Food

Independence Days – Week 3

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Anisa

Plant Something  – Rick planted more radishes (those darn chickens!!).  But they grow fast and we had the room!

Harvest Something  – So far Rick has harvested two radishes – they were sweet and spicy and we can’t wait for more!  We also got a good deal of spinach this week… Yum!  😀

Preserve Something– I didn’t really do much in this category…. thinking of picking more raspberry leaves to dry… does thinking about it count?  LOL!

Reduce Waste – I bought a bunch of raspberries on sale last week.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to the last ones before they started going bad… but the chickens sure enjoyed them!

Preparation and Storage – I put the dried raspberry leaves from last week into a baggie?  But they will be used up quickly, so it’s not really long term storage or anything. 

Build Community Food Systems–  I worked on getting more vendors for our farmers market here in Englewood.  It’s neat to see the market grow!

Eat the Food – Spinach!  And pork and corn and tomatoes!  The corn and tomatoes were from the freezer, from last year’s CSA harvest.  Still great! 

I’m thinking, so this doesn’t get boring, of putting a recipe in this section each week.  So for this week, since we harvested spinach, I’ll share my favorite dressing recipe to top fresh spinach with:

  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/4 cup orange juice
  • 1/3 cup rice vinegar
  • 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
  • 1-2 tsp freshly grated ginger
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 envelope onion soup mix (or use dehydrated onions and a good measure of salt or soy sauce)

Mix ingredients well and pour over a big spinach salad topped with sliced almonds, and mandarin oranges.  We usually throw red bell pepper, thinly sliced red onions and cucumber into the salad if we have them, but use what you like!  You can even throw in cooked pasta and grilled chicken and make it a whole meal.  We took this salad (with pasta in it) to one of the BBQ’s we went to this weekend.  This dressing is for a big salad, so you can use less if you’re not making it for a crowd or as a meal.

Categories: Food, Garden, Independence Days, Recipes | 2 Comments

Independence Days – Week 2

Posted on May 22, 2009 by Anisa

Plant Something  – Rick replanted the skips in our spinach, lettuce and radish rows.  And we have a radish thief… one of the hens keeps jumping the fence and stealing the seeds.  It may be time to clip their wings.  😉

Harvest Something  – Eggs!  Each day we get 2 to 3 eggs from our adult hens.  I was being quite miserly with our egg consumption this week, so the cartons are full!

Preserve Something – I’ve picked some raspberry leaves to dry.  I’m going to try to make raspberry leaf tea from them instead of buying the stuff.  Never tried this before!

Reduce Waste – normal recycling, composting, feeding scraps to the chickens, etc.  Nothing new to add to this category this week. 

Preparation and Storage – We’re looking into getting another freezer.  We may get it for ourselves so we can harvest a buffalo this year, or we may get it and give/resell it to another family who needs it.  We’ll see on this.  It’s not done this week though, so it may not quite count.  😉

Build Community Food Systems – Does this count?  I gave gifts to my friends and cousin for my baby shower.  It was a bee themed shower, so their gifts included honey from local farms and bees wax candles from local artisans. 

Eat the Food – I know this is bad, but I FINALLY broke into the frozen pablanos.  We had four bushels of roasted chiles from last September.  Half Anaheims and half pablanos.  I just didn’t know what to do with the pablanos.  But I braved it, and they were so good.  Glad we have more to eat, but I’m wishing we had started eating them sooner!

Categories: Chickens, Food, Independence Days | Leave a comment

Independence Days – Week 1

Posted on May 15, 2009 by Anisa

AsparagusPlant Something  – this week a lot of planting happened.  We planted our ten tomato plants and all the squash, turnips, carrots, onions and cucumbers.  🙂 

Harvest Something  – Asparagus!  Rick estimated that I grabbed twenty pounds from the CSA…

Preserve Something – Um… asparagus.  It’s mostly all in the freezer now.  After weighing it all out, it was 20 lbs, 8 ounces!  Good guess by Rick!

Reduce Waste – 6 pounds of that asparagus went into the compost pile… it was the woody parts that you have to pick so the patch keeps growing, but that are too woody to eat!  We also put some leaves from the neighbor’s tree last fall into the chicken coop this week instead of using new shavings. 

Preparation and Storage– Rick defrosted the big freezer in the garage.  We kept the meat in coolers while we let it go, and then back into the freezer it went.  It was a good time to inventory what was left… green chiles any one??

Build Community Food Systems – This week I did some work for the Chamber of Commerce to spread the word about Englewood’s new Farmer’s Market! 

Eat the Food– ok… asparagus again.  But we also have been eating our way through our hog, and getting the freezer emptied for the coming harvests!

Not bad for the first week.  But I’m not sure how the next few weeks will go as the garden is getting going.  For now, I think I’ll post my updates on Fridays.  This way I’ll have the weekend and the whole week to get something from each category done.  Stay tuned!

Categories: Food, Garden, Independence Days | 3 Comments

Asparagus & Independence!

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Anisa

Well… asparagus season is upon us!  Today I drove up to the CSA farm to pick asparagus!  Yum!  I picked two rows, not sure what that equates to in pounds of asparagus, but I will find out as I put most of it up for storage tonight (and I’ll probably report back as well).  But, oh!  The sweet green shoots just called my name as I picked!  And I happily munched as I went along filling my big bags.  Henry enjoyed munching behind me as we went too!  Thanks to the Monroe’s who can sell their spears for $8/pound at the market for letting us take all we wanted! 

I read a couple of cool blogs today and wanted to share quickly:  the first was found on Hen & Harvest, called Convenience Store(d) Food. Wendy shared some great recipes for pudding mixes.  I had done a Thrifty Thursday post about making your own mixes a couple months back, and thought this would be a great addition to it. 

Then I followed the link to Wendy’s blog,  Home Is, and saw she was doing something called the Independence Days Challenge.  This led me to another blog, where it seems the challenge (at least on the web) started.  Check it out: Sharon’s Independence Days Challenge.  I really like the idea, and I’m going to try my hand at participating.  I hope you all find this interesting, and that I do as well.  🙂

The basic idea of the challenge is to do something each day or week or weekend that gets you closer to your goals (for example #91 on my 101 in 1001 list).  Basically, that big change can come from little things.  I like how Sharon put it:

It is easy to forget how important this “little stuff” is – easy to think that your little garden doesn’t matter very much, or that your preparations won’t be enough.  But we should also remember the exponential power of saying “no” and doing for ourselves.  The corrollary of the fact that every calorie of food takes 10 of fossil fuels is that every stir fry or salad you eat from your garden saves 10 times the oil as the calories contained within it.  The fact that almost every packaged ingredient uses 7 times as much energy to create that packaging means that your choice to buy bulk oatmeal just saved 7 times as much energy as the package contains.

In 1944, American Victory Gardens grew as much produce as did every vegetable farm in the country – fully half US produce came from home gardens. And while no one was sufficient, all together were something big.  Every bite of food you grow, every bite you preserve, every bit of waste you reduce is a contribution to a larger project – keeping everyone fed.  Every bit of compost you add to your soil, every bit of organic matter, every tree you plant is a contributor to a larger project – storing some of our emissions in soil, so we can have a future.  Small things are the roots of vast and powerful ones. 

Every kid who tastes a cherry tomato or a strawberry from your garden comes away with something that they take back to their homes and forward to the future.  Every neighbor who stops to chat as grow on your lawn or water the peppers in containers on your stoop is a new connection in your community, and a potential future gardener.  Every seed you plant multiplies and produces a hundred, or a thousand more seeds for next year (not to mention the food).  Every dollar you save you save on groceries that goes to the food pantry means your plot feeds not just you, but others.  Every time you point out that you are storing food and preparing for a different future, even if people don’t get it, a seed is planted somewhere in the back of their heads, where they realize…people kind of like me think about this stuff.  The future depends on a whole lot of little things.

I’m excited about it, though I’m starting the challenge a bit late.  🙂  But here goes!   There are seven categories in the challenge, and you are supposed to do something in each one.  The categories are:

  1. Plant Something
  2. Harvest Something
  3. Preserve Something
  4. Reduce Waste
  5. Preparation and Storage
  6. Build Community Food Systems
  7. Eat the Food

Make sure to read the challenge for details on each category if you’re curious or you decide to join the challenge too.  I’ll report in weekly… Wish me luck!

Categories: CSA, Food, Garden, Independence Days, Recommended Reading, Urban Homesteading | Leave a comment

Honey-Do Weekends (Part 2)

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Anisa

Moms day burgerWell, not surprising, this weekend, the honey-do list continued.  Friday, after Rick got off of work, we hit the garden center with the shortest list we’ve ever had at the beginning of May: tomato plants.  There were a few varieties we like from previous years that we wanted to get, and we picked out a few new things as well.  We took home a Super Sweet 100, Lemon Boy, Health Kick, an heirloom Roma, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Sun Gold, Mr. Stripey and Black Krim.  We got ten plants all together.  Actually, half the plants we got were heirloom.  We are going to try our hands at saving seeds from them this year to start ourselves next year.  🙂  These, along with all our seeds were scheduled to go in the garden this weekend.

Saturday morning, Rick took his mom out for Mother’s Day.  They went to Celestial Seasonings to do the factory tour.  From the sounds of things, they had a great time, and Rick brought home a few boxes of tea, along with some farmer’s market spinach from Boulder, since he took his mom there as well. 

When he got home, he cleaned out the chicken coop, while I washed all the walls and trim, as well as all the windows, inside and out.  We didn’t plant anything since we thought it was supposed to rain.  Well… it did rain, but not until the night time.  So it was too wet Sunday to plant.  Instead, we sanded and painted over all the nail hole patches Rick had done last weekend, as well as re-started the refinishing of the trim around the door frame in the living room.  This project is such a bear, since there are so many layers of age-old paint to get through.  Rick worked on it for a good three hours, and got one side and the top done.  Just one more side to go before we can repaint it. 

So yes, for my Mother’s Day, we did projects.  🙂  But this is what I wanted.  Rick made a yummy breakfast for us (french toast with strawberries) and he also cooked what I wanted for dinner: antelope burgers on the grill with green chiles, tomatoes, pepperjack cheese, lettuce and avocado.  Yum!   They were awesome.

The columns will be painted today and the garden will be planted today or tomorrow.  🙂  Those were the outside projects on the list for this weekend.  As well, we have recaulking the bathroom, hanging a shelf, and more weed pulling on the dockett for the week. 

Rick pointed out to me that most women nest when they are pregnant by mopping the floor or cleaning out the closet.  I nest with power tools I guess.  Next weekend there are more projects to come… stay tuned.

Categories: Food, Garden | Leave a comment

Cluck Report

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Anisa

Just a little update on our favorite urban chickens… after four weeks in the house and three weeks in the garage, we moved the baby chickens outside to a structure that I dubbed “The Chicken Shanty.”  It was an old plywood table we had in the garage, butted up against the chicken run, with chicken wire on two sides and two pieces of mismatched plywood leaned up against the fourth side as doors.  Rick built a little perch (notice I said perch, not roost… it was small), and we put the heat lamp in there. 

This ‘shanty’ allowed the big chickens and the little chickens to see each other without being able to peck each other much.  After a week of letting the adults free range the yard in the morning and the babes free range in the afternoons, I gave up and just started letting them all out together.  I figured that our yard was big enough that they could hang out away from each other if they wanted, and, well, it was a hassle.  They were going to have to get together at some point, right? 

This weekend, we decided to take the shanty down and let the flock fully integrate.  Saturday, Rick cleaned out the chicken coop thoroughly.  He even pulled out the removable bottom to hose off, and the roosts, which we scrubbed down.  After airing out and drying completely, we reassembled, and that night, taught the pullets where they should now go to sleep. 

I was a little afraid of rushing things.  The little chickens are still only about half the size on the adult hens.  But the shanty was overly ugly and white-trashy (sorry, I can’t think of a better way to put it), and I was sure the neighbors were hating us.  Plus my cousin is coming to stay with us this weekend, and I didn’t want her to see the plywood and chicken wire eyesore. 

However, despite the size and age differences, they seem to be doing just fine.  each morning as I open the coop, three big hens hop out followed by four little pullets.  No one has been pecked to death or lost an eye yet, so I think all is well.  Poppy, our head chicken (the hen on top of the pecking order), is the main pullet pecker.  Usually it’s around food and treats.  The babes are pretty fast and getting good at avoiding her by the food bin.  But otherwise, every one seems to be living in harmony.

Categories: Chickens, Urban Homesteading | 2 Comments

Sustainable Food Budget Challenge Wrap Up

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Anisa

susbudgetWow!  This challenge certainly has been an eye-opener for our family!  It has been a lot of fun for me, and good for us all. 

For the month, our total is $398.56. This includes the trip to the farmer’s market and a smoothie from Whole Foods Saturday, two trips to Chick-Fil-A (although Rick packs his lunch, he just can’t seem to keep away –it’s addicting!), and I took a friend to coffee at a local shop (but the coffee was only $2.50 for the both of us).  We count as a family of four, since I’m pregnant, but that is even under the family of 3 limit. We still have $64.44 (if we counted as three) to spend for the month, and that is good, since I know we will need milk, some greens, and some lunch stuff before the week’s over. But I don’t expect to surpass the limit. 

Crunchy Chicken didn’t have the success she expected on this challenge, and from the looks of the comments on her wrap up, neither did most of her readers, though most remained optimistic that it was possible.  One of the readers at Crunchy Chicken’s blog commented:

I admit, I find the “you can do it but we didn’t” message a little troubling in this particular challenge. Most people who have to live on food stamp budgets don’t really have the option of going over – if you hit the limits, you eat what’s in the pantry (or you don’t eat much) for the rest of the month.

I don’t mean to give you a hard time, but I guess asking people to live like they live on food stamps, to prove something to the people there, and then really disregarding the limits, while still asserting the validity of the challenge – “sure, you can do it” seems a little troubling to me.

There is so much truth there. We are not on food stamps, but our budget is such that we can NOT go over on our grocery budget each month. If we run out of money, we eat the rice in the back of the pantry.  We took the challenge quite seriously. 

I don’t know if this would actually be possible on food stamps because the majority of our savings came from food saved from the CSA last summer, the hog we bought whole last fall, things we saved our money up for so that we could have a year of sustainable eating on our tight budget. That and two years of practice at cutting the grocery bill each week a bit more, while still making fresh meals for my family.  Things like eating out, coffee shops, and convenience foods have not been in the budget for a long time (though, I’ve seen the Chick-Fil-A receipts creep in this month). 

Dollars wise, it does work.  But I don’t know that anyone raising a hog accepts food stamps for meat and processing (though they should if they don’t).

Bottom line… I enjoyed this challenge.  It got me thinking about ways that we could eat more sustainably, and even prompted discussion of not buying bananas (or at least not so many).  🙂  And it illustrated to my husband that we really do have a tight and good grocery budget.  I was even surprised that we spend less than what is alloted for food stamps. 

I was disappointed to see the results of so many unsuccessful at this challenge.  But I think to jump into this kind of lifestyle without practice or preparation is not really setting yourself up for success.  I was really pleased with the outcome our family had.  I greened up more of our purchases without going over our budget, made extra effort to get to the one farmer’s market that was open in April around here, and even crossed things off the grocery list that we’re there in the store, at a good price, but were not local. 

Can it be done?  Yes.  Does it take practice and preparation?  YES!  Should that keep you from trying it?  Please, no!  It’s a great feeling knowing where your food comes from, supporting local farmers, and saving money!

Categories: CSA, Food, Garden, Recommended Reading, Sustainability, Thrift, Urban Homesteading | 2 Comments

Sustainable Food Budget Challege Update!

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Anisa

susbudgetSo has anyone been participating in the Sustainable Food Budget Challenge?  Here’s an update on how our family has done for the last two weeks.

The week of Easter, we did really well.  It helped that we were only hosting dessert for my mom and Manuel, and that they brought the carrot cake.  I did make a ham with an orange glaze, but the ham was from the hog we bought in November.  It was probably around 5 pounds, so it was pretty inexpensive.  That week we ate, Super Spaghetti (spaghetti with spinach, cheese and egg all added to the sauce), pork chops with summer squash & potatoes (veggies from the freezer), antelope steak with green beans and corn bread, tilapia with escarole and tomato pasta, leek, spinach & mushroom quiche, and that Friday we also had a pizza night with a couple of friends (I made sausage and mushroom pizza on whole wheat crust).  Rick also made some zucchini bread from frozen zucchini.

So, the grocery receipt was $69.02, plus the stuff from the freezer (squash, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, zucchini, ham and antelope).  It’s SO hard for me to estimate the cost of those stock-piled items.  We’ll put the pork at $2/pound.  So that’s $10.  The antelope… we paid $59 for the whole animal… I think there was about 40 pounds of meat total, so that’s $1.48/pound.  Including the left overs for Rick’s lunch, we probably ate about a pound, before cooking, give or take.  Also, $1.97 for the sausage for the pizza.  For the veggies, probably a pound of potatoes, two big tomatoes, a whole squash and 4 cups shredded zucchini.  Geeze.  I can’t remember what those seeds cost, or how to figure the cost of those in.  Maybe they’re freebies??? Is that cheating? 

Well, for the groceries and meat, my total for week two is about: $82.47
Week two’s sustainability?  Well, the meat is, of course, and the veggies from the freezer.  Rick went to the store that week, so I can’t testify to everything he bought.  But I know he got local milk and eggs, and probably about half the veggies he bought were organic.  We got sparkling lemonade as a treat for Easter, and that was made locally.  And the non-organic mushrooms were locally grown as well.  Otherwise, I think we’re not so sustainable on the juices, tilapia and pasta. 

For week three, we spent quite a bit more.  $92.76 at the store and another $4.76 at Chick-Fil-A (Rick just couldn’t resist, and I don’t blame him).  🙂  So, that’s $97.52.  We ate ham & egg fried rice (the ham was left over from Easter) with bok choy (not organic), Glorious Mac & Cheese (from Glorius One Pot Meals: it has tons of veggies), spinach & pinto bean salad with biscuits, and antelope chili.  Tonight we’re supposed to have pork scalopinni with mushrooms, tomorrow is tortilla soup with black beans, and Wednesday is supposed to be a spinach & cheddar omelet.  But I’ll probably nix the omelet, since we have lots of left over chili.  The only things coming from the freezer for week three is the pork for the scalopinni, pork from yesterday’s biscuits and gravy for breakfast, the antelope meat, and some corn and green chiles.  So that’s another $6.90.

Provided Rick doesn’t eat lunch out until Wednesday, week three’s total is $104.42.  Most everything made it into one sustainable category or another, except the pineapple, pasta, lemons, and cherry tomatoes I bought (I know… tomatoes!).  A vast improvement, but the bill was higher.  Though I did buy two boxes of cereal (we usually don’t eat cereal), and some snacky foods at Rick’s request.  So that contributed to the higher price as well. 

In week one, I originally reported us at spending $88.63, but we ended up with another $11 on misc. things (a trip to Einstein’s and I ran to Whole Foods for pizza dough and a bottle of Naked Juice on Friday, since the day got away from me and I didn’t make my dough ahead of time).  So that brings week one up to $99.63. 

For the month so far we’re at $286.52.  I expect two more trips to the store this month, though I might try to make just one instead if I can.  We’re still within budget, but as I shared on the first update from the Crunchy Chicken, I am finding the hardest part of the challenge is the sustainability part… I thought I had that down, but when I look at some of the things that end up in my cart, I am surprised.

I was really wanted to make the trek up to the Boulder Farmer’s market this past Saturday, but with all the snow, I chickened out.  Hopefully we can get up there this weekend, and nail the sustainability portion of this challenge in the last week.

Categories: Food, Garden, Sustainability, Thrift, Urban Homesteading | 1 Comment

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