Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Two year birthday

Back at the beginning of the month (June 2nd, to be precise), HerGreenLife turned two.  (It totally slipped my mind, which I guess makes me a bad blog mama.)

Fittingly, this has been the best month ever in terms of blog readership — it’s always fun to see the numbers go up!

I look forward to continuing the main themes of the blog (green transportation, growing and preparing local food, and general green and health-related musings) into the coming year, while integrating the transition from a family of two to a family of three.

If you have any requests, questions, or topics you would like to see covered here, please let me know.

Thanks for reading and sharing the journey thus far 🙂  Here’s to another great year to come!

Rolling toward the finish

Biking to lunch at 37 weeks

I hit the 37 week mark on Friday and breathed a huge sigh of relief.  From here on out, I am within the window for a home birth 🙂  Despite general increasing discomfort for me, the more time baby spends growing inside, the better, but it’s nice to know that if baby decided to come today, we could go ahead as planned with the birth at home.  (If I had gone into labor prior to 37 weeks, that would have been automatic cause to head to the hospital.)

I spent a good portion of Friday and Saturday doing some serious nesting, though, as with the kitchen, my cleaning efforts on the apartment as a whole seem to degrade quickly.  Oh well.  In general, things are pretty well set for baby’s arrival.

On Sunday, I helped Matthew as he showcased our garden in the Sustainable Backyard Tour.  He did an amazing job, giving inspiring tours to the more than 50 people who visited our garden over the course of the afternoon.  More on the garden to come later.

The consequences of eating watermelon seeds

It should be illegal to sell watermelon without some kind of warning label.

WARNING: Consumption of watermelon seeds may cause extreme abdominal swelling and numerous other side effects.

Baby prep — Freezer meals

Making freezer meals to have on hand for the postpartum period was one of our homework assignments for Naturally Prepared (our childbirth class).

Ironically, we didn’t get around to any freezer meals until the last night of class, when Matthew started a huge pot of ribollita (i.e., Tuscan bread soup, recipe here) that finished cooking just in time for us to leave for class without getting to eat any.  We ate some for lunch the next day, and froze at least two meals-worth.

Apparently, that jump started things, because two nights later, we made a batch of Snobby Joes for dinner, and froze the leftovers.

Still to Come
Our instructor (who just so happens to be Greek) shared her falafel recipe, which apparently freezes well, so that is on our “to make and freeze” list.  Most veggie burgers also freeze well, and I’ve been scoping out a few new recipes from 101 Cookbooks:

We’ve talked about making spanakopita, which freezes well, but it’s a bit labor and time intensive — we’ll have to see whether or not that happens.  If we make it, I want to try a version with Swiss chard instead of spinach, as we have tons of chard coming in from the garden at the moment.

I’d love more freezer-friendly vegetarian ideas — please share!

Ungreening Green Drinks

It had been a few months since we made it to a St. Louis Green Drinks event, so last night’s gathering was a priority.  They had a great panel of speakers on the topic of Urban Farming — apparently quite popular, because it was standing room only.

The usual meeting location, Schlafly Bottleworks, is easily bikeable for us, but last night our trusty steeds did not grace the bike racks.  Although I’ve been feeling pretty good for the past week, I have had a few relapses into not so good, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s as much my body giving signals that I’ve been overdoing things as it is related to what I’m eating.  So I’m trying to be good and take it easy, at least until Friday.

Despite having some justification for riding in a car to get there, I felt a bit guilty all night, especially given the nature of the event (but hey, at least the topic wasn’t green transportation).

Not all was lost, as I had some great discussions after the panel, including the chance to bring up Cycling Savvy.  Speaking of, if you live in the St. Louis area, don’t miss the July series of Cycling Savvy courses.  I won’t be teaching, but depending on baby’s arrival, Matthew will be teaching both of the on-bike course segments (“Train Your Bike” and “Tour of St. Louis”).