’s been a long, cool winter. And I’ve been very patient. There were a few warm days earlier that tempted me to get out and garden, but I knew better. Sure enough, a good, hard frost hit days later. Ah, but it’s warming up quickly now. Tomorrow we expect sunny skies and 70 degrees, and the future reports are trending upward. In the next two weeks there isn’t a nighttime low of less than 39 expected! I know there will be one more cold night, probably right around Easter. There always is.
I was late ordering my seeds again. Our finances run very, very tight at the first of the year with various taxes due. But, I’ve been socking away a dollar here and there from our food budget and have purchased most of the seeds I’ll need. I’ve also purchased the ingredients for my homemade custom potting mix.
Today the kids and I poured the ingredients of the custom potting mix onto the ground and mixed it up. We cleaned out and filled all our containers, first with an inch of pea gravel, then with our mix. It will compact down a little as the season goes on, so we made some extra for supplementing. My strong teens carried the containers up the stairs to the second-floor balcony where the plants will live just outside my kitchen window.
Last week I started Johnny Jump Ups, Dianthus, Greek oregano and Mountain mint indoors in little recycled paper cups. I’ve been squirting them with water every day, keeping the soil just moist. Tomorrow I’ll start the calendula, bergamot, two types of tomatoes and two types of bell peppers indoors.
My patio looks barren but hopeful and more than a bit eclectic with all the recycled containers and pots. But it smells of composted manure and peat moss, the stuff of spring.
Watch this spot for more as my garden and my zero-mile foodshed grows.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
