Easter, naturally

Every year for Easter we go to Houston to visit Shinerman's family. It's a weekend of fun and eating way too much. Usually it means we bring a ton of 'stuff' back, too. But I guess my and my sister-in-laws frustration with the overflowing Easter baskets got through. There were no Easter baskets, just some crafts. Which is even better, because then they are creating something themselves. I think we actually came back with less than we took. This was because we took some naturally dyed Easter eggs that we, obviously, didn't bring back.

This was our first year to dye the eggs using natural dyes, and I think our last using conventional eggs. In the past it just hadn't made sense to me to pay so much for eggs we weren't going to eat. But this year, I felt really guilty buying the conventional ones. I don't just buy the farm raised eggs because they are better for you, but also because they are better for the chicken. I'm really just so done with factory food. Of course this means that we'll be eating the eggs next year, deviled eggs anyone?

I was really impressed with the outcome of the natural dyes. I didn't take pictures, sorry. Just a few days before I made some black beans from scratch and used the left over water from their soaking. This made an absolutely beautiful purple-blue color. I also saved the brown skins from a dinner's onion. This made the eggs orange-yellow. They also ended up splotchy from air bubbles - not sure why that happened. I also used some turmeric that made the eggs a really bright yellow - those were great and I wish we did more of those. The only disappointment was the chili powder; I had some leftover from a chili packet. But it just left the eggs a light, light beige - unimpressive. The littlest man was full of wonder at figuring out what color things would turn out. So much more fun than the chemical dye pellets!!

So, how did we do it? Just bring the items you are using to create the dye to a boil. Boil until you get the color you think you want. I did these all for about 15 minutes, except the bean soaking water since that was already really deep purple. Drain any solids from the liquid, unless you want to see what sort of patterns they'll give. Stir in a teaspoon or so of vinegar. Put in your hard-boiled eggs. Leave in the liquid until they reach the color you like. We left ours in overnight, mostly for simplicity sake. If you're eating these, be sure you do any overnight soaking in the fridge. I liked the matte look of the eggs, but you can shine 'em up with some vegetable oil if you wish. You can also boil the eggs in the liquid themselves, but I always have a hard time boiling eggs so I decided to do it separately. Yes, I can cook really well but can't boil an egg - crazy, I know.

We also replaced the plastic green grass this year. I have always hated that stuff! It seems like you're still finding it on the floor and in crevises in July. I had some leftover green felt from the littlest man's strawberry Halloween costume. So we just cut that up into strips - perfect!!

We did have to do plastic eggs for the daycare party, though. I made sure that instead of going into his playthings, they went went into a baggie with the felt grass to be used again next year. I may have to find another option for his basket next year, though. He used his 'baby' one again this year and I don't know if a hippopotamus basket will fly for a four-almost-five year old.

How was your Easter? Do anything fun and/or eco-friendly?

A few homemade, from scratch items

Where does the time go? I told myself that I would post more than just once this week and I can't believe a week has already passed by! This week has been pretty crazy with work, I had a big deadline and and short week - because I'm taking tomorrow off!! oh, yeah!

Anywho...I didn't just do work business, but home business, too. Our outside fridge's freezer is now home to jars of black beans, kidney beans, and chicken broth. In an effort to reduce our grocery bill, I've made a commitment to make more of our food from scratch. To accomplish this I bought dry beans from the bulk bins and ordered a whole free range chicken from Burgundy Pasture Beef - this isn't it, just all that I'm focusing on today.

Dry Beans

I'll be honest the dry beans take planning, something at which I do not excel. I tried the 'quick-soak' method on the black beans, because I wanted them for dinner. I was making chicken enchiladas and wanted them as a side. With the quick-soak method you bring the beans to a boil in a big pot, boil for a couple minutes, and then you let them soak for an hour. I'm not really sure what I did wrong, but they didn't work out so hot. Even though I soaked them for the right amount of time, it took them forever to cook. The other method is long-soak. You put the beans in a pot, cover with water and let 'em sit for at least 8 hours. Don't put them in the fridge, though, I discovered that slows down the process during another batch.

The kidney beans went easy-peasy. Funny enough, they were my first attempt. I did the long-soak method, put them on before I left for work so they would be ready to cook when I got home that night. After soaking, drain them and put them back in the pot with more water. Bring the beans to a boil and then simmer until they are tender. Since I was cooking these to be used in various recipes, I didn't season them, but you could if you wanted.

After I cooked the beans I put them into quart-size mason jars. As long as you don't fill them past the line there will be enough expansion room. Now, I've got BPA-free beans at the ready and the actual labor involved was minimal.

Whole Free-Range Chicken

I've cooked whole chickens before, usually to lackluster results. I mean they were ok, but you know, just ok. I didn't actually use a recipe this time, so I'll just tell you what I used. I had a bit of a surprise with the free-range bird. There wasn't a plastic bag full of neck and gizzards. The gizzards weren't included and the neck was still attached. So, my first act of business was to remove that. I just snipped it a bit with the scissors, cracked the neck and pulled it off. I froze it to put in the garbage on trash day, but I'm sure you can actually use it for something.

This recipe is really just about what you have on hand. I used the herbs I did because that's what was growing in the garden.

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme in a bowl. Pour olive oil over the chicken and rub it all over. Rub the salt mixture all over the chicken, be sure to get that yummy-ness under the skin. I also put some of the leftover seasoning into the cavity along with some fennel from the garden.

Bake in the oven until the meat's internal temperature is 180, it took about 40 mins for my bird and it was over 4lbs. This was the best chicken I've had. I'm sure the free-range aspect had something to do with it, but I like to think that I did, too. Dinner is served!

The carcass? well...that's another post for another day.

Tuesday Night TV, My Favorite

So, yes, I do try very hard to be at home watching TV Tuesday nights at 8pm. Come on, I don't have a TiVo and I'm lovin' me some Sundance channel The Green. I would also love to be able to see Discovery's Planet Green channel (sweet website by the way), but alas DirecTV doesn't have that one on our plan and I'm not going to pay more for just one channel.

Anyway, The Green is three hours of great greenness. They have several shows and usually an interesting documentary, as well. My favorite by far is the show It's Not Easy Being Green. It's a reality show about this family in England who moved out to the country and is trying to live completely green and off-grid. They do some really interesting things, for example they built themselves a waterwheel to create electricity for the house. As Shinerman says though, they are able to do most of the things they do because of they're location; they have a stream AND a natural spring on their land. This week, they hooked up a wind turbine to run the battery for a pump that is taking water from the spring and supplying the house with water. I'm green with envy.

Of course it's a ton of work and they have a bunch of people who come and help, including two family friends who moved in with them to join the fun. They have two pretty cute kids in college – a guy (who is literally half-naked for the majority of the show) and a girl – for those who might be interested in something of that nature. See related image below. This next week they are supposed to be killing the pigs they've been raising. Mmmm, bacon…

Speaking of interesting Green viewing items, the Angelika is showing The Unforeseen this week. It is about the real estate development of Barton Springs in Austin. The director was on KERA's THINK Wednesday morning. I hope to be able to see the film, it sounded like something that should open up some people's eyes.

Agro-Industrial Complex worse than...

...the Military-Industrial Complex? Hard to say.

I read a report today of a recently concluded study - Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America - by Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (find it here). I do admit that I didn't read the entire 124 page report, but at least a good portion. The study is essentially about the mass production of animals in Industrial Farm Animal Production (IFAP). As I said in a previous post, in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) – large scale IFAPs, hundreds of thousands of animals are kept in a building until they're fat enough to slaughter. Incidentally, if an IFAP is large enough to be a CAFO it can ditch the CAFO designation IF they state "that it does not discharge into navigable waters or directly into waters " ??! So they CAN put it into the ground where it will eventually seep into the GROUNDWATER? And if they're just under the size limit – no worries about where they put the waste? My head just blew up.

Any who… All those animals living in such close quarters pass around disease like mono at a make-out party. These animals are usually a single breed and a single genetic line, meaning if one isn't able to stave off infection it's unlikely his second cousin down in the next cage will be either. This all leads to pathogen transfer, infectious disease transfer, and food-borne infection. The industry uses massive amounts of antibiotics on the animals to treat the diseases and just to 'help them grow' in general, which leads to antimicrobial resistance. We all know that's not good.

And don't forget about those cesspools of shit. "A single hog Industrial Farm Animal Production (IFAP) facility, for example, produces manure in an amount equivalent to the sewage flow of an entire American town. Pound for pound, pigs produce four times the waste of a human. Consequently, a single IFAP housing 5,000 pigs produces the same volume of raw sewage as a town of 20,000…" all this with no sewage treatment plant. The resulting stink is actually making people who live next to these facilities sick; imagine if you had to work there.

And where does it all go? Sometimes the facility sprays the untreated sewage on their own land -at least it's not going in the water. And other times...

In a recent New York Times article about fertilizer shortages, the authors stated that U.S. farmers "have increased the age-old practice of spreading hog manure on fields". The 'age-old practice' they are referring to is from back- in-the-day when farmers used the waste from the 40 or so hogs they raised to add some nutrients back into the land – sounds gross, but a perfectly decent, sustainable practice. Those hogs were likely not sick, fairly free-roaming, and there weren't enough of them to overload the land with too much nitrogen and phosphates. That's not the situation we have today, that hog manure is coming from IFAP cesspools. Is it treated? Who's to say, these IFAPs aren't regulated very well or consistently.

I know it's depressing and I know that not everyone can afford locally produced meat from free-roaming, grass-fed animals. The report gave some very extensive suggestions that basically boil down to what the government, industry leaders, and watch-dog groups need to do. But you can contact your elected representatives, cut back a bit on your meat intake (perhaps forgo the $.98 package of Rodeo hot dogs - I know yummy yummy in your tummy), and when you can, buy responsibly raised meat.