And the sun doth shine

Can you feel it? I can, spring is in the air. The daffodils are blooming and the geese are noisily making their way north.

Another sign that spring is on its way? All the great Green goodness being planned.

The last winter date of the Coppell Farmer’s Market is March 20^th. I’ve really enjoyed going to the market this winter. There was just a little bit of produce, but the meat and egg sellers were there along with some value-added venders.

Also in March is Earth Hour! March 27^th 8:30pm local time to be exact. This will be our third year to turn off the lights for Earth Hour. We have a wedding that night so I’m not sure how we’ll celebrate. Maybe we’ll do it the next night? Obviously the lights will be off while we’re gone, but I want to do something with the Man to talk about what we want for the environment.

April is the beginning of some great potential in Denton. April 10^th is the first Denton Community Market. The website is new and there’s not too much there, but they do have a large presence on Facebook

Denton actually has a farmer’s market, but it’s not very robust. We’ve gone a couple of times and were disappointed with both the number and quality of vendors. By quality I don’t mean the produce was subpar, just not the organic we prefer. We do try to stop when we see what seems like random vendors to support the cause. Obviously this hasn’t happened often enough, because during the season we drive all the way to Coppell to shop their farmer’s market. The Denton Community Market is hoping to change that and make the market more of a destination, a place where local growers and vendors can sell locally grown produce and arts and crafts.

The Coppell Farmer’s Market opens April 10^th as well, but we’ll be supporting the local folks in Denton!

And don’t forget Earth Day on April 22! What are your plans for Earth Day? Will you be joining people in 100 other countries and turning off the lights for Earth Hour?

Pumpkins Galore

Please note: I wrote this and then for some reason didn't publish it?

My kitchen table has been taken over by pumpkins. It annoys Shinerman, but all I see is the yummy goodness I'm going to make. Can you say BPA-free Pumpkin Pie?

We've been going to the Coppell Farmer's Market for a while. They have a couple of organic produce vendors and it's all local. Except for the Wild Alaskan Salmon people, which they said is fished by a local family, but I think is a little out of place. The fish was fished by locals not Salmon People. sigh...I'm tired.

We've gotten most of our produce from there since we stopped getting the organic co-op. Oh, I didn't tell you about that? After our friends with whom we were splitting a share decided to stop, the delivery spot we went to dwindled and it was no longer cost-effective. Then we couldn't get a delivery close by on the weekend, yada, yada.

We also have been getting our meat and eggs there, it really has been great. This last weekend was bring the weekly email and get a free pumpkin promotion. So of course I did! And here is how we came to have a table-full o'pumpkins:

Me:Hey, I brought my email for my free pumpkin, can I just pick one out?

Market Man: Sure(he waves towards them) you want more? Take more.

Me: looking as if I don't believe him

Market Man: You want 3 take 3. You can have 10 if you want, we gotta get rid of 'em.

Say the above in an old Jewish Man's cadence; I don't know if he was or not, but that's how it sounds when I replay it in my head.

I took 3 'cause that's all I could carry and went and enlisted Shinerman and the Man. We got 9 total; I felt 10 would be too selfish. Add that to the two we already had and we had a table full!

We've now pureed several and started pumpkin wine out of a few, as well.

Thinking of you...

Dear Green Across Texas blog,

I know it's been a while since I've written. It's not you - it's me. I've thought about you often in my absence and so much has happened. I'll catch you up with some pictures...

picked blackberries - made wine - made freezer jam...yummm

homemade chicken stock

organic produce at the Coppell Farmer's Market

fancy composting system designed by Shinerman

best winery ever

local produce - cheese - bread - wine + Michael Pollan = best snack ever

love this wine

took the Man to the beach

foraged food from the backyard

started Pre-K

festivals (this one is Oktoberfest)

cooking with the Man

So you see, I've been gathering pictures for you the whole time I've been gone.

What about you? Have you done anything along these lines? I'd love to hear about it!

My grand experiment

For a little over a year now we've been getting our produce from an organic produce co-op. This whole time we've been splitting it with another couple. Recently, they decided to no longer get their portion and instead see how they fare at the Cupboard (GREAT local store). Oh by the way, the Cupboard has fresh LOCAL pastured chicken eggs. yummy!!

I decided that, rather than trying to find someone to share the co-op produce with, we would see how we do with a full share. There have been a couple of times that we've run out of things. With the last shared delivery we had to go to the farmers market to get some food for the next week!

I'm really hoping this will work, but if it doesn't I think we'll look into getting a half share of a CSA. I'll have to do some research when the time comes for that, though.

But the thing is, we don't eat at home every night. Usually at least one night a week I go out with friends and Shinerman goes out another night. On those nights we either eat leftovers or, more often than not, go get sandwiches at a local sandwich shop. And then even on nights when we are all home, it seems I always forget to take something out or get home too late to start dinner.

This week, I got home late on Monday, Tuesday we had dinner at the in-laws for an early Father's Day, and tonight is Shinerman's night at the bar. That leaves just 9 days left to eat all the food! And of course the key is also to be able to do something with it before it goes bad. Bright spot? Two mangoes that will be frozen soon to be made into mango daiquiris, Shinerman's idea and a great one right?! I cannot wait.

I started tomorrow's dinner already - sirloin tip roast in the crock pot. But, I've got to do some serious meal planning. I'll be using this website, supercook.com. You enter in all the ingredients you have in the kitchen. It sounds like that would take a while, but it doesn't. They suggest things as you go and that helps remind you of things you have. The system consolidates recipes from different websites based on the ingredients you have in the kitchen.

My usual process is to write a list of everything in the fridge, freezer, and the cabinet and then troll the cookbooks and websites for something to make. I think the supercook site will seriously save me some time.

I'm off to do some meal planning...

Sooo, Earth Day?

I've been pretty stoked about Earth Day this year. What would we do, I wondered. Last year I took the day off and the littlest man and I went to the Arboretum. Maybe we could do something more giving this year, clean up litter maybe?

But, alas, work had to take over the day this year. Too much to do and too many other days taken off; plus, I had to go to the Dr about a weird rash on my back - boo. Adding to that, I really was beginning to feel very blah about the whole thing. Taking just one day to do something green? We're pretty Green all year-round.

A list of green stuff we do everyday of the year:

• No paper towels - ever.
• 100% recycled toilet paper; except once when we had people over, it was late at night and we were about to run out - bad combo
• We haven't bought plastic baggies in a year and a half
• Only using natural cleaners, mostly baking soda and vinegar
• Making our own homemade laundry detergent
• Making our own hand soap - verdict is still out on that one so no post, yet
• Buying almost all organic food
• Line dry clothes year round, we've used the dryer only a handful of times since we started a year ago
• Composting everything we can
• Recycling everything we can

This list isn't exhaustive and also isn't meant to be a 'nanana-booboo' either. Perhaps I'm trying to assuage my guilt over not doing anything today to celebrate.

So, what did you do for Earth Day? Or what do you do everyday that makes you feel better for not doing anything today?

BPA-Free Organic Pumpkin Puree

It's Pumpkin Time!
And what better way to celebrate than to make some BPA-free pumpkin puree for the holidays?

We got an organic sweet pumpkin in our co-op delivery this weekend. Since we split the deliveries with a friend, we really got a half a pumpkin - but it was plenty.

And what do you do with half a pumpkin? My friend is making soup, but I'm not really a soup girl. But I do like me some pumpkin pie, mmmmmmmm. So, I roasted it - see instructions below. You can actually do this with other kinds of pumpkins too - like the one you carved, but that brings in some sanitary issues for me.

Pumpkin Puree

Heat oven to 450 degrees.

Scoop out the seeds and stringy pulp. You'll want to save this for toasted pumpkin seeds later. DO NOT THROW this goodness away!

Cover with foil - no spices needed, but I think if you're using a carving pumpkin you'd want to add some sugar. They aren't raised for flavor, you know.

Roast until insides are soft. It took mine 1.5 hours. I took it out at 1 hr and started to scoop it out, but the meat closer to the skin wasn't quite ready I think. I noticed it was a bit stringy, so I put it back in for 30 mins.

Scoop out pulp with an ice cream scoop. Puree with a blender or a food processor until smooth. You don't want any strings so you may have to strain the puree to get these out - I didn't have that issue.

I got about 3 cups of puree with my half of the pumpkin. Enough for a pie and maybe some of these pumpkin muffins.

I've always heard that canned pumpkin puree was as good as the fresh, but since this was so easy and with all the nasty BPA lurking in those cans - Why not just do it yourself? Plus you get some yummy seeds to snack on.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Separate seeds from pulp. I cover the seeds with water in a bowl, they kind of float to the top and I get my hands in there to remove the yuck and then put the seeds on a cookie sheet.

Toss with olive oil, enough to coat. Season with your preferred seasoning. Shinerman prefers All-Purpose Season Salt, yes I know it's made of horrible chemicals - oh well. I think a good combo would be cayanne and salt. What about you?

Toast in the oven with the pumpkin for about 15-20 mins.

I tossed the stringy pulp and shell into the compost pail so this was NO Waste project! WOOHOO!

Yummy-ness

So this morning I went out to the garden and picked the last of the ready-to-eat pole beans. Then we had them for dinner!! I just don't know if it gets much better than that. I had about 1/2 a lb, maybe more maybe less. It was enough for us and even enough for Shinerman to have seconds.

For dinner you say? We had some lamb stew meat from Burgundy Pasture Beef, marinated with olive oil, rosemary, thyme, and mint (from the herb garden). I seasoned the green beans with the leftover herbs. All this was roasted at 500deg. It took about 30mins, prep included. I rounded it out with pita bread, hummus, lettuce and red onion.

Speaking of the garden, we have several plants in there growing some sort of vegetable that we can't identify. They look sort of like tomatoes, but we didn't plant any. I'll have to do some research and figure it out - although it might come to light when they're ripe.

Our Garden

We finally got our garden planted for the late summer plantings (I say we, but it was really just Shinerman). We planted pole beans, lettuce, carrots, chives, cilantro, okra, broccoli, broccoli raab, and beets. I bought certified organic seed packets at Central Market.

I tried to talk Shinerman into planting the lettuce just a few seeds at a time so we could have successive harvesting, but he doesn't think that they'll grow very well at all. So we'll see, we might have a plethora of lettuce to share with friends and neighbors.

I think that's a big part of having a garden, sharing your bounty. I think the very nature of gardening and harvesting really requires you to share. Because you don't want all that okra or lettuce to go to waste, right? Sorry about the little tangent - I'm taking hydrocodone after getting my wisdom teeth reomoved and I'm feeling a little out of it.

Anyway, we already have some okra and pole bean sprouts! woohoo! Unfortunatly, the only way I know of cooking okra is to fry it. I'll have to do some research...

Hear are some pics of our garden.

My Canning Commitment

I grew up eating my Nanny's plum jams (the absolute best thing to ever touch your tongue) and apple butters, but of course I never asked her how to do it or, unfortunately, make her peach cobbler. She literally had an entire closet full of things she had put up from the garden. The apples, peaches and plums came from the orchard she had – all this on two acres! I've thought about canning some things or even freezing them, but always been a bit intimidated. It looks like a lot of instructions and equipment to work with. But I've been inspired. Heather from Enviromom has been telling tales about her strawberry freezer jam, and apparently you don't even have to cook the freezer jam. YEA!! So now all I need is some extra fruit and time – neither of which I have right now. The littlest man is turning 3 this week and I've been busy trying to get his party together. But that's another post for another time.

Hmm, maybe a Saturday morning family fun outing is in our future? Yes, yes there is – I'm committing to it – I promise to let you know how it goes! Now I'd better stop writing about this – my mouth is watering!

My food headache…

And so my headache begins…sitting in an airplane waiting to take off. I hear excerpts from conversations next to me, in front of me and the slamming of overhead bins. I'm trying to concentrate on my book and Pollen's long list of all the ways I eat corn. There's a lot.

Essentially, any food that's processed and packaged has processed corn products. And you thought you only ate corn from a can? Reading Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma has made grocery shopping even more of a chore than it already was. Even organic products are offenders. It seems as though nothing is safe from the long golden river of overproduced corn. All this depression and I'm not even halfway through the book. Did you know they are breeding corn that is engineered to produce its own pesticide? I know that many plant species have ways to defeat and ward away pests, but this just isn't the natural thing to do. Also, he talks about how it is not illegal to feed cows to cows, but part of their diet includes fat…in the form of beef tallow from the slaughterhouse they are headed to – because fat is fat (according to the slaughterhouse)! Another thing, poultry and pigs are fed leftovers from these slaughterhouses and then they're leftovers are fed to cows. In my book cows to pigs to cows = cows eating cows.

I'm not saying that corn or corn products are inherently bad, but too much of a good thing is too much. And Pollen also had an entire section about how we're stuffing our cows, poultry, and swine with corn they are not biologically capable of digesting. That's why we get e. coli in our meat supply; cows (who normally have low acidic stomachs) are now full of acid and the e. coli that lives there is used to it and doesn't die when it hits our stomachs. Just one more reason I'm going to go pastured grass-fed meat. There's a local place called Burgundy Beef Pasture, they have a wide range of selections and they deliver to your home or office. The only draw back is the 10lb minimum, but I might have someone who is willing to split it with me. That being said it still isn't cheap, so Shinerman and I have decided that we'll cut back on meat. So my first meatless recipe is cheese manicotti.

Anyone know a good way to cook sweet potatoes and beets? Not necessarily together. Neither of us are fans of the sweet potato, but it came in our co-op food share this week.

Getto-Fabulous AND eco-friendly

Shinerman decided that, although we don't have a clothes line yet, he would dry the clothes outside today. I came home to see clothes strewn around the deck and patio furniture. He was very proud of himself. And they did dry a lot faster than I thought they would, so they weren't out there for too long – not that the neighbors would care – they're pretty ghetto-fab themselves! BTW – I think that the guy a few streets down is building a chicken coop!! I'm not that ballsy, but maybe we'll get some fresh eggs out of the deal.

Speaking of fresh eggs, when we went to get our co-op delivery Saturday, the host had fresh eggs! For FREE!! Have you ever seen a blue egg? I had not, but I can't wait to eat it…yummy! This is our second co-op delivery. It's all organic produce, you don't get to choose what you get, but it's been pretty good so far. I had cauliflower for the first time last week. It was ok, the littlest man and Shinerman both loved it. I didn't, but liked it enough to eat it again. Last time I roasted it like I do our broccoli, not sure what I'll do this time. I'm really hoping that all this produce will force me to up my veggie intake. The co-op also does dry goods, so I will try that out and let you know how that goes. We have one more delivery on our trial membership. I think we'll keep it up. I really wish I could get more local food, but all the CSAs were full and the Denton farmers market doesn't start until June. June! Ugh…

We are thinking about getting a deep freezer. We'll have to get rid of the beer fridge, though – I know I know!!! But this way we could buy a bunch of local beef and also freeze the bounty that this summer will bring so we could have it for the winter without having the eco-guilt from BPA-lined canned/fresh flown in from who-knows-where. We'll have to see.