Weekly Local Booty - CSA - August 22, 2009

So yeah, I have been a bit of a bum with the blog as of late - if anyone can tell. We went to the farmer's market last weekend and somewhere along the way, I completely forgot to post a local booty update, or anything else for that matter. It was a rough week, lots going on, but things are starting to settle down and I am looking forward to a weekend of reading, writing, and perhaps a bit of cooking as well. I have always loved writing and awhile back Selina and I started working on a creative writing project which really brought writing back to me, so I have been playing around with a little bit of fiction - nothing good really, but it has been a lot of fun to work on.

Anyways, we didn't get much at market this weekend - we just picked up our CSA. I am taking it a bit easy in the cooking department and our CSA was packed with goodies that all work for the rough meal plan I had going in my head. I'm thinking a nice Mexican-inspired creamy soup sounds nice...

But enough of my yammering, check our our week 15 DanJo Farms quarter CSA share:


















Starting from the bottom right: 2 tomatoes, a ripe jalapeno, a banana pepper, 4 New Mexico chiles (some ripe, one not), a cayenne, 2 sweet peppers, a yellow squash, a zucchini, an onion, and a mighty large acorn squash.

So as I mentioned earlier, we haven't been focusing all that much in the kitchen. I have been on a reading kick - if you look at the Books J's Read - 2009 post you will see how I spend a good deal of my time and have now been writing as well. Brett is working on programming a baseball simulation game he developed and is having a couple of friends help with the things needed for implementation. It is really exciting - I am so proud of him! I love seeing him so dedicated, so passionate about something he is doing. He has a really good concept for the game and it is an interface that hasn't been done yet but that fans of this genre have been interested in for years. Y'all might want to watch out, Brett could be the next big internet game designer, and you can say you knew him way back when... :-)

Maybe that will help to explain our absence in the blogosphere, we've both got our head in creative projects and often get sucked in for days at a time! But it is nice to use your mind, to be creative, and who knows what will come from it.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend.

'Til next time.

Weekly Local Booty (late), Excuses, and Well, Let's Just Get On With It...

I didn't intend to go on hiatus, but it has been pretty stressful around these parts for the past while. I would expect things to be pretty sporadic for the next few weeks - I haven't really been cooking or doing much of note anyway. Let's just say things have been pretty out of whack. I have been doing an awful lot of reading and have created a Books J's Read - 2009 link under the Currently Reading element on the blogs sidebar. I read a lot of books, so I like to try to keep track and do a rudimentary rating scale. Perhaps this will be of interest to some of you; otherwise, you can see how big of a nerd I am. :-)

I did go to the Root Cellar awhile back and scored some grub, so I figured I would share it - hopefully inspiration hits me as to what to do with it all.















Starting from the bottom left: shiitake mushrooms, carrots, 4 yellow and 1 red onion, a huge head of cabbage, local pickled jalapenos (!!!!!), Sandhill mustard (!!!!!), Bonne Femme Honey Farm alfalfa honey, 2 organic avocados (not local), organic Sumatra coffee (not local), and a bag of shredded organic coconut (not local).

Not pictured are a dozen local eggs and two jars of East Wind peanut butter we picked up from the "regular" store. Making our own granola bars means we use a lot of peanut butter.

Sadly, there will be no Garden Update for December. I forgot to take pictures, well, the whole month. Things kept dying and I got jaded. I decided not to try starting anymore indoor crops and to focus my attention on our 2009 growing season. Surprisingly, the pepper plants are what are doing the best. One of our cayennes is even beginning to grow buds. It is the herbs and greens that have really been giving us trouble. Not what I expected. Our salad greens are doing wonderfully in the window and I think we will be having our first harvest soon, I will make sure to get a picture of our loot.

We've been pouring over our seed catalogs and visions of summers possibilities and I think we are getting narrowed down to the specifics of what we would like to grow. Once the seed order has been placed, I will post about what is (hopefully) on our horizons. I don't know when that will be, but I'll get around to it at some point.

I apologize that I haven't been commenting on blogs - I can't say that will change anytime soon - it will likely be sporadic as well. But who knows, right?

'Til next time.

We Need Each Other - A Brief Rant by J

As I'm sure many of you know, there are tons of "challenges" and "initiatives" out there in the blogosphere and beyond. Many of them are in some fashion related to living a more sustainably and socially just life, or surviving something like peak oil or an economic/social collapse. A lot of them focus on personal responsibility and individual action in response to these situations. Many of these challenges/initiatives (though of course not all), with the notable exception of Melinda over at One Green Generation (an excellent blog you all should check out), tend to leave something very important out: creating solid communities and developing relationships.

While ensuring our families well being and survival are of the utmost importance, we seem to forget that we cannot, and never really have been, completely self-sufficient. In this day and age, it really is damn near impossible. We need others to provide the services we cannot provide ourselves. But more importantly than that, we are social creatures, who need the company of others to be truly human. What bothers me is this almost "every man for himself" mentality as a reasonable approach to complex situations. I might remind us all, including myself, that this mentality has a lot to do with the current state of things - how we got in this "boat" to begin with.

What are we going to do? Prepare ourselves and leave our neighbors in the dark? Take turns guarding our possessions with a gun while our neighbors starve? Where is the humanity in that? And what do we do when our provisions run out and we do not have the appropriate relationships developed to provide for our own needs? We must remember that others were necessary for us to prepare for these potential calamities to begin with. I am in no way saying that this is what the hosts of these challenges are implying, but by ignoring community and others, this might well be the end result.

I do not know how to form strong communities. I do not know how to get self interested people to work together for a common good. But what I do know is that none of us can go it alone. We need each other, we need to share what we have, whether it is a skill, or food for a neighbor in need should times get really tough. It takes all of us, and we all succeed or none of us do. I hope none of these doomsday scenarios ever come to pass, but want to throw my "two cents" out there about a vital aspect of preparation that we have largely overlooked.

As always, thanks for listening to (well, reading) my rant.

'Til next time.

On Gradually Achieving a Sustainable Local Diet - Meal Planning

This first post is going to be about meal planning. What I hope will be a brief (for me) introduction to planning meals which are easy to prepare, that also reduce waste, environmental impact, and cost without having to eat the same thing every night.

This might seem obvious, but to someone whose diet consists largely of takeout or prepared foods, the first step to meal planning is to learn what you like. A couple of years ago, when I first started learning how to cook, the only thing I could ever think to make was a replication of the errant things I ate at restaurants or that came out of a box. Obviously, many of the ingredients didn’t go together, and I wasted a lot of food. I also got bored with those options, and as a result, returned to a diet largely consisting of takeout and boxed foods.

I have become a strong believer in the “cultural diet”, where your diet is comprised of foods from predominantly one culture. The reason I think this is an appropriate and easy way to eat is this: a cultural diet comes about for a reason; the diet consists of foodstuffs available to that particular area, and in combinations that extract the most nutrition from the resources available. Basically, cultural cuisine is interchangeable and relies on what’s abundant. If you live in a semi-temperate climate, you can largely have free choice in the cultural cuisine you choose, and even with dietary restrictions, like eating a mostly vegan diet as I do, knowing what cuisine you like can help you form a base for your meal planning.

Well, what I did was look to the places I went out to eat, the boxed food I ate, what cuisine did it fall under? Was there a trend? For me, there was, it was Mexican food. So I decided to pursue Mexican cooking, and suddenly many doors opened up for me.

This, of course, does not mean that I only eat Mexican food, what it means is that my diet largely consists of Mexican food because pinto beans, black beans, brown rice, tomatoes, peppers – all of these things that I like and keep on hand – are interchangeable in most Mexican dishes. You can put essentially the same things together, with various spice combinations and it’s something completely different. So, sticking primarily to a favored cuisine can be seen as the lazy person’s way of getting optimal nutrition with the least amount of effort and resources.

Once you determine what you like (and what you don’t like, but this also comes with time and experience), you should determine what your protein base is going to be. If you are a vegetarian or vegan, will it be beans and rice? Tofu? Tempeh or seitan? Can those items be found locally or from a bulk cooperative? If you are an omnivore, will this be fish? Red meat? Poultry? A combination? Again, are these things that can be locally or sustainably sourced?

You can use your preferred cultural cuisine and protein base as a good starting point for finding a battery of recipes that you (and your family) like.

When looking for recipes, look for ones with interchangeable ingredients, detailed instructions, and familiar terminology, this leads to more clarity in the kitchen (it also helps to make sure you have suitable equipment). At first, look for basic recipes, and have some sort of back up. You have to convince yourself that it’s alright not to like something, or this process will be torture for you. Have a frozen pizza or a takeout place on speed dial in case things don’t work out. If you tolerate food you do not like, you will never enjoy eating sustainably, and what’s the point of eating if you don’t enjoy your food? Mere survival? Psh! I’m not satisfied with that. Don’t worry about the additional waste this might produce. It’s only temporary, and there are ways of making food waste less of a source of guilt that I’ll touch on in a later post.

I don’t recommend inundating yourself with tons of new recipes all at once, unless you are really ambitious. It took me almost a year to become a vegetarian, and it has taken Brett and me five years to get to the point we are, so this is a process. And recipes don’t work out, ideas don’t go according to plan, it happens. We tried 1-3 new recipes a week and had a back up plan of very tried and true foods in case of failure, even if they are processed foods, you have to start where you are. Over time, some of those recipes will become integrated into your “routine”. Once you have a large enough battery of recipes, begin to look at staple ingredients. What is used most often in all your recipes? Is this something you could feasibly have access to year round? If not, this should be placed into your “seasonal” routine.

So how do you plan meals that don’t involve unnecessary waste? Well, you must be willing to innovate, working with what you have and what’s available. Once you’ve gathered an arsenal of knowledge and experience, keep a mental (or literal) inventory of what you have on hand when you go to the farmer’s market or grocery store and find ingredients that you use often, but are seasonal or non-perishable. Bring them home, assess your new “inventory” and work from there.

I will lead off with an example from our household: This week, I have left over cabbage, egg roll wrappers, refried beans, some “aging” brown rice, and pesto. When we went to the market we got our CSA, which included many staple items we usually use, we also picked up some additional staple items that were available from the farmer’s market. After consulting our “tested and approved” recipes, and the ones I've created or found that we want to try, we came up with the following meal plan, which includes something different everyday of the week and a very small list for the grocery store. We will be having eggrolls with Leng’s Green Beans and Tomatoes (we have leftover eggroll wrappers and cabbage, we got shiitake mushrooms and carrots at the farmer’s market, and got collard greens, green beans and tomatoes in our CSA share); Black Bean Quesadillas (we bought 25 lbs of bulk organic black beans awhile back which we'll cook up a large batch of and eat on throughout the week, we got sweet corn and peppers at the farmer’s market, and we already had salsa and tortillas at home); Pesto Sandwiches with Roasted Beets and Sautéed Beet Greens (I had some leftover pesto and spinach, got tomatoes and beets in our CSA, and bought a petite loaf of bread from the grocery store); Black Bean Burgers (we will have cooked black beans, aging rice, frozen burger buns that need to be used, Matzoh meal that needs to be used, spinach that needs to be used, and we got tomatoes and sweet corn from the farmer’s market); Black Bean and Potato Tacos (black beans from home, we got potatoes in our CSA and more from the market, we got peppers and tomatoes from the market, and will need to buy some black olives); Black Bean, Corn, and Chile Quesadillas (black beans from home, zucchini from our CSA, corn, jalapeno peppers, and bell peppers we got from the farmer’s market; and finally, Roasted Potato and Black Bean Quesadillas (black beans from home, potatoes from CSA, yellow squash from our CSA, and the rest of sweet corn from farmer’s market).

This meal plan will utilize all perishable items we have in the apartment and only require us to buy the following from the “regular” grocery store: a petite loaf of bread, whole wheat bagels, sriracha hot sauce, almond milk, a lime, black olives, and taco shells. Some of this stuff will last beyond this week. We’ve already paid for our CSA (I will explain that in the next post), we spent $22 at the farmer’s market (you will see our load in the Garden Update that I will be posting soon), and $16 at the grocery store, granted we still have to get the lime, olives, and taco shells, but I can’t imagine that costing too much. Point is, with a little bit of planning and effort we are going to eat seven different, mostly local meals, for around $50.

I have to say here – it is important to be honest with yourself about your cooking style. If you do not like to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, accept that and seek out – or better yet create – recipes that are simple but tasty and nutritious. If you or your family don’t like a certain food, healthy or not, don’t eat it! We seek these lifestyle changes for good and altruistic reasons, but we should also be able to enjoy the change as well. I like to view learning to cook new things as a positive challenge that I can tackle. I think about it like this: Sure, I don’t know how to do that now, but a few years ago I couldn’t do this and now it’s second nature. Be confident in yourself - that is important.

My advice doesn’t provide a lot of specifics, I know. I simply advocate a cultural diet that is looked at holistically – it will be easier, and often less wasteful that way. Learn the cuisine, the flavor combinations, the interchangeable ingredients, and find ways to source them, as locally as possible. Learn how to work with what you have on hand and what is available and keep it simple, always be willing to innovate while accepting and preparing for failure. Simple meals are easy to prepare, and are often the best ones. I don’t go to the farmer’s market and buy random items that I’ve never had before. Most of my “experimental” foods are often a result of unexpected items in our CSA, some we like (beets and collard greens), some we don’t (radishes). I pretty much stick to the items that are staples in the cuisine of my choosing: Mexican. This means a lot of beans, rice, tomatoes, chilies, corn, potatoes, and tortillas for a vegetarian, but I love these things.

And I stick to my meal plan, this I can’t stress enough, if you have things planned in ways that utilize all you have on hand, and then decide to go out to eat, food will be wasted. It is hard if you are in the habit of eating takeout all the time, but stick with it (perhaps join Chile’s challenge and make that what you “quit”). If friends suggest going out to eat, suggest they come over for a meal at your place, show off your cooking skills, spend some quality time with those you care about in a setting that doesn’t require spending a lot of money. Once you get out of the habit of eating out every night, you can start to view it as a luxury, to be done as a treat every once in awhile. And who knows, maybe you can start a new, perhaps more rewarding tradition with your friends.

'Til next time.

On Gradually Achieving a Sustainable Local Diet - An Introduction

This series of posts is a result of my experience, as well as a few posts I’ve seen recently. Chile is doing a series on food security and what to do if food or the resources to obtain food are unavailable; Arduous did a post of food waste and cooking for one, which got me thinking. I started thinking about the path to food sustainability and the “in between” region, folks who aren’t destitute and struggling to feed themselves, but aren’t made of money either. Do I have anything to offer you all? Well, I am one of those people who isn’t destitute and also isn’t made of money, but wants to find ways to reduce my dependency on the “global food system”, eat locally, reduce my burden on the environment, and also to have at least a little more control over my access to food, a concept I’ve heard referred to as “food sovereignty”. The thing is though, I also don’t have a whole lot of time, equipment, space, a large family to cook for (just the two of us) or well, the discipline to spend hours in the kitchen each night.

I will probably tell you a lot of things you already know, but perhaps you will learn something new, a new trick, skill, or way of viewing your eating habits. I must also caveat that my experience is in no way all inclusive, I am not even where I want to be, I can’t say in any way that I “know it all”, or even that I have the best way of going about or viewing things, but this is what worked for Brett and I. A lot of it is psychological; some of it is common sense, pragmatic, or resourceful. I must also state that neither Brett nor I are fans of sudden change. Nor do I feel that, at least for us, this is the most effective route to a long-term, lasting change in lifestyle or personality. I prefer the gradual method, the trial and error method, but this requires one to have an unlimited sense of humor, and also be willing to fail, even waste, on their path to, well, reducing their waste. It might seem counterintuitive to waste to not waste, but if you don’t know how to cook, garden, or preserve food, there is a learning curve involved, it helps to be aware of that. You should also view your transition as a journey, a gradual change that requires effort and even failure, basic cooking skills, how and where to obtain food, and how to be resourceful with the materials you have.

The first post will be about meal planning. Learning to look at what you eat in a slightly different manner, and assessing where you are, what you like, where you’d like to go, the level of effort you want to put in to your food preparation, etc. I will discuss how Brett and I plan our meals in such a way that we do not waste food and does not require a lot of money, but does require planning, motivation, and creativity.

In the second post, I plan to discuss the notion that sustainable, local food is unaffordable. I will talk about the different ways of food procurement and how to get the most out of the resources you and your locality possess.

And the third post will be about gardening in small places and changing your viewpoint about “waste”. I will discuss how to turn your waste into food, while also reducing your environmental impact, costs, and reliance on the global food chain.

Stay tuned.

Garden Update #14 - This Is A Long One

The gardens are continuing to progress nicely. We didn't have as much rain this week, the winds were calm, and we had a fair share of sunlight, so we've seen a lot of growth. The pepper plants in the container garden are starting to get very tall and weighted down with fruit, so Brett is going to try to figure out a "non-invasive" way of staking them up. We probably should have put something to stake them up on when we transplanted them, but we didn't think about it, we'll know for next year.

One of our vining squash at the community garden is going nuts. When we got there today, we noticed it had made its way into the neighboring plot. We may end up having to wind it around the plot if it keeps this up.

We also noticed what appeared to be some sort of aphid on our roma tomato plant today. Brett used the 'ol "thumb and forefinger" method to rid the plant of most of them today (or you could always do my "flick it off and hope it doesn't come back" routine, either way, I suggest something manual as a first attempt at solving a bug problem organically, unless you don't find the problem until it has reached the point of infestation), but we may have to use the boiled garlic-cayenne pepper solution. Brett also thought he saw some caterpillar eggs, he brushed them off, but we may need to keep an eye on that.

Oh, and we have our first squash! You'll see it in the pictures below, we think it's a yellow straightneck. We'll have to make sure to label our crops from here on out, you know, so we know what they are.... ;-)

As I've noted in some of my previous garden updates (and elsewhere), I have gotten very interested in permaculture and other types of "holistically" approached gardening. I've also become more interested in sustainable, ecological, and socially just food, and well, food self-sufficiency in general. As my interest has grown, I realized that one of the best things we can do, all around, is to grow as much of our own food as possible, while using as few resources as possible, I've done more research, and somewhere along the way, was introduced to indoor gardening for use during the winter months, or for growing crops not suitable to one's climate.

What I didn't know, is that for some plants, growth has more to do with soil temperatures and conditions than length of direct sunlight. I think what I've discovered is that it takes a thoughtful, mindful, and dare I say common sense approach to get the most out of the space and resources you have at your disposal. Sure, you can grow tomatoes and things like that inside, but it's going to take an awful lot of work and probably a lot of external resources. What you need to do is to look for things you eat on a regular basis in which hours of sunlight is not an issue (shade crops, dwarf crops), tolerant crops (cool weather, moisture loving/hating), self-pollinators, or ones that can be manually pollinated with little effort.

This is where Brett comes in and why we work together so well. He thinks plants are neat, yes, but determining what to grow, what companions grow well with it, ward off bugs, disease, provide soil nutrients, etc., how to start the seeds, care for the soil, how to tend to it, what to do with it when it's done growing, these kinds of things are not really of interest to him. What he is interested in are the "engineering" aspects of it. The design, the "irrigation systems", the apparatus the whole thing sits upon, all that kind of stuff. I hate that kind of stuff, so it works out well.

I was a little nervous to bring this up to him as we've had so many changes lately, I was afraid he'd think "when is this going to stop?!?!" So I waited for a little while.

The first thing I did was bring up the idea of indoor dwarf fruit trees. I did some research and found out that dwarf avocado, lemon, lime, and clementine trees can all be grown indoors and they will even fruit. Especially if you have Southern facing windows like we do. Granted they will not fruit nearly as much or as often as one planted in the ground, and there is the chance that they will never fruit, but it seems like such a neat idea. We've wanted more plants and greenery in the house, but we both have a hard time justifying something that isn't "useful". But when I brought this up with him, he seemed very interested, it could produce fruit at some point, other wise, it's a pretty tree. So a dwarf avocado and key lime (Mexican lime) tree, suited to container growing, comprise my birthday "wish list" (there you go Dad!).

Today, after some thinking, I floated the idea of some sort of indoor "winter garden", and Brett really liked the idea, so long as I decided what we grew, tended to it once the "system" was in place, and well, cooked with it. Seems like a fair deal to me. Now, I have to do some research on sunlight, soil conditions, temperatures, etc., but I've put a list together of "cool weather" or tolerant crops that I thought might be possibilities for inclusion in the indoor garden.

Herbs/Kitty "Distracters":
• Sweet Basil
• Thai Holy Basil
• Peppermint
• Wheatgrass (for the kitties)
• Catnip (for the kitties)

(We may add some beneficial legumes or flowers here if needed for soil maintenance.)

Root Crops
• Garlic
• Onions (Red, Green, Yellow, White)
• Carrots (short, small variety)
• Beets

Greens:
• Mesclun Mix (various baby salad greens)
• Spinach
• Swiss Chard
• Kale

Other:
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Sugar Snap Peas*
• Snow Peas*
• Green Beans*
• Blueberries*
• Acorn Squash*

Brett has some really cool ideas for how to rig this whole thing up. The * denotes crop he wants to attempt trellising or vining. He had an awesome idea for the blueberries and acorn squash, we could try a long, fairly shallow (though deep enough to allow an adequate root system) potting container backed by a trellis against a wall in our apartment that gets full sun. We could then train the berries and squash to climb up the trellis. I had the idea of wrapping blankets around the pots to help them maintain a constant, warm soil temperature even on cold days.

I learned that beans and peas grow well indoors from this Canadian gardening website. We love stir-fries and snack on fresh, sweet peas, so we might give these a chance too. I'm not sure, but I think that beans might help fix nitrogen in the soil. Like I said, I still have much to research.

Brett also has an idea for using old coolers as little microsystems, where we can plant a variety of herbs, root veggies, greens, other veggies, and cat greens. We thought this system might be a great application for a new "irrigation system" we learned about that is used in India to get the most absorption with the least amount of water. You take a clay container with a small hole in the bottom of it, and bury it in your soil or container, fill it with water, it slowly trickles out from between the pores and crevices in the clay and keeps the soil adequately watered without overwatering. So simple, yet so rarely discussed, let alone used.

Anyways, so there is definitely interest and we are going to attempt a small indoor garden over the winter. I don't what'll happen, we may get nothing out of this experiment, but it has worked for others so it seems like it's worth a shot for us. If anybody out there who reads this blog has any experience with indoor gardening or growing dwarf fruit trees in containers, please leave any tips and hints you may have and feel free to email us.

Back to the garden update at hand! Here is the Community Garden:





















The original two tomato plants we had, the Brandywine and the Better Boy, didn't end up making it, we've also lost a couple of squash and other unknown crops along the way, so we picked up two sad looking tomato plants lingering at the market. They are doing quite a bit better than they were when we planted them last week, and they both even have some little tomatoes on them. We might have enough tomatoes to can with after all!



















This roma plant is going absolutely wild! We've never had too much luck with tomatoes, but up until now, we've only tried them in containers, so I've never seen anything like this. We've lost a few already, they're so close together they stab each other and start to rot!























Here's the other new tomato plant.



















Our first little squash!

















Now onto my brief weekly moment of excitement over OPGs.

I thought I'd show the whole garden. It really is beautiful, all the crops growing, a nice little patch of forest behind it. We've seen deer there when we've been at the garden. Such a nice sight, I just hope they don't make a snack out of our plants. You can see the fun painted rain barrels off to the side in one of those pictures, those are nice to have.



















It's corn! Sadly, this person's few stalks of corn seem to be faring far better than most we've seen in the Midwest. When we were driving to St. Louis a few weeks ago, fields with corn "growing' in them looked so pitiful, so small.

Onto the container garden:



















And now for your weekly dose of "Pepper Porn", courtesy of this pepper fanatic. I know there is always a disproportionate amount of pepper pictures in these posts, but I can't help it, the peppers are so photogenic....















Chocolate bell pepper. I hate when this happens, this plant seems to be devoting all its energy to growing this one pepper. There is no new growth, no blooms, nothing, just this pepper!















Cayenne peppers.















More of those lovely cayennes. Don't they look kind of mean? :-)

















All the Hungarian Wax peppers have started upside down. This plant has a lot of peppers on it, and it still growing strong, with new buds on it daily.

















The banana peppers. They haven't really seemed like they are going to be too prolific thus far, despite their reputation and even our experience with them in the past. We've already gotten a few off the plants so far (probably because we have six sad looking plants), but there are never more than two peppers growing at the same time.

















I can't wait until all these sweet, petite, orange bell peppers mature. Mmmmmm.



















Our jalapeno plant is really taking off. I like that the pepper seem to be progressing at roughly the same pace, so they might all mature at roughly the same time which will allow me to make a bunch of salsa out of them.















I don't know what kind of flowers these are, but they are some sort of native wildflower. We got some flower seeds awhile back at a peace rally and decided to plant them, thinking they might bring beneficial insects. They are also pretty.



















Super chilies.

















These are our two little starts, still going strong. We have a serrano and a New Mexican Chile in here, we'll probably need to separate these soon. One of them has a bud on it!



















This serrano has been very prolific this year. We used two of the larger ones this weekend to make an "Asian-ish Cole Slaw" which I will be posting about sometime soon, it was fantastic, and the chilies tasted wonderful. I love leaving chiles on the vine until they mature and become red. I find this to be their best point of flavor, but they do increase in spice as they mature as well. But they don't have to be mature to pick them. For example, the serranos on our plant don't generally get any longer than about 2 inches. So once they are fat and plump, they are ready to pick. You can also get an idea of ripeness by pressing lightly on the wall of the pepper, if it is very firm, it is not ripe, if it gives ever so slightly, it's ready to go. At least this has been my experience.

Check out this week's CSA:















We've got a cucumber, a zucchini, what I think is another cucumber, but to be completely honest, I'm not sure, some leaf lettuce, beets, a yellow onion, some gorgeous looking little new potatoes, fresh dill, and collard greens (which are excellent shredded, steamed, and used in a stir-fry.)

Here is the rest of our farmer's market booty.















We've got an eggplant, some local shiitake mushrooms (!!!!! This is a rare treat, the restaurants usually buy all of her (the local purveyor) mushrooms leaving none for the market. I'm really happy local restaurants are serving her goods though!), fresh garlic, sweet basil (Phil's organic greens just rock), cucumber (I was feeling the cuke yesterday I guess), snow peas, red cabbage, and tomatoes.

Lots of yummy stuff, I have a lot to work with this week. And I am taking a long(er) weekend, we already had Friday off due to the holiday, but I also took Monday and Tuesday off. I am very fortunate to get a lot of vacation and personal time at my job, and that our work load is slowest during the summer. Not only do I have plenty of time to take off, I'm actually able to use it - a common problem workers here in the US have. It makes having to have a "regular" job bearable. Don't take that the wrong way, I actually really enjoy what I do, it's intellectually stimulating, flexible, it nourishes my love of continued learning, but my heart's not in it. My dream would be to sell my salsa and homegrown veggies at the market to make any additional money I needed, but mostly, just to homestead.

Coming from a self-professed "city girl", this is weird, but I have changed. We are working towards, at the very least, being far more self-sufficient. Our goal is to live very simply and frugally so we can pay down our educational debts quickly, purchase some land (hopefully just a small house with a decent yard here in the city that we could retrofit), and get to the point where neither of us have to work full-time, or at the very least, where only one of us does. That isn't to say we wouldn't work, but we want to spend our time doing more simple things, growing and preparing food (in my case), building, creating, and maintaining things (in Brett's case), living simply with less - even when that means damn hard work (both of us), dedicating more time to joy, music, company of friends and family (both of us). This is not, in any way, an unachievable goal, quite the contrary. You just have to rethink what is important to you, what you can give up without sacrificing your quality of life, when you think in a manner that reduces burden, clutter and thus frees your spirit and your creative nature, you think of all sorts of ways to "trim the fat", and suddenly ideas such as these don't seem quite so far fetched after all.

That's all for now.

'Til next time.

On the Joy of Simple Living

I’ve been thinking for awhile about lifestyle changes and all the little things people are doing everyday to lighten their burden on the Earth, to be better stewards of the planet and everything and everyone on it. There are many reasons we all do the things we do; we tackle problems from different angles, and there are many positive aspects of our actions that we might not often stop to think about. But I, still trying to find joy in the benign, everyday experience, have thought about it quite a bit lately.

To me, even if suddenly issues like peak oil and climate change were no longer a problem, I would still continue to live the way I do and continue to try to live better with less, to me it doesn’t seem right that just because I live in an affluent nation I should be able to consume so much more than my fair share of the world’s resources. Let’s go out on a limb even further and say that global hunger and inequality were suddenly eradicated overnight, I would still live this way as I feel a wonderful sense of calm, freedom and homeostasis with the world around me.

Let me explain further. There is a concept Barry Schwartz talks about in the book The Paradox of Choice. It basically states that choice is a positive thing, to an extent, but it can get to the point where there is so much choice that even the simplest decision is suddenly not so simple. And if one is a conscious consumer of either products or information, there is even more anxiety that goes into decisions such as “what type of cereal should I buy? I have 75 different choices?!” or even more difficult “what source of news should I trust?” Living simply reduces a lot of these choices, though one’s choice of media is no simple decision no matter what, but when you buy locally, say at the farmer’s market, there is a variety of choice, but it is still limited in many ways. You won’t find lemons at the farmer’s market in Missouri, nor will you find 5 different kinds of them! If you subscribe to a CSA as we do, well, you get what they give you, and that makes things pretty easy.

But living simply goes far beyond consumerism; it has a lot to do with what you don’t do. Giving up our car was perhaps the most liberating thing I’ve ever done. Getting somewhere on my own accord is such a rewarding feeling. I know I am doing my part to reduce the negative aspects of gasoline. Not to mention, I don’t make useless trips, and thus get useless stuff, I have to think twice before I go somewhere as my ability to get there depends on the bus schedule, the weather, and if I feel like walking. At first this was tough, but then I began to appreciate having to figure out other things to do with my time. I began to do things like watch the birds in the neighborhood, even though they are just ‘lowly’ house sparrows, starlings, robins, cardinals, etc, and let me tell you, they are truly fascinating. Some of my favorite things to do now include taking a walk to the garden after dinner or reading a good book on a Friday night with the windows open and a nice cool breeze, not very exciting, but truly enjoyable and peaceful activities.

I spend time growing my own food, attempting to play music, learning about the people I care about, spending time with my animals, cooking, really very basic things.

I know so many people who feel overwhelmed by the ‘hustle and bustle’ of life, and I feel truly bad for them. We only have one life, and there is so much around us that we miss, small gestures from kind neighbors, baby squirrels making their way around one’s neighborhood, these small things are truly what matter in the end. We often complain about how we ‘have no time’ and for many this is a valid complaint. However, I often feel like we spend an awful lot of time talking about how little time we have, and we have to remember that we choose how to spend what little free time we do have. It feels wonderful to slow down, spend more time preparing meals, reading, enjoying nature, good friends, family, and neighbors.

Why am I waxing poetic like this? I guess it’s that I’ve seen a lot of signs of changes in our world to come, things that could be very bad like potential wars or climate catastrophes, possibly economic depression or collapse. But I also see signs of a change in the conception of reality for many people, close friends and family are coming around in ways I never thought possible, and I’m constantly amazed at the caring and resourceful people all over the world doing their little part. Not to mention, living in fear or with intense anxiety over a future out of one’s control can leave one feeling helpless and hopeless and cause many people to either just give up or become paralyzed with fear.

I live simply for many reasons, but I’ve found that as I’ve simplified my life, I’ve also limited the things to be anxious about but expanded the things I can get joy out of because I now appreciate things I used to take for granted. I’m truly happy, and I think many others too find immense personal satisfaction and joy in doing what they think is right: living simply, doing more with less, and having an identity defined by much more than the stuff they own or the size of their paycheck, or even how they earn that paycheck. I am much more than an Institutional Research Analyst.

I can only hope that if our world is forced to live a more humble way of life in the future that it can resemble something similar to the scene in my neighborhood last night. It was a gorgeous night; folks were out on their porches, cooling off and enjoying the weather; families were gathering to chat in the parking lots; a group of kids from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds were playing a rudimentary game of soccer in the parking lot; kids on bikes, a common nighthawk screeching and diving for bugs, you get the picture. It was a wonderful scene and it again illustrates how rich and beautiful a simple life can be.

I must also make note of the amazing sense of community the internet has fostered. It seems that many feel isolated in their physical communities. Not many people share our interests or values; we are vested in different things. Some of us, as we move through different levels of understanding about the world around us, begin to become distanced from those that used to be close to us, as we no longer see reality in the same ways. The common ground upon which we once stood is no longer there. Our neighbors are more like strangers. But what we’ve forged here in the blogosphere, though not real in the physical sense, has all the aspects of a functioning community, and I can’t speak for others, but you all have taught me so much, enriched my life, and given me a sense of belonging that is hard to feel when you are ‘out of the mainstream’. I think, given the specialized, self interested nature of many of our Western societies, like minded people may not be found next door, they may be across the world, but so long as we are there for each other, continue to teach each other, to continue to help each other through the troubles we all face, personal or as a whole, we have a common interest and common goals that bind us in ways our physical communities used to. That is not to discount our physical communities – anyone from Columbia, Missouri who reads this blog and is interested in what we stand for or have to say, please contact us; we would love to connect with more like minded people – but until things change, by choice or necessity, at least we have something, and as humble and minimal as it is, it is something to be thankful for.

So what do you guys think? In your journey to live a more ethical, sustainable, and socially just life, have you experienced any unexpected positive outcomes? Has living simply made your relationships easier, more satisfying or a nightmare? What has the blogging community brought to your life? To your sense of belongingness and ability to influence those around you? Do you see positive change on the horizon or more of the same? What keeps you all plugging away, doing what you can to make the world a better place?

Fajita Burritos with "Traditional" Refried Beans

So I'm a little bit behind in my food posts as things were a bit hectic this past week.

We had a really good, albeit short, trip to St. Louis. My dad's graduation ceremony was held at the Missouri History Museum. It was a lovely ceremony with a good keynote speaker. It was also really nice to see my grandparents from Houston, we don't get to see them enough. After the ceremony, we had a nice lunch and looked around the St. Louis Art Museum for awhile. I will post some St. Louis pictures at the end of this post.

Onto the food. As you all know, Brett and I love Mexican food, it might go beyond love, but that is beside the point. :-) Anyways, we have been trying to get a good refried bean recipe down for a couple of years. Our beans have always turned out well, but they were also always more flavorful than authentic refried beans, and something always seemed a bit off. I did a little research and experimented, and have come up with the most 'authentic' recipe for vegan refried beans we've had yet.

Brett also made a good portion of this meal. I made the beans, he made the marinade, cut up all the veggies, and marinated them for the day. When I got home from work to make the meal, all I had to do was sauté the veggies and heat up the beans. Gotta love meals like that!

'Traditional' Vegan Refried Beans

1 cup of dry pinto beans, soaked overnight and rinsed

1 serrano pepper, stem removed

1 jalapeno pepper, stem removed

1/2 medium onion (or equivalent)

1/2 bulb of garlic, peeled

2-3 tbsp vegetable (or other) oil

1-2 tbsp salt (in water)

In a crock pot, combine all the ingredients and fill the pot with water. Simmer on high for 2-3 hours or until beans are soft. (You could also do this in a pot on the stove.)

Reserve about half a cup of the bean water.

Remove the peppers, garlic, and onion, and discard.

Mash beans with a mixer or potato masher, adding bean water and salt as needed to taste.

Fajita Burrito with Refried Beans

2 red bell peppers, seeded and sliced

1/2 red onion, sliced

1 package white button mushrooms, sliced

Just Another Fajita Marinade

refried beans

tortillas

salsa

Marinate the veggies in Just Another Fajita Marinade for at least a couple of hours.

Heat a large skillet over medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add the veggies and cook for about 15 minutes or until soft. You may want to put a lid on the pan (if you have one) to help them cook faster.

Layer refried beans and marinated veggies in warmed tortillas and roll 'em up! Serve with salsa.

We both really like this mariade, it works really well with fajita style veggies.

I'll end this post with a few pictures from the History Museum St. Louis. Unfortunately, none of them will be of my dad's graduation. For one, the lighting was difficult for our camera and we didn't get many good pictures. And for two, well, I didn't ask him if he minded living in infamy on my blog, so I didn't think it would be fair to post the pictures without asking him first.

Anyways.....

I really have a thing with public transportation, so I was excited to take a picture of one of the Metro buses in St. Louis.

The Missouri History Museum. You can actually see my family walking up towards it.

Old trolly car.

Good 'ol TJ.

These posters are from 1943. I don't think we should have ever lost these principles.

And finally, they have an exhibit at the Museum where you can stand behind this thing that looks like the basket of a hot air ballon and the TV shows you 'flying' over St. Louis, seeing the arch, all that sort of stuff. It's a pretty silly, kitchy thing, but I thought it would be fun to take a picture of it 'flying' us over St. Louis. See the Arch in the background. It felt so real...... ;-)

I will try to get back on this afternoon and post the weekly garden update, and will try to catch up on everyone's blog soon!

'Til next time.