10 ways to be more sustainable with your vegetable garden

Yes, I know a vegetable garden in and of itself is a pretty sustainable thing. Growing your own food instead of getting it from the store (usually in some sort of plastic bag or container) is great. But what are some extra steps you can take to be even more sustainable with your garden? Here are ten of them.

1. If you start your own seeds, do it in reused containers instead of buying new ones. Yogurt cups are great for this, but any container will do. Also starter pots made from newspaper are an eco-friendly way to go.
2. Use water saved from cooking or captured water from running the faucet to water your plants. When you cook vegetables or pasta in water, nutrients leach into the water and that water makes great plant food. Don't use water that you've used to cook meat in to water edible plants, though. And, make sure the water has cooled before you use.
3. Water early in the morning or late in the evening so the midday sun doesn't soak up half of the water before the plants get it. You'll have to use less water this way.
4. Save your seeds for next year. In addition to saving seeds from my own garden, I plan on buying a couple expensive heirloom tomatoes from the farmers market, enjoy them, and save their seeds for next year. I'm not sure how well it will work, but I'm going to give it a shot.
5. Share your bounty. Your bound to have too much of something (basil? zucchini?). Don't let it go bad. Share with friends and neighbors or find a food bank that will take the donations.
6. Compost. Turn your vegetable and plant waste into food for next year's garden.
7. Rotate your plants. Even in a small garden, moving the plants around from year to year will help the soil.
8. Deter pests naturally. It's very tempting, and I know how tempting it is from experience, to want to destroy bugs or keep the rabbits away using toxic methods. But, this is food your family will eat so keep the chemicals away. Experiment with natural remedies and be okay with losing a little of your crop while you're figuring it out.
9. Learn about the types of diseases your plants could get and how to identify them. This year especially with the late blight wiping out tomato plants, identifying and properly handling a disease could save part of your garden and your neighbor's garden, too.
10. If you have kids, get them out in the garden with you and pass on the skills that you have (or maybe learn skills together) so that they will continue to garden when they have their own space.

Leftover Turkey? Try My Turkey Pot Pie Recipe

Good Morning! Is your fridge stuffed with leftover food from Thanksgiving like mine is? In the past, we would eat some of it, but usually about two weeks from now, I'd be throwing a bit of it away. This year, I'm determined not to let that happen. I've talked about food waste before. In the U.S., we waste about 30% of the food produced in this country. If you consider all of the resources that went into making the food and all the energy that went into transporting that food, that is a heck of a lot of waste.

So I'm going to make sure that I use up the leftovers. I'll be making turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwiches, turkey soup, potato pancakes, and my turkey pot pie. This recipe originally called to be done traditionally in pie crusts (which I still do on occasion) but an easier, very tasty way to do it is to make the filling and then ladle it over biscuits.

Turkey Pot Pie over Biscuits

Ingredients

• 6 tbsp. butter
  
• 1/3 cup flour
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
  
• 1/4 tsp dried marjoram
  
• 1/8 tsp black pepper
  
• 1 cup milk (I use 1% and it works fine)
  
• 10 oz. hot water
  
• 1 tsp. chicken bullion
  
• 3 cups cubed turkey
  
• 16 oz. partially cooked mixed vegetables
  
• biscuits

Directions

1. Melt butter in large saucepan
2. Stir in flour, salt, marjoram and pepper - cook until smooth, stirring occassionally
3. Slowly stir in milk, then water
4. Add bullion
5. Bring to boil, reduce heat and stir constantly until it thickens
6. Add turkey and vegetables, cook for 20 minutes - make sure turkey and veg are cooked through
7. Serve over homemade or store bought split biscuits

I challenge you to get creative and figure out how to use up all your leftovers yesterday. Don't let any of them go to waste. Give them away if you need to.

And the picture above really has nothing to do with this particular post. It's just my cat, sitting at the table last night, waiting for dinner to start. She seemed rather surprised when my husband pushed her off the chair and sat there himself.

Green Term of the Week - Freegan

There's a new, hip, term for someone who picks trash, and it's not dumpster diver. That term is so last minute.

This minute's term is freegan. According to wikipedia a freegan is someone whose "lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters that have passed their display date but haven't passed their edible date. They salvage the food not because they are poor or homeless, but as a political statement." 

I suppose that is what freeganism started out as, but it has evolved to include more than just salvaging food to salvaging other useful items.

I first became aware of the freegan movement when someone who goes by @freegan started following me on Twitter. This person gives updates through Twitter on what she gets from dumpsters - mostly dumpsters behind grocery and other retail stores. Here's something she wrote yesterday

Every nite same store dumps 4 boxes fresh fruit & veg; last nite I got 102 firm bananas, 30 apples; 10 pumpkin pies I couldn't reach

She doesn't keep all this food for herself. In the past eight months she has donated over $29,000 worth of food to homeless shelters. Yes, it does sound kind of gross - taking food from dumpsters. But this isn't half eaten food. This is perfectly good food that is just past its expiration date or not even to its date yet but needs to be gotten rid of to make room for new shipments. It's at the top of the bin, and this woman, who has a blog called Secret Freegan, knows when to hit the dumpsters so the stuff is right on top.

The amount of food wasted in this country is startling. In the U.S., 30% of food produced gets wasted. That's an awful lot of food, water, and fuel  gone without ever having done any good. Secret Freegan helps to lower those statistics and the environmental impact of wasted food with her actions. I think it's pretty awesome.

She's not the only one. Freeganism is a movement. Freegan.info gives more information about the movement including its philosophy on waste reclamation,  waste minimization, eco-friendly transportation (including train hopping and hitchhiking), rent free housing, and going green. Check it out. It's a pretty interesting read. 

So what do you think about taking the perfectly good food from the top of dumpsters and using it? Good idea? Disgusting? Fine idea for other people, but not for you?

Image from Secret Freegan's website.

Buy Ingredients and Save Money

Green Saves Green 

Day 20

I've come to look at foods in basically two categories - ingredients and processed foods. These are my own categories, so please don't take them as official.

To me ingredients are ones you can eat as is or by simply cooking them. This would be fruits and vegetables, grains, pastas, meats, eggs, cheeses, milk and other dairy products.

Processed foods are the ones where the ingredients have already been put together to form something like a cookie, a loaf of bread or a frozen meal. 

I've noticed something. Bread made from ingredients costs less than processed bread bought at the grocery store. The individual ingredients for my meat loaf (which I'm making tonight) cost less than a family size Stouffers frozen meat loaf dinner or the pre-made, uncooked meat loaf at my grocery store that is ready to cook. Homemade cookies usually cost less than packaged cookies. 

When I buy ingredients instead of processed packaged foods and make my own foods, it costs less and I have much more control over the quality and earth friendliness of the ingredients. Right now, I've got a huge pot of chicken noodle soup on the stove, and at least half of the ingredients are organic. Others are all natural. This whole pot is costing me about $20 to make (I've doubled the recipe).

Making your own food from basic ingredients may cost you time, but buying processed packaged foods for the majority of your meals costs you more in money and quality, and it costs the earth. Take a look at the ingredients in a frozen dinner. They can come from all over the world and by the time that frozen meal hits your table, it's much better traveled than you may ever be. 

Even if you can't get all of your ingredients locally, buying ingredients instead of processed foods will still minimize your food miles. Add that to the fact that your food will be better quality and cost you less, and you can see why it's a better choice.

I know not everyone can cook from scratch every night of the week. I can't. But several nights a week, I make sure I organize my time so I can do it. If you never do it, try it just once this week. 

A little hint - the more you do it, the less it will cost you. Once you get used to cooking from scratch and become familiar with favorite recipes, you'll be able to buy more and use an ingredient in more than one dish. If a dish calls for half a red pepper, diced, you can also plan to have kabobs that week and use the remaining half a pepper on the skewer. You'll be able to waste less, saving even more money. That type of planning takes time to learn, and I don't have it all down yet, but once in a while, I have a week where it all comes together.

10 Easy Ways to Be More Sustainable With Your Leftover Food

How are you all doing with your waste less food mini eco-challenge? The other night I took a bunch of vegetables in the fridge that would usually be destined for the garbage disposal (I REALLY need to start composting!), chopped them up, threw a little olive oil in the pan, went out back and picked some parsley to add in and sauted them together with a little sea salt and fresh ground pepper. I ate three servings - it was so good and had enough left to reheat for last night's dinner.

I've been keeping a list of what has gotten thrown out (wish my oldest would eat his crusts - the list would be much shorter). 

In keeping with wasting less food - this week's 10 Easy Ways... is how to be more sustainable with your leftover food. Being more sustainable with leftovers basically means not wasting them. 

1. Put a container in your freezer to make leftover soup. Throw the odds and ends of vegetables, pastas, rice, beans and other things you might put in a soup. When you've got a substantial amount - make a one of a kind soup by adding some organic chicken or vegetable broth and some seasonings. You'll end up with something interesting.
   
2. If you've got a small amount of leftover vegetables from two or three nights in a row - say peas from Monday, zucchini from Tuesday, and corn from Wednesday, on Thursday heat them up and let everyone choose which one they want with their dinner.
3. Leftover white rice from Chinese food? Here are Five Ideas for Using Up Leftover, Cooked White Rice.
4. Keep a bread bag in your freezer to put the ends of loaves of bread. When you need fresh bread crumbs, defrost a few slices and use your food processor to make the bread crumbs. 
5. When bananas get too brown to eat, put them in the freezer. Find a good banana bread recipe and when you've got enough for the recipe, defrost and make banana bread. The bananas will look thoroughly disgusting once your defrost them, but they'll make great bread. 
6. Let the kids eat leftover mac and cheese or other pastas for breakfast if they want. This drives my husband crazy for some reason, but my kids love it.
7. Share - especially after a party, you might have a large amount of something leftover. Send it home with party guests or give a whole meals worth to a neighbor.
8. Freeze small portions of leftover meat for nights when not everyone is going to be home. I use these small portions for nights I know my husband won't be home. I'll defrost the meat and split it up between the boys and me - none of us are big meat eaters. I'll add some pasta and vegetables and we're all happy, and I didn't have to cook a main dish.
9. Refrain from cooking something new until something still edible is used up. This morning my son asked me to please make granola bars. I told him that we still had plenty of zucchini bread and until it was gone, I wouldn't be making granola bars. I know if I made the bars, the bread would probably be forgotten. We're become accustomed to having a huge variety of food to choose from, but if we're going to try to eat more sustainably, we're going to have to get used to eating things until they get eaten up. 
10. Get off your butt and start a compost pile already (I'm talking to myself here). That way some food that doesn't get eaten can go back to nourish the earth to grow more food.

September's Mini Eco-Challenge

Happy September, Happy Labor Day, Happy Kids Go Back to School Week (if they haven't already)!

What a bittersweet day. The calendar may say that there are still three more weeks of summer, but around here summer ends today. It's the last hurrah. We'll spend the day at the pool with our friends and then that will be it. The pool will officially close at 8pm for the season. Seems like it just opened.

Well, onto the business of fall. We took August off from eco-challenges, but it's time to refocus. This month instead of giving your choices, I've got just one challenge to offer.

Waste Less Food

In the U.S., 30% of food produced gets wasted. That's an awful lot of food, water, and fuel that transported the food gone without ever having done any good. I wrote about this in the Shocking Statistics of Food Waste. I suggest if you're going to take the challenge, you read that, too.

Here's the challenge.

Waste as little food as possible for one week. Cut your food waste by 50% - and shoot for more. If you're in on the challenge, please leave a comment, and I'll make a list of those of us taking the challenge on the right of the page.

We'll start Friday, September 5. Here is what I propose.

• Sometime between now and Friday, clean out your refrigerator. You want that potato salad from 4th of July that is shoved in the back out of there before you begin. That's waste from before. You'll be focusing on stopping waste from this point on. Don't cry over spoiled potato salad.
• Take stock of what is perishable in the frig or elsewhere and plan your next week's meals around it. Say you've got one grilled chicken breast in the frig that is still good. Plan to use it chopped up in a salad or cut up on top of pasta alfredo. Freeze it if necessary to make sure it's still good when you need it.
  
• Plan your meals for who you really are, not who you want to be. Don't plan for seven nights of fully home cooked meals if you know you usually pick up take out a couple times a week because your schedule is crazy. Sure you want to cut back on take out, but if you're wasting food bought at the grocery store because you haven't managed to cut out the take out yet, be honest with yourself. It's better to just do the takeout than do the takeout and waste store bought food.
• Be wise with your leftovers. Freeze what you know you won't be using within a couple of days. Give them away to single or senior citizen neighbors. Often if I have a whole piece of meat leftover I give it to my mom. She appreciates a piece of grilled salmon - it's something she wouldn't do for herself.
• If you have a bunch of leftover, have leftover night at the house. Don't cook a new meal. Reheat everything in the frig and let the family use it up. Even if it doesn't all go together.
• Be careful with your produce. Eat it before it goes bad. If you want a snack and you've got a choice between a peach that only has a day left or pretzels, the pretzels will be good in two days, the peach won't. Eat it before it goes bad. Freeze any banana that is beyond the edible stage and when you've got four or five, make banana bread.
• If your garden is still producing, or producing like gangbusters like my tomatoes are, make the most out of it. Take the time to make and freeze some sauces or meals from your garden. You'll appreciate it in month or two and you won't waste the labor your put into it this summer.

These are just a few ideas. I could go on and on, but I think we're all smart enough to figure out our own ways to not waste food.

The hardest place, I think, to stop wasting food is on our dinner plates. It's going to be a challenge to figure out how to not have food leftover on the plate - especially my kids' plates - at the end of a meal.

I'll be blogging about food waste at least once a week this month including recipes for foods commonly leftover.

Who's with me on this?