Fresh veggie storage ideas!

This is a topic that has been hot on my internet feed this morning, so I thought it would nice to share the links that I have been receiving with all of you. I am not quite sure why, maybe because Labor Day means that summer days are starting to wane, your garden is in top form with harvests getting out of control, and you have to start thinking about how to preserve your harvest before it goes bad. Now, if you want to truly enjoy your healthy harvest while continuing to be friendly towards the environment.

Once you get your organic local veggies with in your house, the first thing you might do is put them into plastic. Plastic continues to drain valuable oil sources from the planet, and all though plastic has been a semi-success in recycling programs, it is still one of those items that if you don't need to use you shouldn't. One of the biggest problems we have environmentally right now is over-packaging, and that goes for our home life as well. Reducing plastic and packaging from your house is just one more way to reduce your overall energy and carbon footprint. Also, in the past decade there has been a growing concern with Bisphenol-A, aka BPA, leeching into their food through plastic containers. Removing plastic storage containers would be the most logical and easiest step to this problem.

Here are the two articles that list everything from Eggplant to Corn to Berries, to Zucchini and how to store them safely. Both articles talk about close to the same techniques but cover things that the other doesn't. One comes from Whole Living and one from Nature's Path Organic.

And here are the links:

How to Store Summer Produce

How to: Store Fruit & Vegetables without plastic

---Justin

Slay Energy Vampires! the return, plus a new local business in Tempe that composts!

Hello all! Justin here, and I am pleased to announce the return and reboot of Slay Energy Vampires. I am sorry for leaving all of you hanging, I took a quick break for the holidays, but when I returned I found that my computer was on the outs, and after many weeks of battling the computer, and other issues I finally started gathering information and idea for the return of Slay Energy Vampires! We are back in complete operation now, hoping to provide you with tips and tricks on reducing your footprint, plus local businesses trying to make a difference, and yes, Meatless Mondays, and my own adventures to make my house just that much energy conscious. I thank you again for the patience, my own person New Year's resolution this year was to make this site 100,000 hits...please help me out, spread the word, send me some links, or heck, even write an article, this is a community here, not just me...

Now with the news!

Coming out ot Tempe, Arizona, there is a new business in town called EcoScraps. EcoScraps offers to takes unusable rotting fruits and vegetables from local restaurants and grocery stores and uses them to turn into nutrient-rich compost and which they then  sell back to local nurseries and landscaping companies. This is removing the need to ship in other compost from out of town, and keeping the whole decomposition chain local. According to the press release from the City of Tempe:

This month alone, they will likely create enough compost from what would otherwise go into a landfill to offset the emissions of 13,000 cars for a month.

That's a lot of cars to offset. I applaud companies like this that take the initiative to bring green farming, and sustainable practices to a city and community.

EcoScraps started as a brainchild of Dan Blake who noticed that so much of his food was getting thrown out in restaurants. He started dumpster diving for food from local restaurants and composting at home as an experiment with different methods of composting. EcoScraps is currently in Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. You can find EcoScraps on Facebook: here.

---Justin J. Stewart (...link via Angie Fretz)

Meatless Monday 09.27.10

Ok, this is our third installment of Meatless Monday! Today, most of the food is food featured from the local farmers market, or from our own garden. I also promise, after today, there will be other updates besides Meatless Monday, I have a whole bunch of links and ideas coming! Regardless, on to the food!

For breakfast, as usual, I had nothing. Laura had some Cheerios. So on to the lunch!

Crazy Cucumber!    For lunch we tried something different, that I have seen in many restaurant, so decided to try it on my own. We picked up a Armenian Cucumber at the Brazos Valley Farmers Market. I must admit that we bought this vegetable due to its strange shape. For lunch it was a simple pita sandwich. We cut up the cucumber, but a few slices inside of the pita (which was cut in half), and added some homemade baba ganoush, which I also made for a previous meatless Monday, and the recipe can be found here. I must say it was a delicious and refreshing pita sandwich, and I do plan on trying it again sometime. Even Laura, who is not a huge fan of Cucumbers, though that this sandwich was tasty.

 YUM!

 For an in between snack, we went to our favorite Frozen Yogurt Bar, Spoons Yogurt. Needless to say, there was not any meat involved in this. But there were nuts, kiwi fruit, and strawberries!

For dinner we decided on an recipe that we tried a few weeks ago for the first time. Now yesterday, we harvested from our garden over forty banana peppers, so we had to do something with them. We pickled two jars worth, but then with twenty-two of them, we decided to make stuffed Banana Peppers. We make two variates. One is stuffed with a rice mixture, and one is just stuffed with cream cheese and shredded parmesan cheese.

RICE!First to make the rice mixture, I make one cup of white rice. I cut one large lime in half and squeeze both sides worth of juice into the rice, add about 1 tablespoon of butter, some chopped up cilantro, and some salt and pepper. I mix it up together, and there ya have it. I usually also put in some sour cream for flavor, but this time, alas, our sour cream was bad, and we went with out it. It was equally delicious and better for us anyways.

Sliced peppers...

I then cut the top off of the banana peppers, and slice them down the middle. For the cream cheese cheese and parmesan peppers. I add just enough cream cheese in each pepper to fill it, and then take a pinch of parmesan and press it into the cream cheese. (With both the cream cheese and the rice, I use my hands to handle the filling and to stuff the peppers. Way easier than trying to use a spoon, but more messy).

Ready to put in the ovenFor the rice stuffed peppers, I fill as much rice as possible into the pepper. Then when all the peppers are stuffed, I sprinkle some cheddar cheese and chili powder on top of the peppers. I then put all of the peppers into the oven set at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted. Pull them out, serve the rest of the rice stuffing with them, and your done. Quick and easy, and also delicious!

Finished peppers!!!

Look out this week for some mad posting! I have link and suggestions from everyone out there! Thank you! Plus I will finally look at my electric and gas bills and tell you how I've been doing. Remember, if you have any suggestions or ideas, send them my way! Thank you!

---Justin J. Stewart

Pools and Plants...enter the GardenPool a whole new way for backyard gardening

...link via GayLee Fretz

WOW! I don't even know where to start with this new technique in backyard gardening. I am blown away and overly jealous. Who and how do you get a garden in an old pool?! Well the people over at GardenPool.org have found a way to do it, and it is truly a work of amazement.

Swimming pools to being with are a pool of energy waste and excess, if you ask me at look at the numbers (yet, I am not down at all on anyone who wishes to take a dip in their backyard pool on scorching days, especially in the Southwest). This family from Mesa, Arizona took an empty, run-down pool in a new house that they just purchased, and instead of pouring money into it to continue pouring more money and energy into it for recreation, they put money into an investment. The investment was food grown in your backyard (from crops to chickens, to fish!), in one of the most difficult growing regions in the United States.

The garden pool uses solar power to power the self-sustaining garden (farm?!). They are using hydroponics gardening to reduce soil use, aquaponics to grow their fish, and are using naturally grown insects and plants (duckweed to filer and purify the water) to feed and combat nasties from their crops and fertilize their crops. Did I mention they have a chicken coop?!!

This is the empty pool that they started with!They use SPIN (Small Plot Intensive) gardening techniques, which we also have seen in the more common term, square foot gardening. They are promoting this as a way to get as much as what little room you have. Which I have fully supported, I have been saying since my own organic gardening experiences this year (article coming soon!), that if everyone planted a one foot by one foot or two foot by two foot garden we could take a huge strain off of the American food system. They are using gutter planting techniques as 5 gallon buckets as planters and appear to be getting quite the harvest, 365 days a year. DID I MENTION THEY HAVE CHICKENS?! I can't get over the the chicken thing. Even though some people would probably be more impressed that they literally have a Tilapia farm in their back yard. The family also gives tours of their pool, and offers a volunteer program so you can get some hands on experience and think about how you can build one of your own in your desert backyard.

I see this The inside of the GardenPoolas a step, even though a huge step, that we can all work towards. Maybe not at this scale at first, but something we can look at and think about. I am super impressed with these guys, and if you are in the Phoenix area, I would suggest checking this out. If not, please visit their website and read all about it. The information that they have places on their website about this project is so  in depth and fascinating, yet simple reading. I applaud the family for their outreach on this project. Also, check out their facebook page while your at it. Big props to this family for their dedication and demonstration of showing us that you, yes you, can own your own food supply!I will now leave you with a video of their GardenPool!

---Justin J. Stewart (link via GayLee Fretz, all pictures and videos from GardenPool.org)