Adventures in Veggie Growing

I had a very productive weekend. I got very, very dirty...and sweaty. Saturday, Hubby and I went to breakfast and finished the crossword. Woohoo! Then I got home and got to work. 

I cleaned up the garden beds, harvested and replanted. I harvested and pulled up the rest of the lettuces, pulled up the spinach and harvested the rest of the pak choi. I was going to pull it up, but it hasn't bolted yet and it looks like it's still growing some, so I left it in. I replanted pac choi, lettuce and spinach for a second harvest.

The amaranth, long beans and spaghetti squash I got from Baker Creek this winter was FINALLY found. (Where? Oh yeah, in with the rest of the seeds...) I planted the amaranth and squash, hoping it will still have time to grow. They're both about 90 days, so I hope to just squeak by. If I don't get grain from the amaranth, I can at least eat the leaves for a very colorful salad!

The finding of these seeds can be attributed to my need for organization. Kroger had plastic shoe boxes 10 for $10, and I needed more clothespins (more on that later), so I hopped on my bike and went a got a few to organize my overflowing seeds. During the organization, I found these awesome seeds that I had been searching for the last couple months. Awesome!!

The tomatoes and peppers are actually doing well this year. I already have some fruit! Despite my best efforts, the seedlings got all mixed up though, so I have no idea what varieties are what yet.

baby peppers!

baby tomatoes! I'm guessing these are the amish paste.

I also have some seedlings from the random squash plantings that happened last weekend.

squash seedlings!

The first green beans have now been harvested as well. I got about a pound and they're just in the fridge, waiting to be eaten. I'm finding that I like a lot more vegetables when they come out of my own garden!

green beans!

The peas have been producing like crazy. Every morning while I let Tex out I pick a good handful. They're keeping AMAZINGLY well in the fridge. I keep all my produce in Debbie Meyer Green Bags. (You can usually find them for a few dollars. I get them at Big Lots or Menards for about $1.99. They're reusable and awesome. I also love her bread bags.) I've been picking peas for about a month now and we just ate our first ones last week. They were delicious. I was thinking about freezing some of them though. We have a few pounds and with all the other stuff, I don't think we'll get to them. And how awesome will the be in January!?

snow peas. These are the ones 

I'm letting go to save for next years' seed.

Swiss chard was also up on the chopping block. I pick some HUGE leaves. Literally bigger than my head! This I decided to just blanch for 2 minutes and freeze in smaller quantities for soup. I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to each some fresh. There's plenty more out there. I'm still just a little scared!

swiss chard, pre-harvest

Our farmer's market in our little home town finally had some veggies this week! They've been having it every morning since the beginning of June. And from the beginning there's been the same 4-5 vendors (it's a tiny town, we're still trying folks!). There's a local meat market with pork rinds and landjaggers, baked goods from the kitchen at the senior housing place in town, a jewelry lady and a few other crafters intermittently. Veggies are exciting! I got a zucchini, and yellow summer squash and a couple patty-pans.

This weekends beautiful weather paired with my own eco-guilt and my mothers prompted me to try and figure out how to line dry clothes. I managed to rig a couple of short lines on our upstairs landing outside. That, paired with the drying rack outside and our already-existing inside lines let me dry 4 loads of laundry outside. I did dry Hubbies thermals for work in the dryer. Mostly because I know they'd take a while and my husband is under the impression that anything dried outside is dirty and germ-laden. But he didn't seem to notice with the bath towels or his boxers! Yes, I'm sneaky. But it's only because he doesn't notice.

new clothes line. I later added a second line behind this one.

The adding of more lines meant I needed more clothespins. I was very excited to find, at our local grocery, bamboo clothespins in plastic-free packaging. The poor box was dusty, so I'm sure they've haven't been moving much, but I did buy one of two boxes. It made me smile!

Ooh, and on another shopping note, the meat guy from the farmer's market keeps promising us that they're opening a fresh market in town! The old Super-Value that has been vacant since, from what I can gather, a few years before we moved to town, will now house a fresh market. They will be selling they're meat, custom cuts from their own cattle and swine. He also says they're grass-fred. But around here, that usually still means grain-finished. We'll see. They're also going to have fresh, local produce when available. And not-so-local during the winter months. The opening date keeps getting pushed out, but for the last few weeks he's saying August 1. I'm very excited and will report back soon. :)

Since this is already WAY too long, I'll update on Sunday a little later. Oh, and I have a yummy recipe! For more garden pics, become my friend on facebook!

Adventures in Drying Clothing

Last night, finally, I got the clothes line hung in the upstairs bathroom. A while ago I took out the shower doors from our upstairs bathroom. It's a teeny, tiny little room and the shower mechanism doesn't work. It hasn't since we moved it. It's on our grand list of things to do, but it needs a serious remodel (ugly pink everywhere, and did I mention it's tiny!), which will be far off in the future. For now, it's useful as a toilet upstairs and we occasionally brush our teeth or wash our faces up there. And, until I removed the doors, I would hang clothes on hangers from the cross bar to dry.

With the door gone, however, I had nothing. I made things a little difficult :) So after having the hooks and the line, I finally mounted it all last night. Woohoo! It's not exactly what I had envisioned, but it will work for now. Total project cost was about $5 and about 20 minutes.


Something about it being light outside, and not frigid cold, seems to make it a lot easier to be really productive after I get home from work!

More on dishwashing

I've continued my crusade into the world of washing dishes to gather more information. Last night's discussion with my husband as well as this that I got in my inbox today prompted me to post about it again.



Last night, I got home about 7pm, made dinner and sat down to work on my laptop in the kitchen. Hubby had basketball practice from 6-9pm, so didn't get home until almost 10pm. He called on his way home and I let him know he was the winner of the wonderful opportunity to do the dishes, yeah!! I was tired, cold and busy working. He didn't argue, which was nice. But I guess I get what I ask for.

He did the dishes alright. He filled the sink almost to the brim with water and then turned on the faucet to rinse EVERY SINGLE ITEM. I am not a rinser. We use Seventh Generation dish soap that is non-toxic and not overly bubbly like most standard dish soaps, so I'm not worried about us ingesting the occasional bubble. Our drying rack sits over our second sink, so when I'm all done, I take the sprayer and rinse the whole mess quickly. I also only fill the sink half way, if that. And then he stopped and let all the water out with the pan and skillet left from dinner unwashed. There's no more room in the dish-drainer. He's done. Which means I had to run another sink of water to finish those and a few others that were left undone. I also washed what I dirtied for breakfast, the crockpot and lunches, but would have left those for tonight otherwise. More wasting of water.

Here's some of the article:

Though it doesn't much resemble what's in my own sink, the face-off was based on washing eight six-piece place settings and six serving dishes. If you put all that in your dishwasher, you'd wash the whole kit and caboodle with an average of just six gallons of water. Four if you have an Energy Star machine. That's how efficient dishwashers are, and since it's hot water that's a lot of energy and CO2 emissions saved, too.

The typical faucet, on the other hand, flows at about two gallons per minute, which doesn't give you much time to rinse those 54 items and still beat your dishwasher. In fact, you'd have just 4.4 seconds of running water to rinse each piece (and that assumes you're washing with a soapy sponge instead of a basin of sudsy water). Which means that unless you can be pathologically miserly with your tap water, a dishwasher is the way to go.

In my world, I think I actually use less water to wash than a dishwasher would, especially since we would have a hard time filling it up most days, and I'd still need my pots and pans cleaned daily. I have to believe this, or it will eat me up inside. I'll venture to guess I don't put more than two gallons in the sink to do dishes. Add any rinsing I may do before or after washing, and I think I'd be pushing to use 4 gallons of water. Do I wash 54 items? Probably not, but like I said, I don't think I'd fill the washing machine up completely either.

But what do I do about my man who likes to leave the water practically running while he does the dishes, and by the way, gets it EVERYWHERE!?

I made a couple comments to him while he was washing last night, and probably got him mad, but it needs to be addressed. He said he doesn't care about the earth and tree-hugging and that garbage and doesn't like tasting soap with his food. I'm pretty sure he's making up the part about tasting soap...I never have and don't think there's even much of an opportunity to do so. I kindly reminded him that we also pay for our water, both what we use and what we put in the sewer, so it wasting money as well as water. No response.

What's a woman to do? Never ask for help with the dishes? Try and change a man who doesn't share some of the same beliefs? I've managed to get him to turn the water off while he's brushing his teeth most of the time. I guess it's a step. But this issue just bothers me so much!

Hand washing vs. Dishwashers

This is a debate that has been discussed quite a bit in the blog world. Treehugger has recently published another article on this topic and discovered that it is possible to be just as efficient with hand washing as it is using a dishwasher, but you have to try.

Unfortunately for me, this isn't an argument I need to pay attention to. We don't have a dishwasher. And even if we had the available cash to buy one and make a space for it with hookups in our kitchen, there really isn't a practical place to put one in our kitchen, or anywhere in our house. This picture is a mountain of clean dishes from one Sunday.



We have a smaller house. It fills our needs completely, but it is almost 150 years old, and back then farm housed weren't built for our modern conveniences. Our bathrooms are tiny and afterthoughts. The closets are built into rooms or are a result of adding in the bathrooms. And our kitchen is very nice and plenty big enough for us, but has one wall of cabinets/appliances and countertops and our table is on the other wall. No dining room, just our eat-in kitchen. And that's fine for us. But it means that if we want to put in a dishwasher, the only available place is between the sink and refrigerator, where the only full-size under cabinet storage is. All of my pots, pans and mixing bowls will be displaced, not to mention our George Foreman grill, coffee maker and our strainers.

So, I hand was everything. It isn't so bad with just the two of us. But looking to the future, it could become more of a burden as our family grows. And when we have guests (which is at least once a week), the dirty dishes take over the counter space and dish washing must be a combined effort. I make efforts to use as little water as possible and I use an environmentally friendly dish soap, in very small quantities.

Oh well.

Crockpot Chili

This is the recipe for the chili I made for Hubby's lunches this week. I added some lean stew meat, cut in small pieces, but he doesn't really like it much. I also added some Spirulina, sshhhh, don't tell! This is definitely a protein packed meal!

I like to have my chili over a baked potato or with a thick slice of my homemade wheat bread. Yum! And this recipe is great because you can put in in the crockpot overnight or while you're at work and have it ready when you need it!

Another great aspect is this is made in the crockpot or slow cooker. These are wonderful time and energy saving devices. Yeah for being frugal! Warming things using the microwave is also much more energy-efficient usually than cooking or warming with the stove or oven. Despite my concerns over the quality of food cooked in a microwave, I have to admit that the steamer bags are my friend when it comes to green veggies. I used to never eat them, ever. Now that I'm an adult, I'm forcing myself to eat them and have come to tolerate asparagus and sometimes broccoli, if I can cover it in some kind of sauce or gravy! Since I never ate, I never learned to cook them, and the microwave steaming bags are the only things that seem to work well for me. Although, I did make some roasted asparagus a couple weeks ago that I actually had seconds of! Crazy, I know. I may be learning :)

This picture is actually of the chili in the fridge, waiting to be warmed for lunches. Again, I forgot to take pictures. I will try, I promise.



Makes 10 servings

Ingredients

1	pound lean ground beef
1	can tomato paste
1	can diced tomatoes
4	cups water
15	oz. kidney beans
15	oz. black beans
15	oz. lentils
1	small onion, chopped
1/4	c bell pepper, chopped
1/8	t cayenne pepper
1/2	t brown sugar
1/2	t oregano
1/2	t black pepper
1/2	t salt
1 1/2	t cumin
1/2	c chili powder
1/2	t curry powder

Directions

1. Brown beef in skillet.
   
2. Add all other ingredients to slow cooker and mix well.
   
3. Add beef.
   
4. Cook on low 8-10 hours. (Can be made on a stovetop as well)
   
5. *For additional flavor, try adding other meats or veggie and beef broth for the water.