Food is what sustains us, energizes us & makes us content.  Recently I posted on FB an article about Genetically Engineered food that was speaking about Cheeto’s.  My sister said she was not going to read didn’t want to know, hmmm she ‘loves’ Cheeto’s.  It got me to thinkin about food and how do I get people to “think” about what they are putting into their bodies?  Here are some questions that you need to answer prior to the change

1. If you know something is bad for your body do you put it in anyway?
2. If you don’t know something is bad for your body and you eat it and then find out, how does it make you fee?

Part 1- Going Organic (on paper)

There are 3 places that need to be defined –  Home  &  Food  &  Personal Care

We will tackle the Home first because so many people are involved in the decision.

#1 on my list is the laundry– change out the old petroleum based laundry soap & rinse with an Earth friendly product. This affects all of the family & this is the most expensive because it starts with Petroleum.  I use Ecos all natural laundry detergent it is plant based, non polluting ingredients, septic safe, greywater safe & 100% biodegradable and the bottle & cap are recylable and it is not tested on animals.  This a a big plus plus on everyones part – here are some things to think about when looking at your switch over to a better soap & rinse.

1. The plastic needs to be able to be recycled.
2. When making it shouldn’t have harmed any animals in testing.
3. It should be free of phosphate, formaldehyde & petrochemical free.
4. It shouldn’t pollute the ground water city or country.
5. It should make you feel good about doing one small baby step in your household.
6. Cost ranges between $.06 – .10 a load when buying the biggest bottle.

Our primary goal is to offer quality in the Organic world with our Baked goods & produce.

Baked goods are made with Organic & Locally grown products.

Produce is grown with the idea that the soil needs to be first and the seeds second.

Al dente: Often found in pasta recipes. It means to cook the pasta just until it’s done, not soft or overcooked.

Au gratin: Refers to a baked dish, such as a casserole, topped with cheese or bread crumbs, then browned on top, either in the oven or under a broiler.
Baste: Spooning or brushing food with a liquid — such as butter, broth, or the cooking liquid — to help the food stay moist during cooking.

Blanch: Placing food briefly in boiling water and then plunging into cold water to halt cooking. Blanching loosens the skins of fruits and vegetables to help peel them more easily.

Braise: Slowly cooking browned foods in a small amount of liquid in a tightly covered pot.

Butterfly: Splitting meat, poultry, or fish in half horizontally without cutting all the way through. When spread open, the flat piece looks like a butterfly.

Caramelize: Melting and cooking sugar over low heat until it browns. “Caramelization” also refers to the browning that occurs during cooking.

Chiffonade: Thinly sliced strips or shreds of vegetables or herbs.

Cream: Rapidly mixing one or more ingredients with a spoon or mixer until smooth and creamy. When you cream butter or other fats, the mixture also becomes fluffy because air is incorporated during the rapid mixing process.

Curdle: Separation of a mixture into a liquid with solid particles. For example, soured milk curdles.

Deglaze: Adding a liquid to a pan in which food has been browned, and heating it to loosen the cooked food particles. This liquid is usually thickened to make a flavorful sauce.

Dredge: Coating a food lightly with flour, bread crumbs, or cornmeal.

French: Cutting a meat or vegetable lengthwise into very thin strips.

Julienne: To cut a fruit or vegetable into matchstick strips about 2 inches long.

Mince: Cutting food into very fine pieces.

Reduce: Boiling a liquid in an uncovered pot or pan to evaporate some of the liquid. This reduces the volume, concentrates the flavor, and thickens the mixture.

Sauté: Cooking and stirring a food in a small amount of fat over direct heat.

Score: To make shallow cuts in the surface of a food just before cooking or baking.

Sear: Using high heat to quickly brown the surface of a food to seal in the juices. Foods can be seared in a very hot pan or under the broiler.

Simmer: Slowly cooking food in a liquid just below the boiling point. Tiny bubbles may break the surface.

Steep: Soaking dry ingredients in a hot liquid to infuse it with flavor and color, as with tea or coffee.

Sweat: Cooking food over low heat in a small amount of fat in a covered pot or pan so it cooks in its own juices until soft but not browned.

Zest: The peel or colored part of citrus fruit skin, which contains flavorful oils. (The white pith is not part of the zest, and has a bitter taste.)

I use to grow only 1 type of green bean- bush blue lake variety, I always bought 1/2 a pound every year.  This year I wanted to expand my green bean horizon and see what I was missing in taste & texture.  Some of the varieties that I am trying this year are Jacob’s Cattle, Beurre de Rocquencourt, Cherokee Trail of Tears, Christmas Pole/lima, Henderson’s black valentine and some leftover seed from 2009.

When choosing different seeds of a broad variety you have to know what you are looking for in terms of growth & eating/storage.  My terms were simple, try something new, try something that I didn’t like as a child & try climbers because in 09 my back hurt after picking beans.

I never ate lima beans as a child so I looked for the most outrageous lima bean I could find. The bean size when planting was between a quarter & 1/2 dollar size and is spotted red & white.  My next bean to purchase that I didn’t like the texture/feel on my tongue as a child was a wax bean so into the garden went Beurre de Rocquencourt a french variety that talked a good talk on paper I can hardly wait to try them.

I love black beans and wanted to try saving them for cooking in soups and Mexican dishes this winter so I bought Cherokee Trail of tears, it didn’t hurt that Mike is part Cherokee and I always thought the American Indians got screwed (whoops different blog post for that) so we will see how these turn out towards the fall.

Jacob’s cattle just looked fantastic and I can eat it green or save it for soups later in the fall.

Henderson’s Black Valentine just seemed to most of the criteria especially about how sore my back was last year.

Anyhow bean season is upon me & you so in the next few months we will all get to enjoy the bounty of our hard labor.

Enjoy the photos &

Happy Eating

Marianne

This site http://www.naturalhub.com/grow_vegetables_cultivars_lettuce.htm I took the liberty of copying their information here for all to read.

SUMMER CRISP-(syn. ‘French crisp’, ‘Batavian’) unknown to many of us, yet one of the best lettuce types, Although variable between the various varieties, overall it is perhaps intermediate between the crisphead and the loose leaf lettuce. The outer leaves are thick, crisp and flavorsome, the often conic heart/head is crisp and sweet. In some varieties, the outer leaves can be harvested as a loose leaf until the head starts to form. These are quite large lettuces, and need good fertility. Their particular virtue, apart from their top rate taste, is their ability to ‘stand’ without bolting.

BUTTERHEAD-(syn.’boston’, ‘bibb’) until fairly recently, the best known type of lettuce in the UK and very popular in USA. It is also the European lettuce. This type has thick but soft and tender leaves forming a cream coloured, soft, blanched heart. The outer leaves are large and ruffled. The very finest tasting lettuces, such as ‘Nancy’, are in this group. Butterheads are rarely bitter, quick maturing, more tolerant of less than ideal soil and weather conditions than crispheads, even if they don’t ‘stand’ for a long time in the garden without bolting.

LOOSE-LEAF-(syn. ‘leaf’) Well known and appreciated in the USA, but for years relatively unknown in the Southern Hemisphere until the explosion in hydroponic lettuce growing. These are the easiest of all lettuce types to grow. They form no heart or head, and are, as the name implies, a cascade of loose leaves, which may pe picked without cutting the whole plant. There is great variety in this group-thick leaves, thin leaves, savoyed leaves like a silverbeet leaf, flat leaves, red, green, frilled, cut, curled, and so on. Some, such as ‘royal oak leaf’, are outstanding-thick, tender, delicious. Others, such as ‘lollo rosso’, look great on a plate, but are uninspiring eating. As a group, they tend to bolt more quickly in heat than other types.

COS-(syn ‘romaine’) Supposedly originally from the island of Cos in the Mediterranean, this type of lettuce is very upright and columnar, forming a particulalry sweet creamy white crisp heart, surronded by sturdy outer leaves. Fairly demanding to grow, in terms of being unforgiving of poor conditions (a bitter reward), and poorly adapted to hot weather. Some claim this type to be the sweetest and best tasting of all when grown well. All things being equal, in hot weather, the crispheads are the slowest to bolt, then the summercrisps, the bostons, the leaf lettuces and finally the cos types.

As we just read there are mainly 4 types of lettuce, however within the types of lettuce there are literally hundreds of names.  When I bought my lettuce seeds in early spring I bought more with the name versus the type and the same held true for May purchases.  Now I see that I have bought more of one “type” then the others and can hardly wait till they are ready to pick.  It seems that my boggled mind decided with out me knowing to purchase a plethora of “Butterhead” lettuce.  So within the next 30 days I/we get to try lots of new varieties of lettuce within the Butterhead family.

Also on the topic of lettuce, this Spring several lettuces that had wintered over in my hoop house went to seed quickly.  When your lettuce goes to seed it is one of the most beautiful sights to behold.  Just this past week I picked all of the plants by the roots and bundled them together and put them in a dark place to dry.  This fall we will have the Christy’s Lettuce Mix available – I can hardly contain my excitement to try out this mix.

Some of the lettuces that are growing as of this writing:

I found this information at this website – http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/peas1.html#1

Pea is a frost-hardy, cool-season vegetable that can be grown throughout most of the United States, wherever a cool season of sufficient duration exists. For gardening purposes, peas may be classified as garden peas (English peas), snap peas and snow peas (sugar peas). Garden pea varieties have smooth or wrinkled seeds. The smooth-seeded varieties tend to have more starch than the wrinkled-seeded varieties. The wrinkled-seeded varieties are generally sweeter and usually preferred for home use. The smooth-seeded types are used more often to produce ripe seeds that are used like dry beans and to make split-pea soup. Snap peas have been developed from garden peas to have low-fiber pods that can be snapped and eaten along with the immature peas inside. Snow peas are meant to be harvested as flat, tender pods before the peas inside develop at all. The Southern pea (cowpea) is an entirely different warm-season vegetable that is planted and grown in the same manner as beans.  I found this information at this website – http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/peas1.html#1

Harvesting

Garden Peas

When the pea pods are swollen (appear round) they are ready to be picked. Pick a few pods every day or two near harvest time to determine when the peas are at the proper stage for eating. Peas are of the best quality when they are fully expanded but immature, before they become hard and starchy. Peas should be picked immediately before cooking because their quality, especially sweetness (like that of sweet corn), deteriorates rapidly. The pods on the lower portion of the plant mature earliest. The last harvest (usually the third) is made about one week after the first. Pulling the entire plant for the last harvest makes picking easier.

Sugar Snap Peas

Snap peas should be harvested every 1 or 3 days, similarly to snow peas to get peak quality. Sugar snaps are at their best when the pods first start to fatten but before the seeds grow very large. At this point, the pods snap like green beans and the whole pod can be eaten. Some varieties have strings along the seams of the pod that must be removed before cooking. Sugar snaps left on the vine too long begin to develop tough fiber in the pod walls. These must then be shelled and used as other garden peas, with the fibrous pods discarded. Vining types of both sugar snap and snow peas continue to grow taller and produce peas as long as the plant stays in good health and the weather stays cool.

Snow Peas

These varieties are generally harvested before the individual peas have grown to the size of BBS, when the pods have reached their full length but are still quite flat. This stage is usually reached 5 to 7 days after flowering. Snow peas must be picked regularly (at least every other day) to assure sweet, fiber-free pods. Pods can be stir-fried, steamed or mixed with oriental vegetables or meat dishes. As soon as overgrown pods missed in earlier pickings are discovered, remove them from the plants to keep the plants blooming and producing longer. Enlarging peas inside these pods may be shelled and used as garden peas. Fat snow pea pods (minus the pea enlarging inside) should be discarded. Fibers that develop along the edges of larger pods, along with the stem and blossom ends, are removed during preparation. Pea pods lose their crispness if overcooked. The pods have a high sugar content and brown or burn quickly. Do not stir-fry over heat that is too intense.

Pea pods can be stored in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for two weeks. Unlike fresh green peas, pea pods deteriorate only slightly in quality when stored.

So there you have it along with me on the difference amongst the peas, amazing little sweet nuggets of truth.

Happy Eating

Marianne

Picture was taken about middle of May.

Gorgeous potato plant

Another example of the potato plant

Potatoes- Purple, Blue, Rose, Pink, Yellow, White- we all love potatoes.  It appears that my garden & the potatoes Love each other.  We are going to have a good crop this year and the variety and colors are amazing.  But I would like to know who the heck came up with the idea of “hilling” these beautiful plants????  So off to research I go with my questions. and I was unable to locate an answer that I like.

What I found was certain potatoes will grow more potatoes from their stem, not all potatoes.  Which I wonder if there is a chart somewhere stating which ones grow from stem.  I would consider this a piece of gold considering the amount of work it takes to hill potato plants.

Great web site here: http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-grow-potatoes Not exactly what I am looking for but a ton of information.

Anyhow enjoy the pictures and later in the season we can enjoy the potatoes.  Visit me on line at http://www.purpleporchcoop.com.

Good Friday is a day of reflection and there is no better way for me to reflect then to be sitting out amongst the dirt, getting it under my nails, in my hair, all over my clothes.  My entire life I can see that when I was the dirtiest I was quite possibly the most content.  Life is full of mystery’s and turns in the road – however I can count on my one hand what the dirt means to me – Life!

So today I was out in the garden & I was diligently digging up all of the strawberry plants to give them a new life, last year the grass & weeds had taken over and they were being strangled.  As I type up this article I am content in the knowing that life is growing in the garden.  I learned some new things this year and so I planted Spinach amongst the Strawberries, they seem to like each other but more then that they apparently need each other.

As I was sitting on the ground doing my Strawberry/Spinach patch I looked behind me to see how the Raspberry bush was doing and was pleasantly surprised to see 10-20 new starts on the ground around the bush.  It was like looking at a Mother hen and her chicks.  So I decided to review more of the garden rows and I can tell you that I found 9 Rhubarb plants, 5-6 garlics, 1 onion, 3 bunches of chives and some lavender all made it thru the winter.

Yes Virginia there really is going to be another beautiful crop of veggies & fruit this year.

God Bless each and everyone of you that have bought from me, are reading this blog & just because.

Happy Eating.

Marianne

Just shows that all of this new research is promoting eating healthier beef,  so go out buy locally raised beef and enjoy that hamburger– it’s good for you.

Grass-Fed Animal Products are a Natural, Healthy Source of CLA

Aside from having a far superior balance of omega fats, both the beef and milk from grass-fed cattle also contain far higher levels of another fatty acid, known as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

For example, meat from grass-fed animals contains three to five times more CLA than meat from grain-fed animals.

CLA has previously been deemed a potential weapon against cancer, which spurred its popularity as a dietary supplement. In fact, CLA is so potent a cancer fighter that animal studies show as little as 0.5 percent CLA in the diet could reduce tumors by over 50 percent.

It’s worth noting here, however, that I do not recommend that you take CLA supplements in any form.

As with all nutrients, you’re better off getting them from food than from synthetic supplements. Natural CLA found in foods such as grass-fed beef is far superior to a man-made version in pill form–not to mention that CLA supplements are outrageously expensive. Other natural sources include dairy products from grass-fed cows like raw milk, raw butter and raw milk cheese.

Another health benefit of CLA – and hence grass-fed beef and dairy, as a main source of it – is that it can inhibit the formation of body fat while preserving muscle tissue. This is why it’s also popular among body builders.

And, as detailed by Mary Shomon in an About.com article from 2003, studies suggest that CLA:

• Increases metabolic rate
• Decreases abdominal fat
• Enhances muscle growth
• Lowers cholesterol and triglycerides
• Lowers insulin resistance
• Reduces food-induced allergic reactions
• Enhances your immune system