Limited Time Free Viewing Of Movie

A quick note about a new film! "Hungry For Change - Your Health is in your hands" 
This film about making better food choices, is available online for free this week only. View it now while you can, because every little bit of information helps us on our journey. This film discusses food and health basics with the experts, along with those people who actually made huge personal changes by going to plant based eating. There are also short cameos from the stars of other documentaries, and in doing so, this film has made me aware of two other documentaries out there that I have yet to see...

Spring Into Composting! Keter Composter And Oggi Countertop Pail

Spring has arrived and we finally bought a composter!!! Very exciting! For the past nine months I have been feeling bad about throwing away my veggie scraps. Now I can happily save my juicing pulp, along with my veggie scraps, to put towards making good soil to grow a few plants. We purchased a tumbler style composter, at a big box store. The brand is 'Keter Dynamic Turn and Go Composter.' The price was reasonable compared to what we saw online. The unfortunate part was that it came in pieces. 

This made for a nice Sunday morning project for Ben after breakfast. I will have to say getting those curved barrel panels to pop into place caused much gnashing of the teeth. Eventually with all four hands we were able to wrangle the bugger, and get the outer rim screwed on. After that it was a breeze to put the rest of the parts together. 

Then we took our little baby outside to find a level sunny spot to place the new tumbler. I had saved vegetable and fruit scraps all week knowing we were going to have the composter soon! I feel pretty good when I look outside and see our composter. Later we placed a kitty litter box under the barrel, to catch compost tea and to fertilize our garden.

Back to the kitchen to get what we needed next. Oh! What a mess-o-produce-bags filled with mush I had piled on the counter! We carried the rotting goodies out to the composter and Ben did the inaugural dumping of the veggi mess. I took a picture of the scraps inside the tumbler...but it was kinda gross! So I am not posting that one!

We had also purchased an Oggi Bamboo Compost pail to collect our scraps in the house. That goodie arrived just two days ago and it will need to be emptied into the composter tomorrow already. Which works out because you have to spin the barrel 5 times every few days. This little can looks way better than those clear produce bags!

We need to check our aeration holes on the barrel tumbler, and make sure most are open to provide the vital oxygen. I have not done composting for over 30 years, so I have to read up on the smelly basics. Back in the day we used to do it in an outdoor area made up of 3 cinder block walls, into which we shoveled a mix of garden debris, kitchen scraps, hay, horse manure, and leaves. We grew thirty different awesome vegetables, and a few towering sunflowers back then. It works if you have the space.

Here is our cute little Oggi countertop compost pail for the kitchen scraps. It has a charcoal filter to keep down the odor. I did some research online and a lot of people seem to like this one. 

It's made of eco friendly bamboo fiber, so that is good. I decided to line the can with my veggie produce bags, so it does not get dirty inside. We reuse those bags constantly around the house, besides using them in the juicer pulp container.

That kitchen countertop composter can is already full with veggie pulp! We keep a five gallon covered pail in our mudroom to store the filled bags from the countertop pail. When the five gallon bucket is full of those sealed bags we dump everything into the tumbling composter. 

This is how we welcome the sights and smells of Spring! Smelly good... and smelly bad!

Update: Twice had a bad experience with our Keter rotating barrel composter. During spinning, the door came off and dumped the rotting contents out and under the composter making a mess. Compost liquid stains clean concrete. Better to design a door that did not fall off so easily. You must check that the door is locked as tight as can be against the edge of that section, before you tumble the contents. I now always check that and bang it into place. Nature does its thing very well turning my leftover veggie and fruit scraps into dirt and compost tea. After the last smelly spillage event, we moved the rotating composter to a spot on the lawn behind our garage near my garden. We still use this composter and we have not had any accidents for over two years. We filled this baby up too! Plus when we moved it traveled as is with the contents still inside.

You can go here to page 2 of my Composting store to view the next composter I would buy, which is called the "Lifetime" tumbler composter recommended by John Kohler of Growing Your Greens. Having a two section composter is a better idea! Check out the many items on those pages related to composting and gardening to give you some ideas.

Our Oggi Bamboo counter-top composter bucket has been great! After two years I continue to love this pail! There is no smell, and I still like the way it looks in the kitchen.
 

Shamrock Green Veggie Juice

Here is a bright and healthy green drink with which to celebrate St.Patrick's Day! 
I would dare to say that this juice is a far better drink than those usually associated with this traditionally green day. While those who choose to drink the "other barley juice" are finding it difficult to start their day... You will wake up happy, and full of energy! This home made juice is smooth and delicious, and oh so good for you! Give yourself this very green healthy gift on St. Paddy's Day, and your Irish eyes will be smiling! Along with everyone who will notice the sun shining warmly upon your face!

1/2 stalk of Romain lettuce or 6 - 8 leaves
5 stalks of celery 

1 English cucumber

handful of dandelion greens
1/2 lemon

2 small apples
1 inch ginger
1 tsp maca powder
1 tsp barley grass powder

Clean your veggies. Hopefully everything is organic! If you have purchased non-organic apples and cucumbers, you must peel them. Place each vegetable and fruit into your juicer and create this great tasting juice! Add to your finished product 1 tsp maca powder dissolved in a small bit of spring water, and 1 tsp Barley grass powder. Stir...then share this batch of green goodness with a friend and...Drink up!

Honey Isn't Honey...Honey

Sounds weird, but there is a sticky problem with the honey in stores across the country. It simply is not honey. Tests done by The Palynology Research Laboratory for Food Safety News have confirmed that over three fourths of honey that is sold, is not what Bees produce. Seems honey manufactures have filtered out the pollen, as it is heated, watered down and ultra filtered. Plus a good deal of honey is imported from China and India, where antibiotics and heavy metals can be in the product too. Those countries actually remove the pollen on purpose, because that is how you can trace the origin of the honey. Sometimes manufacturers add cheap corn syrup, or any number of 13 illegal sweeteners and sugars. See my honey in the photo above...turns out... it's fake.

The tests revealed 76% of honey bought in groceries, 100% from drug stores, 77% from big box stores, and 100% of little honey packets had no honey! The good news is that honey bought at farmers markets, co-ops and natural food stores had all the markers of real honey. And five out of seven brands marked 'organic' in the regular super markets also contained real honey. When the researchers contacted all of these national brands, including store brands, 98% refused to answer questions about their product. Some used the old "proprietary information" ploy. Who it is that actually bottles the honey is often a mystery. The U.S.imported 208 million pounds of honey over the past 18 months. Almost 60 percent came from Asian countries, which are traditional laundering points for illegal Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone. Seems nobody is watching the store. It's a sticky mess out there in honey world.

All the flavor, enzymes, antioxidants, anti-allergenic properties, and bountiful bee nutrition is removed by the ultra filtering process. Aren't these qualities the very reasons we buy honey? "I wonder if the FDA is doing anything?" I said to myself with a chuckle. Oh that's right, they are too busy ignoring other things, like what Monsanto is up to. So we can just wait for any regulation of Honey standards for the United States. Florida has created their own standards to enforce, and was followed by California, Wisconsin and North Carolina. A few states, including Maryland, have a bill lost in legislation. You must look at the excellent full 'Food Safety News' article here, that also contains the list of sneaky national brands that are not selling honey...honey.

Since local area honey is best for it's anti-allergen properties...I will definitely 'bee' buying from the local beekeeper, when I see his table filled with 'real honey' this year! 

Penzeys Spices!

One of the big changes we have made while creating our new menus of healthy food is increasing our use of spice. Now I am not talking about hot spice, yuk to that. No, I am talking about the real tasty spices that take your new dish to super flavor city! We have found we just love delving into the spices from India and Asia. So I was very excited to go for a drive recently just to check out a spice store and learn more! I had read an excellent article about Penzeys Spices on the How Chow blog, and since we were going to be in the area, I thought this could be a really cool new food adventure. Just spices. Hmmmm reminds me of the old SNL routines... Just Lamps.... Just Tape... 

Now... Just Spices.

The Penzeys Spice Store we visited was set up so nicely that it was easy to navigate their 'spice world.'  The individual displays have a large jar of each spice to open and sniff, along with a description of the origin, use, and flavor notes of the spice. Each of these well organized wooden display boxes had a choice of sizes of the spice or seasonings to purchase, either in glass jars or bags. I chose the small size glass containers to keep the spice fresh and easy to replace after a year or sooner. 

Along with their vast selection of spices, there is also seasoning mixes to choose from in the store. There are even varieties of the same spice from different countries. Just the Paprika had four varieties.The colors of Penzeys Spices are deep, wonderful and vibrant, I have never seen Parsley flakes so green, Paprika so red, and Turmeric so yellow.. So many beautiful choices! I decided on some standard favorites, along with some new mixes to play with in recipes.

The Taco seasoning is great because it does not contain all the extra fillers, chemicals, and salt you get in the packets from the grocery store. Plus I was able to get a Taco Seasoning and a Barbecue Rub that did not contain hot peppers in it! Yea for getting an extra "kick" from flavor and not burning your mouth! I enjoyed reading the ingredient lists on their seasoning mixes and seeing mostly pure spice with no added junk. Many mixes will also say no added salt. One mix we are trying out is called "Sunny Paris." 
The jar says it's great on scrambled eggs, in dips, on fish, salads, rice, potatoes and chicken. The ingredients are: purple shallots, chives, green peppercorn, basil, tarragon, chervil, bay leaf and dill weed. Sounds Yummy. Of course being a former mural artist I had to purchase a jar called "Mural Of Flavor" which has some orange and lemon citrus peel along with spices.

After smelling most of the store, we left happily with our fresh bag of spices! We will definitely go back to Penzeys Spices, as there are always new things to try like Kala Jeera, Sumac, Juniper Berries, Mahlab, and a trio of pure extracts that contain no additives. The company has a number of stores across the country, and you can go to their website to find out if there is one in your area. They seem like such a friendly company too, as their catalog contained many letters from customers that featured recipes and stories. Also their gift boxes look like a fantastic present for your favorite cook! You can order from them online if you do not have a store near you. Remember to store your spices in a drawer or a cupboard to keep them out of the light, and not near stoves, on refrigerators or near dishwashers. Dry and dark areas are best to keep your spices fresh and flavorful, although some people like to keep theirs in the refrigerator or freezer. In the summer months it is better for sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and paprika to be stored in the refrigerator. Just look at these colors! Happy cooking!