Another reason to grow herbs, among other pretty plants: soup stock. Chuck had beef bones left after grilling supper. He knows to save them for me. I dropped them in a pan of water and added, fresh from the backyard:
Beef Broth in Progress
Beef Bones, sage, green onion, and garlic scapes. Did I forget to add basil? Dang it. The basil is growing like wildfire. Must make a pesto or something similar soon.
I’ve been waiting and waiting for this day. The Downtown Farmers’ Market has returned to my fair city! The weather was muggy, but tolerable. No rain, just the threat of it. And people? The street was mobbed. We bought — wait. I can make this easier.
Market Bounty, Week I
You can probably recognize the spinach, the asparagus, and strawberries, and lettuce, too. I also picked up whole wheat bread with flaxseed (from my favorite Amish baker) and a small loaf of cheddar cheese bread. For my sweet husband who loves to cook, we picked up scallops (not local, I know), red potatoes (much more local), and a great local barbecue sauce. He chatted with the sauce maker for a while and got some tips on how to grill really tender ribs. There’s more, but I must get to work prepping the strawberries and the peas. The peas are in the picture, sort of. They’re hiding under the asparagus.
Ah, the Downtown Farmers’ Market. Now it really feels like summer.
I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about five years ago. I was wowed by the project of eating locally for a full year. Her experiment was impressive, starting in spring with rhubarb from the local farmers’ market and asparagus from her own yard and then moving through the seasons.
I still use some of the recipes from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I do lean toward local foods, in particular local produce. I’m nowhere near the level of Kingsolver’s experiment, but putting the locavore philosophy into practice is now a natural part of our food shopping and preparation.
Another year long experiment was No Impact Man by Colin Beavan. I’d had No Impact Man on my wish list for a while. When a copy became available on Paperback Swap dot com, I grabbed it.
Beavan’s project was impressive, too. He decided to create a carbon footprint as light as possible for a full year. His project started in stages, starting with walking or biking to and from work and resisting the urge to buy food or drinks on or in disposable containers. Every few weeks he would add in a new challenge such as limited electricity or water. His project was as urban as Kingsolver’s was rural; Beavan and his wife and daughter lived in a ninth floor apartment in New York City.
One trait both books share is the experimental nature of each project. The authors were both skilled writers before their environmental projects began; and their reflections throughout their respective projects reflect both facts and subjective responses. Difficulties, roadblocks, support, positive and negative attention, and real-life reflections make both experiments less clinical and more enjoyable. Colin Beavan’s toddler decided she preferred her new cloth diapers to the disposables they’d used previously. Barbara Kingsolver’s daughter went to college mid-project and relished her home visits for the good quality local food.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and No Impact Man remain active on the web and in the green scene. That’s what impressed me. They didn’t dump their experiments the minute the calendar flipped to the next year. They left the extremes behind, but the core of each project remained. Kingsolver continued to buy and serve local food, growing what she can and raising her flock of heirloom turkeys. Beavan turned on his electricity and uses public transportation now, but he turns off the lights when he leaves a room and rarely uses an elevator.
Why a book review in June, years after these two were published? Well, folks, I realized that our family already makes a fairly decent low carbon footprint, and courtesy of our freezer and a hot water bath canner, we enjoy local fruits and vegetables year round. I’m not writing a book (well, not about that), but I’m using the space in my semi-urban backyard quite well.
Readers, what are your green habits of choice?
The rhubarb patch was getting overgrown – again – and I was stuck at home due to car repairs. What’s the connection, you might ask, and my family and close friends and regular readers would say, “Doh!”
I might add that the weather was wet, wet, and more wet, so I wasn’t likely to spend any time in the garden temporarily known as the Okay By Me Swamp. That brought me back to the kitchen and (full circle) the rhubarb.
I baked cookies. We now have rhubarb cookies, delicious and sweet, and a little more room in the rhubarb patch. A little, I said. I only harvested what I needed for one cup. There’s plenty left in the patch. For your enjoyment, here’s the recipe, slightly modified from the one I found on All Recipes dot com.
Rhubarb Drop cookies
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 cup rhubarb, chopped thin
1/2 cup raisins
3 Tablespoons flax seeds
1. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside. Mix the raisins into this mixture until well coated to keep the raisins from clumping.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter and egg until smooth. Beat egg into batter. Stir in the rhubarb. Mix flour mixture into the wet ingredients just until combined. Sprinkle with flax seeds; stir one more time.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of cookie dough onto ungreased baking sheets. Optional: use a fork coated with sugar to flatten cookies slightly. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes. Cool on the pan for a few minutes before moving to wire rack.
Serve with coffee, of course.
And then, after you sample the fresh cookies, take the rhubarb leaves out to the compost along with the eggshell and coffee grounds. After all, compost is what happens, and what happens is all natural and good.
If you take the elevator entrance into my workplace, you’ll be in a tiny hallway next to this dark stairwell.
Enter if you Dare!
But if you feel like taking a risk, and you slip silently down the stairs, you’ll see this.
…and this.
There isn’t much sun in this window well – it faces North — but someone cares enough to water the plants and keep them growing.
Officially, I was out of school on Friday, June 6, as soon as I had my progress reports handed in and my cubicle cleaned. It didn’t feel that way, though.
I turned in my progress reports, cleaned my cubicle, and then took off to pick up Amigo at his sister’s apartment in Lake Geneva. We were on the road home when Amigo realized he’d forgotten his wallet. La Petite met us midway, and we were on track again.
Saturday was a busy day and a napping day. Amigo left for camp Sunday, so he spent Saturday doing his laundry and I helped – a little.
Sunday we took him to camp.
Monday could have been my first day of Summer Break, but I signed up for a training session that lasted four days. as Thursday ended, I gave a deep sigh of relief.
Then, Friday, we drove to camp to pick him up and bring him home. Still busy, not feeling the break yet.
Saturday and Sunday I did relax a little, but I did it with La Petite. She needed a little moral support for a few days, and I was available.
Well, folks, now it’s Monday, and it’s not going to be a manic Monday. I’m done traveling (for now), and I plan to stay at home, do my own laundry, and weed parts of the garden. I might even sleep in and/or take a nap. If you’re expecting a lot out of me, you’ll have to wait.
Readers, I know that Blog Basics state “Nobody cares what you had for lunch!” but I’m going to chance it. Due to a rude awakening (99% blocked carotid artery, et. al.), I’m getting serious about keeping my blood pressure down. Task one: monitor the aforementioned blood pressure.
Petunia bought me a home monitor, and I’ve been faithfully using it since I came home from the hospital. Now that I have the numbers and I’ve learned a little about what those numbers mean, I want to move to the next step: do something to keep those numbers low.
In the meantime, I’m paying attention to my eating habits. By using the USDA’s DASH diet, I hope to keep the BP numbers below that mystical threshold. So far, I’m meeting my goal of eating 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The tough part: what makes a serving? Well, I did find some guidelines. I think I can handle this.
Fruits and veggies will be easy for the foreseeable future: it’s Farmers’ Market season! My favorite market, the one that spans the entire downtown of my small city, is starting soon. Time to get out the cloth bags! Vegetable vendors, here I come!
Directly above my planting table, my storage spot for pots and soil and tools, a few newcomers are moving in.
They’re gone now. Don’t ask for details. It was a dark night in a backyard that likes to keep its secrets. Guy Noir himself could have staged a Raid and I wouldn’t reveal the details. No one was injured in the sting — well, no humans were stung. That’s the buzz, anyway.
And when my attempt at humor gets that bad, it’s time to stop blogging, wash the dirt out from under my nails, and put down the laptop.
Bunnies coming out after winter
That’s more like it.
Mine looks nothing like this.
I don’t have carrots yet. Just seeds.
Beans! This, I have!