I've never tried to grow grapes before. One of our friends has some grapevines growing around her back porch, and she often chooses not to do anything with them, so they go to waste. We got some from her one year and made jelly and canned grape juice from them, but I've always wanted to have my own vines. I think this year we might just go for it.
I'll have to do some research to find out more about varieties, but I've learned that there are more uses for grapes beyond the obvious. I'm interested in more jelly, but it seems that with the new dehydrator came a book of recipes that includes fruit leather. The kids are very interested in that. Also, you can eat grape leaves. A friend once made a dish with grape leaves wrapped around rice and a few other mysterious ingredients. They were delicious--I couldn't stop eating them. I'd be extremely happy to have access to my own grape leaves; you can't exactly buy them in the store. Come to that, I haven't even seen them at farmers' markets.
It seems that with the arrival of the new dehydrator, we're already discovering more and more possibilities for foods that we hadn't considered before, or had always treated as rare luxuries but soon could have both cheaply and easily.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Hello, Seedlings
Our first seedlings are up. I'll have to replant a few seeds, but of the ones I planted mid-month, most have come up. I'm especially pleased with the Heirloom Amish Paste tomatoes; the seed was actually from a packet that had been packed for 1999, so there was no guarantee it was still viable. But all of the spots in the pony pack I used now have nice healthy-looking baby tomato plants. I'd call that a definite win. My tomato beds have space for ten plants total. I'll put in six Amish Paste, two Burbank Red, and from our local greenhouse, two Principe Borghese, which are said to be great for sun-drying (or dehydrator drying.)
Monday, February 18, 2008
Bargain Hunting
I lucked out on eBay today. I was looking for a Squeezo strainer for processing fruit, tomatoes, zucchini, etc. Normally, one with all three screens would cost over $200, or you could buy the non-deluxe one with only the standard screen. Buying the additional pumpkin and berry screens costs at least $60.00 on top of what you already paid for the basic setup. Fortunately, I was able to find a great deal on eBay, and the Squeezo I purchased came with the three screens. I'm excited about that--having this strainer will really speed things up when we're processing our produce this year. Hmm. Processing produce. Try saying that five times fast.
I also found an electric dehydrator similar enough to the older model I already have that I'll be able to use it if mine stops working, as I fear it's going to do. They both take the same kind of drying trays, so if one dies, I can just swipe a couple of its trays, add them to the one that's still working and keep right on going. Alternatively, if my old one keeps working, I can use both dehydrators at once and double the amount of produce I can dry during the same 12-hour time span.
I also found an electric dehydrator similar enough to the older model I already have that I'll be able to use it if mine stops working, as I fear it's going to do. They both take the same kind of drying trays, so if one dies, I can just swipe a couple of its trays, add them to the one that's still working and keep right on going. Alternatively, if my old one keeps working, I can use both dehydrators at once and double the amount of produce I can dry during the same 12-hour time span.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Heirloom Seeds
According to the almanac and astrological data, today was one of the best days for starting seeds indoors for later transplant. This is the first year I've actually been on the ball enough to remember to buy seeds early and start any inside--usually I'm planting directly outdoors two to three weeks late, or buying already-started plants as large as I can get them from greenhouses. But this year, I didn't want hybrids; I wanted organic heirloom varieties. So a few weeks ago, I shopped for them online and ordered a bunch of seeds from this company. They arrived quickly, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how they do. I started some today in leftover little plastic pots from past-season bedding plants. If they all sprout, I should have Chinese cabbage, Golden Acre Cabbage, broccoli, leeks, asparagus, and two different varieties of tomato.
We don't have any south-facing windows in our house, so I've put the flat into the bottom half of a shallow clear plastic container in our dining-room window seat, which is east-facing. There's a heat vent on the floor right in front of it, so it should stay at a decent temperature, and I'll give it a little extra light each day with a gooseneck lamp to make up for whatever it lacks. On nice warm sunny days, I may even take the flat outside for a few hours. By the time we're past our last frost date, I should be able to transplant them into the garden beds or flower beds.
We don't have any south-facing windows in our house, so I've put the flat into the bottom half of a shallow clear plastic container in our dining-room window seat, which is east-facing. There's a heat vent on the floor right in front of it, so it should stay at a decent temperature, and I'll give it a little extra light each day with a gooseneck lamp to make up for whatever it lacks. On nice warm sunny days, I may even take the flat outside for a few hours. By the time we're past our last frost date, I should be able to transplant them into the garden beds or flower beds.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
A Healthy Dog Snack
I made something fun this evening. We'd run out of dog biscuits for our German Shepherd, Rommie, and I'd been dreading the idea of going to the store for some. Dog biscuits aren't an emergency--except maybe to the dog--but she'd been asking for them for the past few days and was no doubt starting to wonder why we didn't have any treats for her.
I had bought a book of healthy dog treat recipes for her for Christmas, and it came with a set of little dog-biscuit cookie cutters. So tonight I tried one. Due to ingredient availability, I had to change the recipe enough that other than some of the measurements, the ingredients are quite different from the original. For one, they're chicken-flavored, not beef. For another, I used equal amounts of brown rice flour and spelt flour--a German Shepherd is a hard-mouthed dog and they love to chew. So the fact that the resulting biscuits are now as hard as rocks is of no great importance to Rommie. She loved them, and I think that she understood that we were making a special treat just for her. She thought the dough was just as good raw as it was after it was baked. My younger daughter enjoyed helping cut out the shapes, including a big heart-shaped one for a special Valentines' Day gift. The cat liked the smell and taste of the treats when I crumbled one up and gave him a little of it--he just didn't want to have to chew something quite that hard. There was no baking soda or leavening agent of any kind in the recipe!
Our assessment is that it was fun, made with healthy ingredients, and very easy to do. It was nice to know exactly what was in it and where it all came from, and it was fun to see Rommie's reaction. It was also quite edible for humans--although if I were to eat one, I'd want to soak it in something to soften it first! It might make a great soup cracker, come to think of it.
Nah! Rommie knows they're for her, and when my husband tried a bite of one, she gave him a really funny look.
I had bought a book of healthy dog treat recipes for her for Christmas, and it came with a set of little dog-biscuit cookie cutters. So tonight I tried one. Due to ingredient availability, I had to change the recipe enough that other than some of the measurements, the ingredients are quite different from the original. For one, they're chicken-flavored, not beef. For another, I used equal amounts of brown rice flour and spelt flour--a German Shepherd is a hard-mouthed dog and they love to chew. So the fact that the resulting biscuits are now as hard as rocks is of no great importance to Rommie. She loved them, and I think that she understood that we were making a special treat just for her. She thought the dough was just as good raw as it was after it was baked. My younger daughter enjoyed helping cut out the shapes, including a big heart-shaped one for a special Valentines' Day gift. The cat liked the smell and taste of the treats when I crumbled one up and gave him a little of it--he just didn't want to have to chew something quite that hard. There was no baking soda or leavening agent of any kind in the recipe!
Our assessment is that it was fun, made with healthy ingredients, and very easy to do. It was nice to know exactly what was in it and where it all came from, and it was fun to see Rommie's reaction. It was also quite edible for humans--although if I were to eat one, I'd want to soak it in something to soften it first! It might make a great soup cracker, come to think of it.
Nah! Rommie knows they're for her, and when my husband tried a bite of one, she gave him a really funny look.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Butter, Thanks To Laura
I will admit, the approach of the public school I went to as a kid varied as much as its teachers, but one teacher in particular seemed to have found the best of both worlds. She was our fourth-grade teacher, and read aloud to us every day. She was probably the first teacher who really supported and encouraged my love of writing, and inspired in her class an interest in and enjoyment of history. One day while we were studying the pioneers, she brought cream to class and had us "churn" it in a glass canning jar. Each of us took turns sloshing the cream around in the jar until it finally, miraculously, turned into butter. It was the one and only time I ever made butter as a kid despite being raised by my grandparents who were born in the 1920's and probably saw their share of homemade butter.
Now, years later, I'm looking back on that butter-making with a smile. The correspondence school my kids are enrolled in has a wonderful hands-on curriculum, and as part of the fifth-grade study of American history, the kids are encouraged to get some heavy cream, put it in a canning jar, and slosh it around until it turns into butter. So over the last few years as both my girls went through the fifth grade one by one and dutifully sloshed their allotment of cream, I got to watch their eyes grow round with astonishment and delight as the foamy white mess in the jar suddenly morphed into thin white liquid with a large yellow lump in it. Watching them, it all came back to me--the wonder, the magic of something as simple as a pat of homemade butter.
Now that they've both gotten past that part of the curriculum and moved on to other studies, we've found another reason to make our own butter. As part of our local-food transition, I looked at the package to see where our butter comes from. Apparently, it's made in Texas. Or distributed from Texas. That's a very long way for that butter to travel, and doesn't fit into even an extremely generous definition of local for us. The almost-organic dairy farm where our milk comes from, however, is at least in Idaho. That's a start. I checked, and they don't do butter. But they do have heavy cream, and...hey, I have the technology to make butter. All I needed was a quart glass jar with a lid, the cream, and a pair of hands. Other than that, I needed a quick look at one of the kids' Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which described what to do with the resulting lump of butter to make sure you've gotten all the buttermilk out of it, and presto--local butter.
As it turned out, that one quart of cream went a very long way. We whipped some of it for use on a local-apple pie. I used the buttermilk left from making the butter in an Irish soda bread recipe I wanted to try. And after all that, we were still left with a pat of butter almost large enough to fill a typical-sized butter tub.
One of the usual objections to local and/or organic foods is the cost. This was one time when I saved money by going local and doing a couple of steps myself. I added up the cost of a container of whipped cream, a small tub of butter, and a pint of buttermilk, and lo and behold, buying those things separately came to more than what that one quart of heavy cream cost me. I'd call this experiment a win, and once we've used up all our Texas butter, we won't be buying more.
Now, years later, I'm looking back on that butter-making with a smile. The correspondence school my kids are enrolled in has a wonderful hands-on curriculum, and as part of the fifth-grade study of American history, the kids are encouraged to get some heavy cream, put it in a canning jar, and slosh it around until it turns into butter. So over the last few years as both my girls went through the fifth grade one by one and dutifully sloshed their allotment of cream, I got to watch their eyes grow round with astonishment and delight as the foamy white mess in the jar suddenly morphed into thin white liquid with a large yellow lump in it. Watching them, it all came back to me--the wonder, the magic of something as simple as a pat of homemade butter.
Now that they've both gotten past that part of the curriculum and moved on to other studies, we've found another reason to make our own butter. As part of our local-food transition, I looked at the package to see where our butter comes from. Apparently, it's made in Texas. Or distributed from Texas. That's a very long way for that butter to travel, and doesn't fit into even an extremely generous definition of local for us. The almost-organic dairy farm where our milk comes from, however, is at least in Idaho. That's a start. I checked, and they don't do butter. But they do have heavy cream, and...hey, I have the technology to make butter. All I needed was a quart glass jar with a lid, the cream, and a pair of hands. Other than that, I needed a quick look at one of the kids' Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which described what to do with the resulting lump of butter to make sure you've gotten all the buttermilk out of it, and presto--local butter.
As it turned out, that one quart of cream went a very long way. We whipped some of it for use on a local-apple pie. I used the buttermilk left from making the butter in an Irish soda bread recipe I wanted to try. And after all that, we were still left with a pat of butter almost large enough to fill a typical-sized butter tub.
One of the usual objections to local and/or organic foods is the cost. This was one time when I saved money by going local and doing a couple of steps myself. I added up the cost of a container of whipped cream, a small tub of butter, and a pint of buttermilk, and lo and behold, buying those things separately came to more than what that one quart of heavy cream cost me. I'd call this experiment a win, and once we've used up all our Texas butter, we won't be buying more.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Spring's About to Sprout
Yesterday, my older daughter and I saw a tree full of finches, all twittering like crazy. In ancient Ireland, the first sign of spring was around Feb. 1, when the ewes began to lactate. I don't know, maybe that's still the first sign. But in Idaho, I think it's the finches. That, and the appearance of buds on the trees. Our weather changed all at once. A couple of days ago, we were still in a winter storm watch, and now, suddenly, we've got finches.
Next weekend I need to get the seeds started indoors for this year's vegetable garden, but right now, I'm working on getting my house back under control. Almost-spring cleaning, I guess. Maybe that's another sign of spring on the way--the urge to clear out the obsolete, reorganize the old-but-still-good, and figure out how to obtain the new.
We're working on transitioning to mostly local eating, which is hard in the winter, but we've managed better than we might otherwise have done. Tonight's dinner is vegetable soup made with the lentils I sprouted this week, a jar of our home-canned kale and collard greens, a can of commercial vegetable juice, and a plethora of seasonings. The great thing about sprouts is that you can have them year-round, and they're really easy to do. They give all kinds of wonderful health benefits, and are a great addition to a locavore's diet during the winter when local produce is limited to last fall's squash, apples and potatoes.
Next weekend I need to get the seeds started indoors for this year's vegetable garden, but right now, I'm working on getting my house back under control. Almost-spring cleaning, I guess. Maybe that's another sign of spring on the way--the urge to clear out the obsolete, reorganize the old-but-still-good, and figure out how to obtain the new.
We're working on transitioning to mostly local eating, which is hard in the winter, but we've managed better than we might otherwise have done. Tonight's dinner is vegetable soup made with the lentils I sprouted this week, a jar of our home-canned kale and collard greens, a can of commercial vegetable juice, and a plethora of seasonings. The great thing about sprouts is that you can have them year-round, and they're really easy to do. They give all kinds of wonderful health benefits, and are a great addition to a locavore's diet during the winter when local produce is limited to last fall's squash, apples and potatoes.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Henna
I guess maybe the best way to blog about living green is just to cover the various things as they come up. So I thought I'd start off with a quick post about hair color.
Many other people before me have written about the problems inherent in salon and commercial hair dyes. There's a reason they have you do a patch test before they do your color. (Well, they're supposed to do a patch test, anyway. Some salons skip that step.) More and more often, we're hearing about allergies and skin sensitivities related to commercial hair dyes. I'm not surprised. Off and on since I was in college, I got my hair colored in a salon, and the hair just got dryer and dryer and more fragile. I haven't been able to grow it anywhere near as long as I'd like, because it grows slowly and then breaks off. So in my mid-twenties, I tried henna, and it was great. I've heard all the warnings about henna vs. commercial dyes and how you can't perm or dye over henna or you'll end up with purple or green crispy-fried hair, but I've since found out it's just not true. Not if you use pure henna with no other dye components added. If you want to know more about dying with henna, try this site; the author really knows her stuff, and she offers a fantastic tutorial for free. It should put any fears you might have about henna to rest.
Anyway, earlier tonight (Thursday evening) I re-hennaed my hair; I've done it three times since I first decided to get rid of the grey without resorting to commercial dyes, and every time I do it, it comes out so shiny and smooth and with such great color that I know I'll never go back to salon color again. The henna even smells good, not like that awful ammonia smell you get after a perm or commercial dye job. I'm just glad I can do something about the grey without spending a fortune and without having to expose myself to the toxic chemicals found in commercial dyes. It's very empowering to know that there are healthy, natural choices available for hair color.
Many other people before me have written about the problems inherent in salon and commercial hair dyes. There's a reason they have you do a patch test before they do your color. (Well, they're supposed to do a patch test, anyway. Some salons skip that step.) More and more often, we're hearing about allergies and skin sensitivities related to commercial hair dyes. I'm not surprised. Off and on since I was in college, I got my hair colored in a salon, and the hair just got dryer and dryer and more fragile. I haven't been able to grow it anywhere near as long as I'd like, because it grows slowly and then breaks off. So in my mid-twenties, I tried henna, and it was great. I've heard all the warnings about henna vs. commercial dyes and how you can't perm or dye over henna or you'll end up with purple or green crispy-fried hair, but I've since found out it's just not true. Not if you use pure henna with no other dye components added. If you want to know more about dying with henna, try this site; the author really knows her stuff, and she offers a fantastic tutorial for free. It should put any fears you might have about henna to rest.
Anyway, earlier tonight (Thursday evening) I re-hennaed my hair; I've done it three times since I first decided to get rid of the grey without resorting to commercial dyes, and every time I do it, it comes out so shiny and smooth and with such great color that I know I'll never go back to salon color again. The henna even smells good, not like that awful ammonia smell you get after a perm or commercial dye job. I'm just glad I can do something about the grey without spending a fortune and without having to expose myself to the toxic chemicals found in commercial dyes. It's very empowering to know that there are healthy, natural choices available for hair color.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
New Blog
I'm assuming most of the people who read my main blog, Pooka's Tales, read it for the writing-related posts. I know not everyone is as interested in green issues, so I decided to make a new blog for that. Some content from each may occasionally sneak over into the other, but in general I'll keep this one for posts on ecology, the environment, eco-fuels, eco-friendly products and experiments, and locavore progress and issues. I'm passionate about all these things, but don't want to scare away any potential readers by shoving "greenism" in their faces too often. If you are a future reader of my novels and also are passionate about healing the planet, then you are welcome to visit this blog as well. And if you love ecology and hate fantasy fiction, that's all right, too. According to Kermit the Frog, it's not easy being green, but if we humans want to begin to find solutions to some of the problems we have caused, then we have to start somewhere.
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