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Tomato inspiration
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Are you harvesting tomatoes hand over fist and looking for some fresh ideas on how to prepare them? Well, the global blogosphere is here to help. Below are a few recipes recently posted to some food blogs that you will probably want to get to know better. Enjoy.
From Simply Recipes:
White Beans and Cherry Tomato Salad
Gazpacho
From Chocolate & Zucchini:
Panzanella
From Kayn's Kitchen:
Tomato and Cucumber Salad with Mint, Feta, Lemon, and Thyme
Slow roasted tomatoes
From David Lebovitz:
Marinated Tomato Salad
From Just Hungry:
Tabbouleh with Heirloom Tomatoes and Shiso
From Champagne Taste:
Roasted tomato sauce
From A Veggie Venture:
Baked Eggs with Tomato and Spinach
Photo by D. Knisely
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Kitchen Garden Day Celebrations
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For those of you new to Kitchen Gardeners International, we organize a global garden party on the fourth Sunday of August each year which we aptly named Kitchen Garden Day. The day started as a tongue-in-cheek challenge to the snackfood makers of the world who have claimed the entire month of February as "Snackfood Month". Our logic was that if the fluorescent orange cheese-puff makers of the world could have an entire month to celebrate their vision of good eating, home gardeners and cooks deserved at least a day. The video above was some local press coverage we had in Maine.
What started in one backyard in Maine is slowly, but surely spreading to others and a few frontyards too! Kitchen Garden Day this year (August 26th) will be recognized in different places and in different ways: a street parties, picnics , potlucks, gardening workshops, and locally-sourced dinners cooked by area chefs.
Why not join the fun and organize a gathering of your own with friends and good food? But, please, no artificially-flavored bacon snacks or foods containing "blue #40". Those are for another day month.
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50 Ways to reduce your carbon footprint
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"Just hop on the (biodiesel) bus, Gus. Make a new (home energy) plan, Stan..."
We know from singer songwriter, Paul Simon, that there are 50 ways to leave your lover, but did you know that there also 50 ways to leave your carbon-wasting ways? The Metro Silicon Valley News has recently published a helpful list of 50 things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint. Remarkably, 10 out of the 50 had a connection to food, drink and gardening. Maybe it's time we all found a new plan.
26. READ LABELS AND BUY LOCAL. Organic from Canada or overseas isn't as easy on the environment as locally produced products. Buying anything imported across an ocean means a container ship transported it. "Just one container ship traveling one mile produces NOx emissions equaling 25,000 cars traveling the same distance," says Anthony Fournier of the Santa Barbara County Pollution Control District. Foreign manufacturers often use carbon-intensive industrial and environmental practices that are illegal here. Many imports are made in sweatshops where people labor in dangerous work environments and aren't paid fairly. Reducing the demand for imports not only reduces our carbon footprint but also sends a message to big business that we want better for everyone.
34. BECOME A LOCAVORE. When you choose out of season organic food that's from journeyed overseas instead of locally grown anything, the pollution caused by the container ships outweighs any benefit you're going to get. Locavores say eating what's available locally is healthier anyway. Cooking dinner? Make a few meals at the same time and stash them in the fridge.
35. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FARMER. Visit www.localharvest .org and find the farmers market nearest you. Even better, find a CSA and get your produce from a sustainable local family farm.
36. MAKE YOUR OWN SALAD. Live Earth Farm's Debbie Palmer says make your own organic salad mixes from scratch and use less bagged and precut produce because they use a lot of resources to produce.
37. DON'T BE A SLAVE TO CONVENIENCE. We'll all be paying later for using convenience foods like packaged mixed salads, because they use a lot of resources to produce.
38. AVOID FAST FOOD. Methane-producing factory farming and long-distance shipping are the heart of its business model and they're clear-cutting rain forests to graze their cows.
39. EAT LESS MEAT. Especially beef. The Worldwatch Institute says growing numbers of intensively farmed livestock are responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and account for 37 percent of emissions of methane, which has more than 20 times the global warming potential of CO2, and 65 percent of emissions of nitrous oxide, another powerful greenhouse gas, coming from manure.
41. GREEN COFFEE IS DELICIOUS. Barefoot Coffee Roasters' Andy Newbom says that when you buy fair trade or organic coffee you're supporting sustainable farming practices that don't clear-cut trees or use pesticides or chemical fertilizers and that makes a big difference. "Buying fair trade coffee rewards and supports sustainable farming, reducing developing nations' carbon footprint," he says. "It's easy for the first world to say let's reduce our carbon footprint, but it's harder for farmers in developing countries to do this." Buy fair trade beans whole or ground, get a press or cloth filter and make your own.
42. DISPOSABLE CUPS? Really? Do the math: Buying coffee every day in a disposable cup generates at least 20 pounds of paper a year plus several hundred megaindustrially produced plastic covers. Styrofoam cups are worse. Dr. Theo Colborn, in "Our Stolen Future," says researchers have found traces of polystyrene in 100 percent of human tissue tested, because it migrates from the cup into hot food and beverages. Yuk! Bring your own coffee cup!
47. YOUR GARDEN ISN'T AS GREEN AS YOU THINK. Alrie Middlebrook designs and builds native plant gardens locally. She says take out your water-guzzling lawn and replace it with native plants. They use less water and nourish birds and bees.
Photocredit: Andy
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Start a "gPod" in your area
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You've heard of an iPod and a pea pod, but what about a gPod?
The g is short for gardener. A gPod is a group of kitchen gardeners and other garden-variety foodies who get together from time to time, regularly or irregularly, to share information, plants, know-how, their gardening victories and defeats, and delicious, seasonal foods. More than being focused on just themselves, members of a KGI gPod also look for ways of giving something back to their community through their combined knowledge, time, and resources.
In his critically acclaimed book "Bowling Alone", author Robert Putnam writes about how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, and neighbors and how we may reconnect. Kitchen Gardeners International is encouraging its members and supporters to form gPods because we believe that we are better and stronger together than apart. By banding together at the local level, gardeners can help alleviate global problems such as food insecurity, climate change, and tasteless supermarket tomatoes. We can also have more fun!
Efforts to bring about garden-powered community revival are already under way. In the course of the past year, KGI gPods have started forming and their members have worked together to plant new gardens in their communities, behind homes, schools, and churches. They have organized garden tours. They have hosted educational talks. They have helped to raise funds for local kitchen garden projects. They have held tastings and have organized potluck meals made with local ingredients.
As with peas, to start a new gPod, someone has to plant a seed. Why not you?
Below you'll find some resources we're offering to help local organizers start new pods in their areas. Once you have a group of 5 or more people organized, we will help you get your local effort organized by setting up an e-mail list, helping you pick a group name, creating a group logo, etc. Please let us know what additional organizational resources you need and we'll do what we can to help.
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1. How to start a KGI gPod. An inspirational and informational guide to local group organizing by John Walker, founder and lead organizer of Kitchen Gardeners Bluegrass (Kentucky, USA).
2. KGI informational flyer for downloading, printing, and posting in your area. Add your name and contact details on the tear-off tabs so that people know how to reach you.
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The Sorry Secrets of Sweeteners
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By
Elizabeth Yarnell
www.GloriousOnePotMeals.com (http://www.gloriousonepotmeals.com/)
The other day I went to buy some of the individual bags of
flavored waters for my kids....
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