Tag Archives: it’s not easy being green

>Breakfast Bake with Fruit

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>Chuck: I fear we are failing to communicate.
Daisy: What’s up?
Chuck (unpacking groceries in kitchen): I’ve been buying fresh fruit and you aren’t eating it. I have pears in the fridge and they’re getting overripe.
Daisy: Sigh. It was a wild week; I usually eat fruit with my lunch, but I had a shortened lunch period each day. I’ll see what I can bake with the rest this weekend.

So the search was on! I looked through quick breads, crisps, and cobblers, and decided that this Blueberry Breakfast Bake could also accommodate pears. And indeed, it did. I split the 2 cups blueberries into 1 cup blueberries (frozen, from last summer’s Farm Market) and 1 cup diced very-ripe pears.

Blueberry (or other fruit) Breakfast Bake

1 egg or 1/4 cup egg substitute
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup skim milk
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
pinch of ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 slices whole-wheat bread
2 cups fresh fruit: blueberries or pears or your choice

In a large bowl, beat the egg and sugar together with a fork until well blended. Stir in the milk, cinnamon, lemon rind, nutmeg, and vanilla. Tear the bread into 1/2 inch pieces and stir into the mixture. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly coat and 8X8-inch baking dish with vegetable oil cooking spray. Stir the blueberries (and other fruity gems) into the bread mixture and spoon into the pan, spreading evenly.
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until firm. Serve warm. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or serve with whipped cream.

Daisy’s hint: in my increasing quest to keep our food supply more local, I froze blueberries last summer. By freezing them on a cookie sheet and then dumping the frozen berries into a container, the blueberries do not stick together. I can pull out exactly the amount I need. One cup, one and a half cups, or just a handful to serve over pancakes. Next summer I plan to do the same with strawberries and raspberries.

Original recipe taken from Betty Rhode’s Super So Fat, Low Fat, No Fat Cookbook

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>Pantry Raid, the sequel!

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One fun part of a Snow Day is the chance to cook and eat lunch together. I donned the Iron Chef MommyMoto hat and dug in the freezer. Often I find myself looking over the pan and thinking, “How much is local?” Here’s the assessment of the snow day’s brunch skillet, as I called this mix. We served it with eggs and toast.

Onions and Peppers from the freezer, originally Farmers’ Market fare. Spinach from the freezer, grown in our own garden (the spinach, not the freezer). Frozen corn from the grocery store, a brand that does a lot of business in Wisconsin. It’s tough to trace the origins of grocery store foods sometimes, but I know this company buys from state farmers. That helps. A little.

The cherry tomatoes were actually trucked in the greatest distance. I had a poor crop of tomatoes, so we didn’t have enough to freeze or can. These came to our store from (gulp) Texas.

Sigh. At least the eggs were organic and locally, um, laid.

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>Love is: a rain barrel

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>My rain barrels are turned upside down, emptied for the winter so they don’t fill and freeze. Ice expands, which would crack even the heavy duty barrels.

Chuck, dear husband of mine, models trains in HO scale. For the uninitiated, HO translates as small. Tiny. Put-on-your-glasses and look very closely for details Small.

The building below is part of a granary in his layout. The rain barrel is about the size of my pinkie fingernail, if not smaller. Yes, dear readers; he made a rain barrel in his train layout in tribute to his wife’s green philosophies.


Now if I can stop him from buying the shopping bag that says, “I carry this bag because my wife cares about the environment”!

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>Doing Good by Buying Green

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>I’m still finishing up the Christmas shopping. There are a few people that are just hard to please! They’re either very picky, have very expensive taste, or have everything they need and don’t want more. Mother Nature Network has their Quirky Gift collection, the Nature Conservancy has a Green Gift Guide.
You can plant a tree, donate an acre, or “give” a coral reef.
You could “give” a jaguar. Well, you couldn’t actually wrap it up and put the big cat under the tree, but you could donate in your loved ones’ names to help preserve the jaguar’s habitat.
The Nature Conservancy also has a Marketplace, where all purchases go toward the lofty goal of preserving nature. Ooh, maybe I should get the organic cotton crib bedding for my new niece! Hint to family: the logo t-shirts are cute, and they have some books that look to be right up my eco-friendly alley.

Ever since Chuck ordered knit slippers from National Geographic’s online market, he’s been getting their print catalog full of unique gifts. There’s also Heifer International, where a small donation will donate a cow, goat, sheep, llama, or even (gulp) rabbit to a family in need. These are gifts that truly pay it forward; the money spent does good in the world.

I can’t bring myself to sponsor a rabbit, even though they are a valuable source of protein. I’ll pick up a few items for our school’s Adopt-a-Family program, though, and do good in my own small way. Then again, a teacher and blogger can never have too many of these…

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>When green products have wasteful packaging

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>Eco gifts. Love ’em or hate ’em (and how could anyone truly hate a gift that helps keep our planet healthy?), they’re here to stay. Last year I gave reusable shopping bags, some simple, some fancy. This year, I’m still looking for the perfect inexpensive eco-gift for my extended family and friends.

Mother Nature Network has an unusual set of gift suggestions in their Quirky Gift Guide. I seriously like these bootie slippers, but they’re a little pricey for my gift budget. My favorite, however, is this wallet. If Amigo needed a new wallet, this cute bifold made from ties and suits would be perfect.

I’ve been thinking of giving anti-static dryer balls as a stocking stuffer. They’re inexpensive, long-lasting, useful, creative – all in all, a good gift for the family members who don’t need Random Stuff in their Stockings. But wait: look at this wasteful packaging! Much bigger than the product itself, plastic galore, impossible to open without scissors, yada yada yada. In other words, how could such a good product come in such a terrible package?!

I contemplated returning it. Really. In the balance, is it worthwhile? Thinking long term, these simple anti-static balls will keep a year’s worth of fabric softener chemicals out of the water supply, save $$ by removing the product from grocery lists, and help take good care of clothing in the process. That’s my dilemma: does the good outweigh the bad?

Readers, what do you think? How do you balance the eco-good with the eco-bad? The green with the greenwashing? The green and frugal product in the plastic package?

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>Are your holiday cards in the mail yet?

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Mine are not on the way. Mine sometimes even end up going out close to or even after Christmas. I confess.
I heard a Plurk friend exclaiming that she’d already received a card from an uber-organized Martha type. I guarantee it wasn’t me. In fact, I just cut up last year’s cards a week ago! With the help of a few fun craft scissors and a basket full of holiday and birthday cards, I can create gift tags and little decorative pieces for gift wrap. Some cards will yield not just one, but several cute tags.

Martha Stewart doesn’t live here. Nope. Never has, never will. But I’ll tell you this: I haven’t purchased gift tags since we were married 25 years ago. It’s too much fun (and green and frugal)to do it this way!

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>50 Ways to Love your Larder

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>Never Waste Food Again – 50 Ways, 50 pieces of advice. I found this post through a link on Eco-Women.

I do fairly well on this list. Vegetables are fairly easy. Between bunnies and soups, we rarely waste a veggie.
Fruits? We’re doing a decent job on that list, too. Orange peels get composted, apple butter is delicious, and Chuck has been pulling the raspberries from last summer’s market out of the freezer to top his ice cream.
Grains – I use leftover pasta and rice in casseroles, soups, and other leftover concoctions. Bread is a little harder. I like toast and sandwiches, but Amigo and Chuck usually pass on the PBJs in favor of some other sort of lunch fare. Making our own croutons and setting aside bread crumbs is something we haven’t tried yet. Maybe we will – or maybe we won’t. I’m not a big eater of croutons; La Petite enjoys them, however.
Making the Most of Meat: I started making soup stock from meat bones a few years ago, and wondered what took me so long to discover the process. It’s so easy, it tastes so much better than broth from the jar of granules, and it is nearly no-cost.
Herbs – we moved the herb pot inside, so we’re still working on it. The basil died, the rosemary is struggling, but the oregano is stretching toward the windows in search of the elusive winter sun. If I have more success with herbs next year, maybe we’ll freeze or dry some.

In conclusion, my fellow green-folk and family, we live in the land of plenty. Let’s make sure that less of that plenty goes to waste.

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>The frugal and green teacher: room decor edition

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>One more sign of a frugal and green teacher: low- and no-cost room decor. First, train pictures illustrate our theme of “All Aboard the Fourth Grade Express!” The pictures are from an old calendar.

Demonstrate expectations like headings for written work and make a poster from the demo. Materials: two scraps of chart paper, a piece of leftover tagboard, and a blank flash card. Yes, I often use book characters as examples. It’s a literary and entertaining attention-getter.

And the fall foliage, large size, scavenged from the give-aways when another teacher retired. These are two-sided; they look great from the school’s front lawn.


Then there’s poster fun: using tagboard already in stock, an overhead projector, and clip art, a little creativity makes a world of difference and saves a bunch of money.

Is there more in the NaBloPoMo edition of the Frugal and Green Teacher? You’ll have to click back next Monday to find out.

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>A Tree with a History

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>This tree was tall. It was born as a hybrid, created to be a pulp tree for the paper industry. It grew quickly, spread its seeds quickly (we pulled out its descendants every spring), and reached for the sky amidst the other trees in our old, historic neighborhood. It fell not to a lumbering crew, but to an urban tree crew with chainsaws and ropes.


The scientist who once lived in the house across the street experimented with trees, combined the cottonwood and poplar, created a successful cross-breed for his industry and planted one in his front yard. That tree was a climber for the kids, a host for birds’ nests, and a favorite route for traveling squirrels. But in the last year or two, it was leaning, stooping like an elderly grandparent reluctant to use a walker. Every storm would drop a few branches in the yard or the street, and the family was nervous. What would it take to knock this once-stately old giant into a home? At its size, it could take two or three homes with it if it fell.


So the humans took it down before the winter winds could do it. In keeping with the legend and the memories, Chuck and I salvaged several pieces. Chuck sliced a few thin for me; I’ll take them into my classroom. My students can look at the rings, analyze the age of the tree, and imagine the history it has seen.


A teacher down the hall is an expert in forestry. She’s offered to look over the rings and help me interpret. In exchange, I’ll share the rich stories of the tree, its developers, and its fans.

It’s not Aldo Leopold’s old oak, but this tree is special. A few small pieces are on the woodpile, but there’s more than firewood in this gentle giant.

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>The frugal and green teacher: reading edition

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>Another sign of a frugal and green teacher: books procured through Paperbackswap.com. Our grade’s theme is trains, so I entered “trains” in the search box and clicked “children’s” for genre. I ordered ten books, all good quality literature, at a variety of reading levels. My students love them. This is a rare day; most of the time, these books are in someone’s desk.

The USA Pop-up books, however, were in the Target dollar aisle a few years ago. I bought five. Hmmm… I see four in the picture. One is in a desk somewhere, and I’m sure the kiddo is enjoying reading it!
Tune in next week for the next episode of The Frugal and Green Teacher, NaBloPoMo edition!

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