Entries Tagged 'Independence Days' ↓

• Plant something: moved strawberry seeds from warm to cold stratification
• Harvest something: marjoram from windowsill
• Preserve something: froze leftovers for lunches, made crockpot yogurt from half-price local milk near its sell-by date, bottled our most recent beer (Cherry Stout – we tend to like the flavored beers better), and brewed and started the next batch fermenting.
• Waste not: made stock from chicken bones, raked up all the leaves now that the snow’s all melted and made a huge compost pile (alternating layers of leaves and semi-composted kitchen scraps)
• Want not: I found a guy on craigslist who delivers flour and grains from Wheat Montana Farms to my door. He does his rounds once a quarter. While I realize that I live in what was once the milling capitol of the world, delivery of 50lb bags of grains to my door is a powerful force for someone without a car, even if I am in general trying to eat rather more locally than Montana to Minnesota. Anyway, I ran out of white flour, and placed my order for his next trip.
• Community food systems: shared dinner and pie with housemates
• Eat the food: potatoes, beans, home-ground whole wheat flour, and jalapeno goop (leftover from making jalapeno jelly last fall – I smeared it under the skin of a chicken before roasting – yum).

• Plant something: I re-started the currant seeds I had been cold stratifying (the first seeds dried out completely, which probably means they won’t sprout), and winter sowed spinach and strawberry spinach
• Harvest something: basil from my overwintered plant – one branch is still alive!
• Preserve something: nada
• Waste not: just the usual (buy with less packaging, reuse, recycle, etc)
• Want not: I planned menus for this week (I never do this, and should) and bought everything at the co-op so I won’t have to run to the chain store across the street for something I’m missing. Also got an empty 4-gallon peanut butter bucket from the co-op, which I plan to make into a self-watering container.
• Community food systems: I participated in 1Sky’s “72 Hours for Clean American Power” campaign, calling my senators (well, one of them – I freaked and chickened out on calling the second) to express my hope that he opposes Sen. Murkowski’s attempts to dilute the Clean Air Act. Not exactly food, but important. I also attended my first meeting of Transition Twin Cities. If you haven’t heard about the Transition Towns, it is a movement started in Wales focusing on relocalizing food and energy and reducing an area’s outside dependencies.
• Eat the food: We’ve been digging into my stores this week: used frozen homemade stock and beans, home-canned salsa and pickles, homegrown potatoes, stored squash. I tried making tortillas this week for the first time – it worked pretty well, but I think I might have overmixed the dough a bit.

Sharon over at The Chatelaine’s Keys is kicking off year three of the Independence Days Challenge, and this year I’m joining in. The inspiration for the Challenge came from the late Carla Emery, author of “The Encyclopedia of Country Living”

“All spring I try to plant something every day – from late February, when the early peas and spinach and garlic can go in, on up to midsummer, when the main potato crop and the late beans and lettuce go in. Then I switch over and make it my rule to try and get something put away for the winter every single day. That lasts until the pumpkins and sunflowers and late squash and green tomatoes are in. Then comes the struggle to get the most out of the stored food – all winter long.”

The idea behind Independence Days is to try to do a little something every day, and report on your progress once a week – and no reporting failures! No saying, “I didn’t pick the beans in time and they all got tough,” or “I left the tomatoes on the counter a couple days too long, and, well, compost time.” Only success may be reported.

Independence Days Challenge categories

• Plant something – this can be as small as starting some bean sprouts for your salad, or sowing your 10 acres of wheat
• Harvest something – foraged wild greens, herbs from your kitchen window, or a 10 pound pumpkin
• Preserve something – stick a few baby cucumbers in vinegar for refrigerator pickles, dry what’s left of the fresh sage you bought to try in that new recipe, throw your extra tomatoes in the freezer whole or (if you really want) slave over a hot canning pot making tomato sauce in August
• Waste not – keep track of what you have so it doesn’t go bad before you eat it. Check the fridge before you go shopping and freeze leftovers for future lunches before they mold. Reduce packaging and trash, plan errands ahead to save time and gas so you don’t need to run out for just that one thing.
• Want not – things you’ve done to be prepared that aren’t growing/storing/preserving food – the 50 lb sack of flour in 5 gallon buckets, the big package of toilet paper so you don’t run out in a week, stocking up on your family’s medicines, that kind of thing.
• Build community food systems – Spread the message, share your knowledge, help your community to be more resilient and food secure. Frankly, I see this as being my Achilles heel.
• Eat the food – having 50 lbs of dried beans (or tomatoes) does you no good if you never eat beans (or tomatoes). Explore new recipes or tweak some old ones. Try some new foods that store well, but also don’t bother to go to all the trouble of growing and trying to store brussel sprouts if you loathe them – grow broccoli or kale instead.

I’m going to try to give my weekly reports on Monday, so here’s the first one:

• Plant something: winter sowed chevril, borage, anise hyssop, and about a million tomato varieties (what’s winter sowing?), planted indoors various varieties of broccoli, cabbage and kale.
• Harvest something:… I’ve got three feet of snow, ok?
• Preserve something: I’m slowly learning that nuts really do go rancid eventually, so peanuts go in the fridge
• Waste not: leftovers packaged in the freezer for Shaun’s work lunches, and made my winter sowing containers out of old plastic jugs. (It’s not food related, but I cut up some glass bottles for making Sundrops )
• Want not: bought a new brand of 100% recycled toilet paper and a package of paper towels (used only for oil and cat barf)
• Community: does sharing dinner with our housemates count?
• Eat the food: French onion soup with frozen homemade stock, and Garlic Potato Soup with more stock, potatoes that were starting to sprout and whey from a cheese-making attempt, no-knead bread (I need to refill my flour bucket), naan (made with homemade yogurt) and hummus(es).