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Archive for July, 2008

THE NEW GARDEN

So a while ago I wrote about how dismally my square foot garden was faring in contrast to my neighbor’s raised garden bed. I speculated that the reason was that mine wasn’t getting enough sun and that I had a slug problem.

This weekend, on a whim, I sought to fix the problem once and for all being the not-willing to fail type. So a trip to Home Depot and the local gardening center got me started and I finished everything this afternoon. Here’s what I did:

1) I harvested everything that was left out of the “old” garden. I got about 2 big salads worth of greens, a small bunch of Swiss chard that I will saute with garlic and raisens in a few days, and some very baby carrots.

2) I dumped out all the old soil so I could move the garden to a sunnier place. My husband cleared a spot that is much sunnier but still in our backyard and leveled it. I didn’t want to use the same soil because it had too many weed-seeds since I hadn’t followed the square foot gardening method to a tee last time and I was determined to follow it this time which leads me to…

3) I bought the Mel’s Mix stuff that I was supposed to get the first time around: 3 cubic feet vermiculite, 3 cubic feet compost of two different kinds, 3 cubic feet of peat moss. I mixed all these ingredients on a tarp just as the book instructs. (My kids helped with that part.)

4) My husband and I nailed the weed barrier fabric to the bottom again because it ripped out when I dumped the old soil out. We moved the box to the newly leveled, sunny spot.

5) I filled the box with the Mel’s Mix today. Wow is that soil nice! Then I replanted a fall crop of seeds, which I bought from the local nursery. These seeds aren’t the cheapo seeds like I had gotten before. They are formulated to work here in my part of the country.

6) Used the new spray nosel attachment to hose to give it a nice misty water bath to get it started. Oh! That just reminds me that I forgot to put the sluggo around the perimeter. I’ll have to do that tomorrow.

I also drew up a quick diagram showing the 16 squares and their contents so that I can refer back to it when needed. That way I didn’t have to put all those ugly tags in each square identifying the contents. Here’s what I planted for my fall crop with the number of square of each in parentheses:

• Carrots (2)
• Bunching onions (2)
• Regular onions (1)
• Swiss chard (2)
• Romaine lettuce (3)
• Gourmet lettuce blend (2)
• Spinach (savoy) (2)
• Kale (2)

I have to admit that I have no idea what kale is so that’ll be an interesting crop! I managed to do almost the entire project without the kids messing it up this time. There was a slight incident right at the end where my 3.5 year old thought it would be helpful to poke 2 holes in the soil with a wooden stick (and this was after instructed not to touch!!) but I think it will create minimal damage. Next up: secure the permiter from varmin, dogs, and kids, with some chicken wire.

Today I was researching childhood obesity because I am interested in why it is increasing so rapidly. I think it has been on my mind lately because out of the 10 children under the age of 14 on my street, 3 are overweight. Out of the age 14 and over population (including adults), of which there are 30, 10 are significantly overweight/obese. When you see it around you I guess you start to wonder, what gives?!

So I randomly came across a YouTube video of a presentation called Current Issues in Pediatric Obesity Part 1 - which was absolutely fascinating and I am telling you is worth watching every minute of the hour-long video.  It isn’t just about childhood obesity because, as the presenter states, the reasons for obesity are the same in both adults and children.  In it you’ll learn that:

• Soda needs to be limited to one drink per week
• Fast food needs to be limited to 1 or fewer meals per week
• Exercise is the absolute best way to decrease insulin resistance
• Exercise only helps the insulin issue for 24 hours so you have to do it daily

When I watched it I couldn’t help but thinking about how our local elementary school and my child’s daycare have both, in the past year, held fundraisers for the schools at McDonald’s! I was appalled at this from the first but I found out that not many other parents were at all phased.

(I am getting to a point here…) So then I watched the second presentation - Current Issues In Childhood Obesity Part 2 - and thought I’d share the nutritionist’s snack advice for kids as we could all use some new ideas for kids snacks, right? She also has a lot of other practical diet guidelines on there as well if you are looking for more detail.

Healthy Kid’s Snacks

• Carrots and hummus
• Celery and peanut butter
• Apple slices and cheese slices
• Trail mix (nuts and fruit only)

The last take-home message I got from the two videos is that if you or your child wants to lose weight it is very beneficial to do it with a doctor’s counsel as opposed to trying to do it on your own.

What’s an often overlooked ingredient that really helps to sweeten up a main dish? Carrots! Don’t believe me? Then try this:

Next time you make lasagna peel and grate 3 regular sized carrots. Mix the grated carrot into the cheese filling before you put it in the pan. Your lasagna will taste sweeter and have a pleasant crunch!

A lot of bloggers have been posting lists of things to do and get to prepare you and your family for a potential disaster of any kind.  There’s no telling why this topic is on the cyber spacy’s minds of late, but it sure has motivated me to act. I dragged my family to the local drug store yesterday to (finally) purchase our 3-day supply of extra water that we needed since our last supply was probably 2 years old. We also got a small battery operated radio, a new pack of batteries for it and our emergency flashlight, emergency long-burning candles, and ramen noodles to add to our supply collection (we already have surgical masks and duct tape).

This may all seem quite silly, and perhaps it is.  In a major disaster these items may not be at all helpful. Does anybody else wonder about whether or not those who have stock-piled, say, one year’s worth of food, will simply become targets for attack under extreme conditions? If you have resources you would then have to protect them because a true long-term emergency that requires one year worth of food would likely cause other people to want to steal your stash out of hunger and anxiety.

Two of the recent posts that contain good, practical advice on the material goods to keep on hand in case of perhaps a more modest emergency than the one I speculated on in the previous paragraph are:

• FrugalDad’s article Is Recession Preparing a New Breed of Survivalist?
• TheSmartDollar’s article Frugal and Prepared: Emergency Supplies

Once we have amassed our collection of material-good emergency supplies we might want to ask ourselves what else we might need in a true emergency situation. My guess is that we need social-skills, street smarts, a fit body, and as many friends and contacts as we can get, preferably people in many different countries. These social resources are just as important as the material ones. And unlike those iodine capsules and ramen noodles, friends are actually nice to have in non-emergency situations too!

Chocolate Mousse

Here’s your challenge: make yourself and your spouse this decadent treat during the day and enjoy it in the evening, just the two of you, after the kids have gone to bed. You’ll get brownie points (mousse points??) for sure.

Now, while my husband and I did savor it after the kids went to bed I won’t lie and say it was romantic or anything. I was reading a Ram Charan book called “Know-How” and he was working on that solar-power project we took on recently for my business. But we enjoyed it nonetheless! Maybe you can be less nerdy than we were. . .

The recipe for this Chocolate Mousse is adapted from the Chocolate Mousse Piethat garnered a full four-fork rating from Epicurious. Four forks is tough to achieve so you know its going to be good! Here’s how I made it:

• 12 ounces of milk chocolate chips | $2 for 11.5 oz bag
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract | $0.10 for 1 tsp of imitation extract
• pinch of salt | price is negligible
• 3 cups chilled whipping cream | $3.20
• 2 tbsp sugar | price is negligible

Makes about 6 servings

Total Cost per Serving: $0.88

Here’s What To Do:

Put the chocolate chips, vanilla, and salt into your food processor and process until it is all mixed up, about 30 seconds to one minute. Put 1 cup of the whipping cream into a pot and boil it on the stove. Then slowly pour it into the feed tube of your processor while the processor is running. Keep processing it until the chocolate is all melted and smooth. Put the mixture into a 9 X 11 dish and spread it out. Let it cool to room temperature. (This allows it to cool quickly since there’s a lot of surface area for it to cool in a big dish like that.)

While it is cooling whip up the remaining two cups of whipping cream with the wire whisk attachment to your kitchen aid (or whatever you use for rapid whisking). Put the sugar in there too. Whip it until it forms stiff peaks. By the time that is done the chocolate ought to be cool. Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate (still in the 9 X 11 pan) until combined. Put it in the refrigerator and let it set - about 2 to 6 hours.

Scoop out the mousse and put it in some wine glasses for an extra touch of fanciness. Enjoy this super-cheap treat!!!

Something I have done for years now is to keep a favorite snack and recipe list tucked into my recipe folder. Whenever I find a particularly wonderful recipe or snack idea I jot it down on the ever-expanding list. Then, when I am at a loss for what to plan for the week I can just get this out and pick a few.

I got the idea from a roommate back in my days as a summer intern in college. She was second generation Chinese and boy could she cook. She mostly cooked Chinese dishes, all of which were super-tasty, but could also wow us all with her American cuisine as well. One time she even went out picked wild rasberries to top off a pie that she had basically just whipped together from what ingredients were on hand. That’s some major skill for a 20 year old and all the rest of us were definitely appreciative.

Anyway, she kept a recipe box with 3×5 cards. Everytime she made up a new recipe that she liked, she’d write down the ingredients and a few notes about how to cook it and file it away. She explained that if she didn’t then she would forget what she had done.

My system is not nearly as fancy. A lined sheet of paper torn out of a spiral notebook from about 5 years ago that is labeled “Food Ideas.” There’s 4 different colors of pen ink on there and a few scribbles from the kids.

Here are some of the things that are on my list:

• Jiffy apple-cin muffin mix - make the coffee cake
• Lasagna with shredded carrots in filling
• Cinnamon sugar toast
• Sauted veggies with basil and goat cheese
• Focaccia bread w/ roasted garlic and sundried tomato on top, goat cheese on side
• Re-fried bean and cheese burritos
• Fruit salad with yogurt, honey, and chopped walnuts on top
• Krusteaz pancakes
• Scrambled eggs w/ ham and cheese mixed in
• White cheddar popcorn cakes w/ peanut butter on top
• Blackberry Chicken (recipe in New Basics cookbook)
• Green bean casserole
• Fresh broccoli steamed w/ a little cheddar on top
• Bagels w/ strawberry cream cheese
• Chile from “Pasta, Grains,…” Cookbook
• Phad Thai - Box, quick fix
• Sandwiches: pesto, tomato, goat cheese, and prosciutto
• Smoothies - fruit, yogurt, oj, etc.
• Cous cous

I wrote those exactly as they appear on my list. What’s on your list?!