Earth To Eats

Gluten Free Rice Krispies have arrived!

17th July, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

They're here!

Yes, it is true.  All those celiac patients out there can now have rice krispie treats!  General Mills has developed a brown rice based Rice Krispie that is gluten-free.  This is one cereal we thought at the beginning that Scott would be able to have in its regular form, but not so, it had malt in it.  In fact most breakfast cereals have malt in them.

I haven’t found these at our stores yet but we will be trying them. Brown rice is better for you for sure, but I’m not convinced it will pass my taste test in the marshmallow squares.  We’ll see.

Here is the website for Gluten Free Rice Krispies - with recipes of course!

A two-hour perennial bed – how to make one fast

17th July, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

The Perennial bed is in the front - too long to get all in the photo

Last week we had 50 or so perennial plants that needed a new home.  We’ve been having hot and humid weather so I avoided the task as long as I could, but finally I set myself to do it.

Scott knew where he wanted things but when I went to dig in the ground I couldn’t.  It was hard as rock – so…. I decided to improvise.  Fortunately for me we had all the makings for a “lasagna” garden.  It took a lot of trips in the wheelbarrow but that probably was easier than the digging I’d have had to do if I did it the normal way.

First I put down a layer of cardboard that we get from the grocery store.  These are the boxes that frozen food comes in.  Boy is that an education seeing what people eat and how much packaging is involved.  Made me swear off of frozen food.

I didn’t have enough cardboard so I finished with thick layers of newspaper.  You aren’t supposed to use color pages or glossy pages, but if your paper is like ours EVERY page has color on it now, even the classifieds.  So I did skip the glossy pages and heavily colored ones, but used the rest.

The point of this first layer is to block out all sun to the grass beneath to kill it.  Some folks say to poke holes in it for the plant roots to go through but that also means you have holes for grass and weeds to come up so I don’t.  It will break down completely over about 2 seasons here.

Next I put down a big layer of straw, probably more than a foot, in the center of the cardboard.  This straw we bought to mulch the strawberries but we had too much. It was already starting to break down.

Then I put a thick layer of compost over the straw – about 6-8 inches.  I made sure all the straw was covered.  This was the planting area for the plants.

Next came the wood chips to put on the border where you could still see the cardboard.  This is playground mulch we got to work on the yard earlier and it was left over.  I put that on thick to to make sure the cardboard was held down.

Then I planted the plants.  Tansy, yarrow, lavender, coreopsis, shasta daisy, lambs ears, purple bee balm and others I can’t remember.  These were either given to us by a neighbor we found on Freecycle who needed to clean out her garden or they were bought for .99 at our town florist who is cleaning out the plants nobody bought.  The plants from the florist were badly root bound so I had to break apart the root ball and in some cases cut it because it was too densely matted for me to pull apart with my hands.  I also cut off any blooms so the plants could put their focus on growing new roots.  Made them look pretty ugly.

Once the plants were in I watered them well and then covered them with more wood chips to help retain the moisture.

I thought the bed looked really nice for only two hours of work.  It is over 10 feet long and I still have a lot of space to put things in. The plants won’t be much to look at this year, but next year they should do better and spread.  We get nice sun in this part of the yard which will help them.

Hope that helps any of you wanting a new garden bed but not really wanting to do the heavy digging.  This method has worked for us over and over and it makes a real nice looking flower garden that grows well.

A Cool Morning

17th July, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

My newest published story comes out soon.... my authors copies have arrived!

I’m up at 5:15 on a Sunday which means, hopefully, I’ll be able to catch up on some writing before the house wakes up.  The sun isn’t up yet and it sure is cool outside.  I’ve opened the window above my desk and the breeze is coming in smelling of mint.  We have a large (larger than I wanted) mint bed in our front yard.  Mint sure does travel, but I’d rather have it than the bindweed which it has successfully pushed out.

Spent a lot of time in the kitchen yesterday while both little children napped – a rarity.  Our young daughter rarely naps but needs to most days.  She is much more pleasant.  While they were sleeping I managed to:

1. cook and freeze 5lbs of hamburger (I always cook my hamburger before freezing to save time.)
2. freeze 1 qt buttermilk in 1/2 C measures (I didn’t get to use it and didn’t want it to go to waste)
3. cut up plums for 3 trays in the dehydrator
4. cooked (and burned dry) some golden beets – ruined the pan, will have to replace it.  I was reading recipes and didn’t notice the water was gone.
5. cooked 3 cups white rice
6. cooked a box of brown rice
7. put one tray of Granny Smiths in the dehydrator (I bought them to go with mashed sweet potatoes but all the potatoes have gone bad)
8. started to make chocolate chip cookies but ran out of time
9. cut up a pineapple
10. froze a bunch of beef I bought on Friday – lots of meals in the freezer now.

What I didn’t manage to do was get a nap which meant come evening I was tired and had to go to bed early.

A grocery trip on tap today after I read the paper for sales/coupons.  I don’t do much couponing any more because I buy very little convenience food.  Between the food allergies in our family and our desire to avoid chemicals there isn’t much left to buy.  I still buy boxed cereal because people are disappointed if I don’t.  I do buy gluten free cake mixes but the Betty Crocker ones have very little in the way of chemicals in them.  I also will buy lunchmeat which I know is bad for us, but is a staple – especially pepperoni.

The garden needs attention too and I still have those cookies to bake.  Other than that it’ll be watching the kids while Scott works outside I guess.  We also need to get the table we bought yesterday stripped – the previous owners tried to shellac it (it looks like, I’m not an expert but it is clear and sticky) and we need to get that stuff off.  Doubt that’ll be environmentally friendly to do.

Oh and need to take our oldest to practice parallel parking.  She takes her driving test on Thursday.

Hope everyone has a good day!

Make one change at a time to be more sustainable and environmentally friendly – they add up to something big!

16th July, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

Some nice fruit on our everbearing strawberries

It’s a little after 6am here, a late start for me but it is a Saturday and I was really tired last night. The kids are all still sleeping which hopefully will last at least another hour or so.

Sometimes I think all the things we are doing to live sustainably and environmentally responsible aren’t enough. There is always so much more we could do. But as I sit here at my desk with the cool morning breeze coming in the window I realize a lot of the changes we’ve made and the way we do things do add up to a life that is more thoughtful toward saving the environment than that of most of my friends.

For instance, my Excaliber dehydrator is running in the background. I’m drying plums at the moment for use in the winter in my fruit cobbler. I pulled out kale and pickles just a few minutes ago. Not sure yet what to do with them but heard you can dry both. The pickles are like little bursts of salt (since they were are sun pickles who had a little too much salt) so I’m not sure I can use those for anything, and I didn’t try the kale yet. So we are taking farmers market produce and saving it for winter in a way that won’t require further electricity. That’s a good thing.

Also I just put in a load of diapers. We are still using cloth diapers most of the time and every one of those has saved thousands of disposables from going into a landfill.    We hang a lot of our laundry outside to dry which is probably the single biggest thing we do to save energy.  Dryers use a ton of energy and I much prefer the free sun and wind out there to do my drying.

The diapers are rinsing now but will be washed next with our homemade laundry powder. This actually is not a more environmentally friendly product than regular detergent, but it does eliminate the traveling of water over long distances. Liquid detergents are mostly water and carrying them in trucks from who knows where is a waste of energy. If we all used dried powder so much more could be transported using the same fuel – plus we wouldn’t be loading our recycle bin with plastic bottles. The containers for our homemade soap are cardboard and paper.

Then there is the fact that I have the windows open. We have a ductless AC unit here now thanks to my mother gifting it to us last year and it is very “green” but it still uses electricity. Have the windows open in the AM when it is cool costs us nothing and smells so much better.

Upstairs I’ve just turned off the crockpot which has been cooking overnight with pork and barbeque sauce. The pork was gifted from a friend so there we are building community which is so important to permaculture and the future success of our world. The sauce was homemade and contained no high fructose corn syrup or other manufactured ingredients so we are saving ourselves all those chemicals. The sauce was stored in a Ball canning jar so we didn’t use a plastic container or something else that must be thrown out.  I used the crock pot to save on the electricity of my stove both in quantity and price since I cooked in the off hours.  I’ll pull the pork when it cools and store it for a fast lunch today when we’re busy.

In the hallway upstairs are 3 bags of clothes ready to be donated to the Salvation Army. Sheridan (finally) cleaned out her closets and drawers and packed up the stuff that no longer fits. I have a bag in my room too of things that I just don’t really like – you know the things that hang in your closet that you pass by nearly every time unless you’re late with laundry? So we are allowing those items to be reused rather than going to a landfill. We’ll be dropping them off on her way to school so we are not using any extra gas to get them there. In addition we are helping support the community efforts of the Salvation Army.

Later today Scott and I will be heading into the city to hopefully pick up a new dining room table and chairs. While on our anniversary trip last week we saw it at a thrift shop. $150 is a lot for us to spend on anything but it is solid wood with 6 chairs, and it is in pretty good shape. The top needs refinished but we can do that. The table we are using now was found at a yard sale for $10 in 2001 and it wasn’t good quality to begin with but it held on pretty well. The main problem is we need a larger table to fit 5 of us so hopefully this table will still be there. If we get it we won’t get rid of the old table, it will be turning into a craft table for me in the basement and Scott will get the table I’m using now for a bigger and better desk. He’s using a drafting table as a desk that I got for a birthday present over 20 years ago. It’ll be kept to use as a drafting table for his permaculture designs.

And that is just the things that came to mind immediately, but there are plenty more. We each have choices every day which can reduce our impact on the environment and support our local economy. All these little things add up to something big.

The point is, if you are feeling overwhelmed by all the things you COULD change in your life, just pick one and make it a part of your routine. In a few months when that becomes second nature choose another. Eventually you will have found your lifestyle has changed dramatically and you barely noticed it.

Hope everyone has a great day!

Sunshine Dill Pickles – make them in your yard!

15th July, 2011 - Posted by shawn - 1 Comment

Perennials waiting to go into the ground

It’s 5:30am here and I’m trying a new posting scedule for Earth to Eats. I’ve been reading The Amish Cook’s Anniversary Book: 20 Years of Food, Family, and Faith
and it has inspired me to try writing early in the day.  This book is an enjoyable read for me and helps me keep my work in perspective.  Reading all about an Amish family who get up at 4am and all they do before leaving for work or school motivates me to get more done.  It is just amazing all they accomplish – and it is important things too like cooking, preserving and keeping their homes clean.  It isn’t watching TV or playing video games.

I made some pickles last week in our front yard.  Yep, in the yard.  I forgot to take a picture of the jar, but they turned out good enough that I want to try them again.  I just put dill in and not garlic and something was definitely missing.  A little too much salt went in too since I didn’t have a gallon jar.  I’ll adjust all that next time.  You can find the recipe here.

I’ve been chatting with some folks from Paperbackswap this week and that is what pushed me to try a different writing schedule here.  The discussions and ideas we are sharing there would benefit so many people if they were put here in this public forum so hopefully I’ll get more posts up.  I especially want to thank Jamie G for chatting with me about frugality and making a better life for our families.  You’ve been inspiring Jamie so keep up the great work!!

Above you see a picture of perennials I purchased at our local flower shop for .99 a piece.  These are the ones she hasn’t been able to sell and it is a great way for us to extend our garden without spending much money.  I got 40 plants for $39 or so and put in a perennial bed the other night.  I need to take pictures of that and explain how I did it in another post.  Yes these plants are pot bound something awful, but if you bring them home and soak them and then break up the root ball they do just fine.  I even picked up one of my favorite plants – lemon verbena.  MMMMMM…..  Not a perennial sadly, but at least I’ll have it till frost.

Must get things moving here.  Hope everyone has a great day.

Being a locavore in Harrisburg, PA – how do you choose what to buy, local? Organic?

28th June, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

2004 PA Cow in front of Farm Show in Harrisburg

Well, my family is trying to eat a local diet – more now than ever even though our budget is smaller than ever - but I’ll tell you, there isn’t a lot of organzied information out there for this area.  I’ve found a bunch of disjunct websites that are rarely, if ever, updated and not much detailed information.  That means a lot of footwork and gas miles spent to try and find local food sources.  Hopefully it’ll get better as we find out where we can get things.

If you’ve wanted to try eating local, but get confused by local, organic, sustainable etc. then I suggest you read The Locavore’s Handbook by Leda Meredith.  It is the most human book on eating local I’ve read so far.  She is a normal, busy, limited-budget, urban apartment dwelling person who wants to eat responsibly from an environmental standpoint.  She explains lots of the options and choices you have when doing this kind of lifestyle but she isn’t preachy or too scientific.

The one thing that is sad is she is in NYC and she can walk or ride public transport to tons of places to get good, local food.  Here in Central PA that isn’t so easy.  We have to drive distances to get things and that adds to the carbon footprint of the products.  She does have a similar viewpoint with “rules” for local eating to what we have but she does not mention US grown vs foreign and that is important to us.

Here is our general guideline for buying food these days:

1. Homegrown (not always practical or possible)
2. Local and Organic (not always available)
3. Local Or Organic depending on if the item is on the dirty dozen list.  Not familiar with the dirty dozen, check here for the official list for 2011.
   • Dirty Dozen items we go Organic.
   • Non-dirty dozen items we go Local.
4. Organic raised in the US.
5. Non-organic raised in the US, fair trade if possible.
6. Organic raised outside the US.
7. Non-organic raised outside the US, fair trade if possible.

This list works best for produce, mushrooms and meat.  Processed foods are another story entirely and one that we rarely deal with because we try to avoid them whenever possible.  (Gluten free baking mixes are an exception.)

At all times we try to buy in season vs out of season.  Problem is everything is in season in the supermarket – so we avoid them as much as possible and stick to local providers and markets.  Where do we shop?  You can find a listing of local providers on the Buy Fresh, Buy Local website for the South Central PA Chapter.  They don’t do much with their facebook page or blog but you can search for provides in a certain mile radius from your home.

Make your food dollars count and vote for environmentally healthy choices by what you choose to buy and eat.

So maybe we’re at monthly posting – or less

27th June, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

Location for new bag garden

Gosh it’s been a long time since I posted anything here.  I’ve been busy over at www.amusementparkmom.com and with the kids and the garden so very little time is left over.

We’ve had a poor year in the garden this year, partially it is our fault and partially it has been the weather.  We had too much rain early in the season and then it got really hot.  And then there was the tornado, the flooding and it got hot again.

Because of the rain our suppliers were not delivering compost when we needed it most and many of our projects were abandoned due to lack of materials.  We lost a lot of started plants to heavy rain and heat.  We didn’t have a chance to get probably 50% of our seeds in the ground due to adverse weather and lack of supplies this year.  So we are looking forward to a fall crop of those things that will grow.

What has happened though is we have had wonderful success with volunteer plants from last year.  You know, dropped tomatoes and cucumbers that we missed that left seed in the ground?  THEY are doing amazing!  I didn’t plant a single cucumber seed this year due to weather but I’ve got twenty or so plants in flower and spreading.  Tomatoes are up too on their own.

I’ve always admired Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes for self-seeding, but some of these are other varieties we’ve grown.  The plants come up when they should and always bear fruit.  Now they aren’t the earliest plants on the block, but our indoor started and store bought plants aren’t even in flower yet and the wild ones are so they will bear first anyway.

So, this has me thinking about not planting certain things at all next year and letting nature take it’s course.  We’re going to try making seed bombs and see if we can get our garden growing by itself next year.  I have no volunteer peppers, but they  never grew well for us anyway.  Mostly it is cukes and tomatoes and some flowers.  Oh and a few squash of some kind.

We harvested garlic yesterday.  I nice crop but small bulbs this year.  Not sure if this is weather related or due to a lack of weeding.

Scott has been busy building beds and killing grass as we attempt to move to grass-free in a few years.  We’ve set up a bag garden too but have not planted it.  (Bag gardens consist of bags of compost/potting soil that you plant directly into.  At the end of the season you remove the bag and it has killed the grass underneath and you have a new bed to plant in.)

Blueberries did not do well at all probably a combination of lack of pruning and lack of winter protection.  We’ll try again next year.

Our strawberry patch is 3 years old and needs to be replaced.  We planted new everbearing plants in the side yard and they are doing very well.  Most berries this year are tasteless due to the heavy rain.  No jelly this year.

Currants are a mixed bag.  We have two plants and one is doing well the other appears dead.  Elderberries are flourishing.  Raspberries too, but no flowers so no fruit.

Poison Ivy is spreading like crazy and we have a new way to get rid of it that we are trying.  So far it is marginally successful.

We had great luck sprouting sweet potatoes but had no place to plant them at the right time so I’m not sure what’ll happen.

Peas came up slowly and we have a few but not many.

Spinach was available for only a week before we got 90F temps and it bolted.  Lettuce has been great, especially Tom Thumb, but it has bolted now too so we are out until fall.

Scott has been planting comfrey and sunflowers and the comfrey is blooming.  The sunflowers got a late start and were damaged by too much rain but hopefully they’ll hold on.

I gathered chive seeds and columbine seeds yesterday.  Hope to plant our fall perennials here soon.

Mint is going crazy as usual, but sage is suffering from overcrowding.  Have to thin some room for them.

Astilbe was pretty but short lived, butterfly bush is blooming as is bee balm.  We saw our first hummingbird last week.  We’ll see a few more of those I guess.

That’s the update for now, can’t say when we’ll post more but Scott is hoping to get back to it and we are starting a new family project to eat more local food so there should be some info and book reviews on that.

Happy Summer!

It stopped raining – and I stopped posting briefly

18th May, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

Our birdfeeder is sprouting!

Yes, it has been weeks since my last post and my excuse is only that it finally stopped raining so we could get out in the garden and get some work done.   Of course that ended 4 days ago and it started raining again so I’ve been playing catch-up to my computer.

Columbine - my favorite Spring flower

My columbines are beautiful but the lilacs were awful, next to no blooms.  We pruned last year and perhaps didn’t do it right, but I didn’t see many blooms at my neighbor’s place either so perhaps it was the weather.  We didn’t get any tulips this year either.  The leaves came up but no flowers.  So odd.  Lily of the valley is doing much better than I’d like it to – spreading like wildfire.  I love the way it smells but it is so invasive here it has choked out my flower beds.

You can see more photos of Spring around our place by checking out Scott’s website, The Permaculture Podcast.  It has a link to his photos.

We have a great crop of lettuce and spinach at the moment, radishes are doing nicely but the tomato sprouts have mostly been eaten by slugs.  <sigh>  Not sure what I’m going to do about that.

We’re trying to eliminate as much grass in our growing areas as possible (we don’t like grass – such a waste of resources) so Scott has been mulching heavily with cardboard and wood chips to kill the grass between our growing beds.  Doesn’t look so good now, but hopefully it’ll look better when we get the plants in.

Our garlic is spectacular!  What a crop we’ll have to use and share.  Such an easy crop to grow – at least it is here.  I’m sure that is not the case everywhere.

And then there is the poison ivy – growing about a foot a day.  I tried to tackle it myself and ended up with a horrible rash on my arms.  (Another reason I haven’t been typing much.)  I’m the only one in my family who gets it at the moment and I was trying to save the others the exposure since it is suspected that the more times you are exposed the higher your risk for a reaction, but, well, forget that.  Someone else can pull it next time.  We are actually looking into a weed killer to keep it from spreading.  Roundup works but kills frogs and we have lots of those so we are looking for something else.  Scott thinks he’s found something.  We have a section in the front that has been there so long it looks like a small hedge.  It is encroaching into our garden space and the area where our children play so it has got to go.  I’ll keep you posted.

Ronnie on his perch

The cats have been enjoying sunning on the deck but Ronnie has made a habit of crossing over the garage roof.  Not sure what he’s looking for – birds I guess. Hunter just likes to soak in the sun.  He’s older, about 15 or so, and seems his old bones need the warmth.

Let’s see, what else, made our first family trip to Hersheypark this year.  They’ve got pansies everywhere – I’m jealous.  But that is what happens when you own your own nursery I guess.

Scott’s been doing some talks on vermiculture.  I don’t think we’ve ever gotten around to posting about that here but we have a worm bin for composting kitchen waste.  It is underneath my craft table in the basement.  They keep me company while I’m scrapbooking.  (Yes, it is a little creepy sometimes.)

I think that is it for now.  We’ve still got tons of hours of work to do in the garden and last frost date is upon us so the blog will most likely be pretty quiet until the skeleton of our garden is complete.  I’ll check in again when I can.

Last week in April…. and it is STILL raining

28th April, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

Our family has been hit with the same bad storms that killed many people in the South.  Our thoughts go out to those folks and we are greatful that all we experienced was some flooding.  Again.

We’ve not  had much luck in the garden since it has been too wet to mow and we can’t get our compost and wood mulch delivered since our supplier has nothing but mud piles at the moment.  Soon, we hope.  No pots can be planted or additional beds made until we have the supplies and our cardboard for the sheet composting is blowing away with every storm.

Shelves are much more crowded now...

Our plants on the growing shelves are doing well… we’re raising “cat” nip on the bottom shelf… always have to make room for the kitties.

I lost all of the onion plants I put out, they washed away.  As did most of the lettuce.  When you get an inch of rain an hour for several hours it is hard to keep things in the ground.  I put peas in early in the week, and put them in again after they all popped to the top after the rain.

We’ve had bear sightings in the area too… so now we have to keep our eyes open for them.  Bees too are a problem this year.  They are super agressive for some reason, even the usually passive wood bees are not very nice.  Guess it was a hard winter all around.

That’s it for now!