It's Easy Being Green

If you have any roses in your garden, make them even more productive with some simple composting.  Roses need potassium to boost their flower production resulting in some nice, lush blooms.  They can get plenty of potassium if you simply push banana peels into the soil at the base of your rose plants.  So, have a banana for breakfast and feed your rose too!

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In 2007, the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year was “locavore”.  A locavore is a person who eats exclusively locally grown food.  It may sound like an easy task to undertake eating only what is produced in your local area but you may find the idea a bit more difficult to stomach that you might originally think.

The global marketplace has opened up markets near and far spanning our great globe.  As a result, much of our produce at the supermarket could be making a trip 3,000 miles or more in the making just to get to our dinner tables.  That trip turns into a major waste of natural resources and there are many long-term environmental impacts of transporting produce all that way.  Not to mention that it has been in transport for about two weeks by the time it arrives at the store.  So, it was either picked way before it was actually ripe or it’s been genetically modified to survive the long journey and maintain its “freshness”.

These days it’s fairly easy to spot produce grown in a far away market.  Just look for the static sticker to see where it was grown.  You might feel like you’re taking an around the world cruise just in the produce department by reading grown-in labels from Chile, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and the list goes on and on.  Many grocery store chains like our local Albertson’s have realized the locavore movement and now specifically point out locally grown produce in their sale fliers.  Health food and natural food stores have been the leader in this arena for sometime, taking careful note of where all their food is coming from and it’s far reaching impacts.

If you truely believe in the locavore movement, you might have to make some major modifications to the meals you eat depending on the season you’re in.  Follow this link and take a look at what produce is available in each season near you.  For instance, here in Arizona we don’t have any produce listed as locally grown right now.  Our last listed harvest was in December and was for pecans.  You certainly can’t just live off pecans until produce becomes available in June again, so you might have to make some adjustments to your comfortable radius that produce comes from.  While many are die hards about this movement and stick to a 100 Mile Diet, I tend to think a little wider when it comes to my produce.

If you’d like to learn more about the produce grown in your region, head over to the Local Harvest website to check out small farms and farmers markets in your area.  Happy eating!

Do you think you could be a locavore?  How committed could you be to eating locally grown foods?

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If you live someplace warm like Phoenix, you might already be getting your spring garden into the ground about now, hoping for a harvest before the Summer heat kills off your plants.  If tomatoes are a part of you new garden, remember this fun tip.

You can snip a branch of your tomato plant and put the stem in a cup of water until it roots.  Once the roots develop, put the new tomato plant into a pot and watch it grow.  Many people apparently clone their tomatoes and keep the new plants inside for a winter harvest, long after their garden has been covered in snow and frost.  That’s a great tip I hadn’t heard about!

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We are just 18 days away from the first official day of Spring, the Spring Equinox happening on March 20th this year.  In many parts of the country it seems the veil of Winter has been lifted already and we’re beginning to thaw out.  Is it just a teaser or has Spring really sprung?

If you happen to live in a warm part of the country, you might already be planning your first Spring garden party.  If so, how would you like to make a nifty drink dispenser that not only tastes good but can be composted when you’re done?!  Check out Elizabeth’s Drunken Watermelon on Tap for the super idea and instructions on how to put it together.  I guarantee this one will be a crowd pleaser at your next outdoor get-together.   If you don’t want to make the beverage alcoholic you can of course substitute it with another beverage.  Watermelon punch, lemonade or iced tea anyone?

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Who knew a book investigating what exactly goes into each and every one of our meals would end up a best seller, illustrating the apparently mainstream idea that a lot of what we eat isn’t good for us. I’m talking about Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. His book investigated what goes into each and every one of our meals from a value meal at the local fast food joint to a home-cooked dinner with ingredients purchased from the natural food store.

Now Pollan has written a follow up called In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. This new book delves into scientific explanations of the diets and nutritional values of many traditional societies. Pollan’s goal is to develop a common-sense alternative to eating what he calls “edible food-like substances” that our mass produced for us on a daily basis. His conclusions is that we should continue eating but in moderation of course and add a lot of vegetation to our daily diet.

You might remember Pollan also wrote The Botany of Desire, examining whether plants use humans just as humans use plants.

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When we ran to Sam’s Club the other day we perused the wine selection like we always do. We’ll typically pick up a bottle or two to enjoy over the next couple of weeks. One half bottle practically jumped off the shelf at us. The frosted black bottle of German Eiswein Nachtgold looked mysterious and the description on the bottle sounded downright tasty!

“These precious grapes from which we press our Ice-wine are harvested in the early morning hours when it’s still dark and frozen. Our vintners therefore call this noble and sweet wine “Nachtgold” which means “Gold of the Night”.

The wine hails from the Rheinhessen region of Germany where there are about 26,000 hectacres of vineyards.  It’s known as the largest viticulture region in Germany.  This Eiswein is produced when temperatures in the vineyard drop to 19 degrees Fahrenheit or what they consider a “hard freeze”.  In the darkness, the grapes are harvested frozen and immediately crushed because the water inside the grapes is still frozen, leaving the vintner with a golden yellow liquid to ferment.  It maintains a golden-yellow color after maturation and leaves intense aromas of apple, peaches and melons.  It has a rich mouth feel and a smooth sweetness of caramel or honey.  We loved it.  I highly recommend this dessert wine if you run across it sometime.

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I had some fun today and put together a quick mini-movie to enter in El Polo Loco’s latest contest promoting their fresh, citrus marinated, flame-grilled chicken. The idea is that it’s a lot of work to get the same flame-grilled, citrus taste yourself and the results might not be so wonderful. I tried to add a little humor into mine. Watch it below! Head on over to watch the other grilled chicken videos.

[youtube pwehwmTobno El Polo Loco]

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