Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Preparing for the new season: Part 6

This book is a quick and easy read and is a great place to start: Worms Eat my Garbage by Mary Appelhof
I do a lazy man's version of worm composting. I made my own box out of a large Tupperware container that I drilled holes in for ventilation. Then I made some bedding for my worms, primarily out of newspaper, as outlined in "Worms eat my garbage." Then I bought some worms online (they came in the mail!) and now I just throw my food scraps in there. It has been quite low maintenance and has worked great.
This is a picture of my homemade system from when I was setting it up. That is a big ball of worms in the middle!
Of course you can get much fancier and buy vermicomposting systems online or make elaborate backyard composting systems - it is all about what works for you!
Check out some online resources about vermicomposting:
Worm composting
More worm composting
Or if you live in Columbia, MO you can attend a free composting workshop

Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Preparing for the new season: Part 5

Sometimes you just can't eat everything you get in one week while it is fresh. Not to mention, that you will also want to enjoy some of this delicious food in the middle of winter. Below are some links I've posted in the past about preserving food in addition to a few new ones. I'd like to learn more about canning but most likely will not as I a) am lazy, b) generally do not like the taste of canned food, and c) like any good medical student, am terrified of botulism and doubt my ability to can properly (see point a) to prevent it.
How to freeze fruits & vegetables
Home canning
Home canning, freezing and drying
Fruit leather recipe
Preserves
Tomato sauce
Roasted Red Peppers
Sun-Dried Tomatoes
Pumpkin puree
New links:
Drying herbs
Guide to freezing fresh produce
Homemade Bouillon
More awesome ideas:
50 ways to never waste food again
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Preparing for the new season: Part 4

Being a part of a CSA means you are going to get a lot of fresh food all at once, but you can't eat it all right then - you've got to spread it out over the week and you will be very sad if your asparagus goes limp! Here are a few useful links I've found about storing vegetables and keeping things fresh:
Quick and easy pdf file on how to store fruits and vegetables
Storing vegetables
More elaborate guidelines for storing fruits and vegetables
More good ideas for storing vegetables
I'm also going to buy a salad spinner for this year since everything usually keeps better and prepares better when dry and it is hard to dry lettuce without one. I've also thought about getting some of the reusable vegetable storage bags. I don't know too much about them, but they don't cost much so it might be worth trying at least once.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Preparing for the new season: Part 3

Then I usually think of something I might be craving that might could be made with one or some of those ingredients, like tabbouleh for example:

The basic idea is to eat as many of your vegetables while they're still fresh, minimize your purchasing of supplemental ingredients, and to not waste anything. Meal planning with the CSA is fun - it is kind of like a logic puzzle to figure out the best way to use your share while getting to eat delicious meals along the way - which is way better than normal logic puzzles that generally do not involve food. So think logically, plan ahead, and find good resources to help you but also listen to your cravings, get creative, and try some new things! Here's another link for some more takes on meal planning:
More meal planning strategies
which is also the place where I got the image at the top of this post from :)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Preparing for the new season: Part 2

I used to just cook by thinking about whatever I wanted to eat, find a recipe and then go buy the ingredients at the grocery store. Joining the CSA reversed this process for me - the ingredients came to me and then I had to figure out what to do with them! This was initially challenging but I think in the end has actually simplified the process of meal planning for me. Good, seasonal cookbooks have been a great help in this department. Below are some of my favorite seasonal cookbooks that I own and a few that I have been wanting to check out.


Saturday, March 13, 2010
Preparing for the new season: part 1
Here are some resources for getting cleaned up:
Clean it out!
Make your own cleaning products
Organize your pantry
Organize your fridge
Building a natural foods pantry
One of the many benefits of a deep clean: I discovered some left over pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, and strawberries buried deep in my freezer. I will enjoy eating those but I really can't wait for the fresh stuff!
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Only 16 Days!

Only 16 days until the Columbia Farmer's Market opens!
http://www.columbiafarmersmarket.org/
Opening Day is Saturday, March 20, 2010. There should be scallions, broccoli, lettuces, cauliflower, and herbs, and of course all of the year-round products that are usually available. The seasons always seem to change at just the right time and this is good because I am very tired of winter weather and winter foods and am ready for some spring!
Unfortunately, there are still two more months until the CSA shares start rolling in . . . but the time will fly by, especially for me since I will be on my surgery rotation until then. The CSA should just be getting started when I'm finished with surgery so that will be a nice treat at the end of two hard months. Don't forget to find and sign up for your own CSA:
http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
Here are some recipes to pass the time while we are waiting for Spring and the good food to start!
Lamb Ragu
Roasted vegetables
Roasted broccoli with saffron lime butter
Feta sun-dried tomato turkey sliders
Garlic soup
Maple apple walnut muffins
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Root Beer Round Up!
It all started maybe a year ago, when Colin and I started buying different root beers around town and trying them out. We were mainly getting them from the natural foods store and tried Virgil's, Natural Brew, Maine Root and probably some others. I argued that Virgil's was my favorite and Colin thought Natural Brew was the best. So we decided we would have a little blind taste testing and settle it once and for all. So slowly I started buying up a few root beers here and there to store until we had enough to do our taste testing. But then things got a little out of hand . . . and before I knew it, we had 15 different root beers in our possession. I had requested suggestions on Facebook and of course had to try all of those, and then read other peoples root beer reviews online and had to get those and thanks to websites like Soda Samurai we ended up with a lot of root beer. We decided a lot of root beer would go to waste if we just tasted it ourselves and thought we could use a couple other opinions to help make the rank list so we enlisted the help of our friends Casey and Lauren. So here is how it went down:
Berghoff (Chicago, IL)
Boylan (Haledon, New Jersey)
Capt'n Eli's (Portland, Maine)
Dad's (Chicago, IL)
Fitz's (St. Louis, MO)
Gale's (Riverwood, IL)
Jones (Seattle, WA)
Lost Trail (Louisburg, KS)
Maine Root (Scarborough, Maine)
Natural Brew (Orrville, Ohio)
Sea Dog (Portland, Maine)
Sioux City (Whitestone, New York)
Sprecher's (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
Thomas Kemper (Seattle, WA)
Virgil's (Los Angeles, California)
There are A LOT more root beers in the world than I thought. I believe one site listed 2530 brands! So we obviously are barely even touching the surface of the root beer world. We had to limit it so these are the 15 we tried. I'm sure we missed lots and lots and lots of other delicious root beers out there.
Lauren and I prepared cups of each root beers in cups labeled with letters and the boys prepared the same for us. We kept track of which letter was which root beer for which person on one of the sheets below:
1. Lost Trail
2. Sioux City
3. Capt'n Eli's
4. Berghoff
5. Fitz's
6. Boylan
7. Thomas Kemper
8. Jones
9. Sea Dog
10. Gale's
11. Sprecher's
12. Virgil's
13. Maine Root
14. Natural Brew
15. Dad's
Below is a chart of the results and each individuals rank list:
First, Boylan:
Second honorable mention, Gale's:
Overall, the root beers seemed to fall into categories of very sweet, vanilla-y, or more medicinal. It probably depends a lot on what you are looking for in a root beer which ones you will like. Overall for us, the highest ranking root beers had more vanilla undertones like Lost Trail and Sioux City, the almost overly sweet ones fell in the middle like Jones and Thomas Kemper, and the medicinal ones were our least favorites. I found it funny that Colin and I both ranked our once professed favorites, Natural Brew and Virgil's, very poorly. We were also somewhat interested if we would prefer sodas with cane sugar to those with high fructose corn syrup. However, we only included two with HFCS, Sprecher's and Dad's, so it isn't really fair to compare in this set up, but Sprecher's was verging on the edge of too syrup-y sweet and Dad's was the clear overall loser among all of us, I described it tasting like pepper-y medicine. I was a bit embarrassed at first that I ranked Sioux City as my #1 but they have recently reformulated to get rid of the HFCS and replaced it with cane sugar and it really is quite good. It almost has a hint of cream soda to it. So I will again leave you with the top 5, very delicious - I recommend them all! Go forth and find your favorite root beer!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Root Cellar
The Root Cellar is a great place to get local food products year round. They have everything from produce, meat, eggs, milk, breads, cheeses, dry goods and lots more! Here's a bit more about them from their website:
"We at the Root Cellar believe that the body is a shrine:
What you put in it is the first stop of the energy that will come out.
What better philosophy than eating clean local fresh food.
By building a healthy circle of supporting the farmers in our community who work hard everyday to earn your food dollar you too can be part of galvanizing your community against urban sprawl, water contamination, excessive fossil fuel consumption, monetary exportation and help make lay the ground work for your state to be more food secure. Support Missouri farmers buy local food. Shop at the Root Cellar! Leave some heritage for future generations.
*Special note: In addition to being an all Missouri grocery the Root Cellar also is a microprocessor of local foods with produce exclusively from area farmers.
We hand craft in small batches salsas, pasta sauces, jams, butters, hot sauces, frozen pizzas and seasonal pies."
The Root Cellar is located at 814A E. Broadway Columbia, MO 65201. Learn more at their website or better yet, go check them out and enjoy some delicious local food!