Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Of recent bicycle escapades

A small snowfall that melted and then froze into a nice slippery layer, followed a few days later by freezing rain, made our streets rather bike unfriendly for a full week.  St. Louis makes no attempt to plow or salt anything other than the biggest roads, leaving many of the ideal cycling routes treacherous for bikers, pedestrians, and drivers alike.

Fortunately, things warmed up a bit toward the end of last week and into the weekend, and we were ready to roll (albeit with caution for those icy patches that remain where the sun don’t shine) on Saturday and Sunday.  I ran a few errands by bike on Saturday, followed with biking to church on Sunday.

Both rides were lovely, with the only treacherous spot being the icy patches in our alley.  On Sunday, I encountered the obligatory jerk driver on The Hill.  He was quite outraged that I delayed his trip by 30-60 seconds for a 1 1/2 block stretch where there was not enough room for him to pass me safely.

His tirade included the oh-so-helpful information that I was operating my bike illegally — that the law* said I could ride no more than two feet from parked cars — and HE KNEW because he raced bikes for 30 years.

Well, Mr. Jerk picked the wrong lady to quote “cycling law” to, but I really wasn’t able to get a word in edgewise.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t carrying my handy-dandy, ready-to-hand-out copy of Missouri Bicycle Statutes.  (I have copies, and I’ll be ready next time.)

Realizing that Mr. Jerk was not in a state to make this encounter remotely positive, I eventually biked away, with two thoughts in my head:

  1. “If he thought that riding within two feet of parked cars (i.e., squarely within the deadly “door zone”) was a safe cycling practice, it’s a bit of a wonder that he survived 30 years of cycling.”  His comment was not surprising, as I see plenty of the spandex-clad crowd riding in this unsafe position on a regular basis.
  2. “Small penis.”  Sometimes this is the only logical conclusion when one encounters an unreasonable male motorist who thinks he owns the road.  This thought, combined with some deep breathing, did much to help restore the equilibrium of my nice Sunday morning ride.

* I have no idea where he pulled this from (okay, maybe I could take a guess 😉 ), but this is NOT a law in Missouri, nor is it a law anywhere else as far as I know.  If you think about how far a car door would swing out if suddenly opened, two feet is clearly not enough space.  I try to ride 4-5 feet from parked cars — you want to be out of the path of the door if it were to suddenly swing wide open AND confident enough in that distance and your position that you won’t swerve out into traffic should a door in fact open.

Retrospective menu

I fell off the cooking wagon for a couple of weeks, but I got back in the swing of things last Thursday night with — hmm, now I can’t quite remember.  Ah, right, lentil sloppy joes.  And I roasted some broccoli and cauliflower for a side dish — delicious fresh out of the oven, but not so great as leftovers.

I opened a jar of our canned tomatoes for the sloppy joes.  I saved some of the tomatoes and used them to make County Vegetable Soup with Pasta on Friday night.  This recipe comes pretty close to what I made — the main difference is that my recipe calls for pesto as a garnish.  Also, I used whole wheat shells for the pasta, which I cooked separately and added to the bowls when serving to keep them from getting mushy.

I love sitting down to dinner and doing a tally of all the garden and local produce in the meal.  The soup was a great one for this: the leeks, carrots, zucchini, green beans, tomatoes, and basil for the pesto came from our garden, and the cabbage was locally grown (we didn’t have much luck growing cabbage this fall).  This is a wonderful soup — really hearty and flavorful — perfect for these frigid days.

On Saturday night, I found my cheesy side with a baked macaroni and cheese dish (recipe from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes, our go-to cookbook).  On the side, a serving of steamed, grated beets with butter and salt, as well as a small roasted beet salad.

I finished my cooking spree with Swiss Chard risotto on Sunday night.  Instead of arborio rice, I used oat groats.  Instead of the normal time-intensive risotto procedure of adding small amounts of broth at a time while stirring almost continuously for an hour, I added the liquid in two installments and simmered it with minimal stirring.  The oat groats produced a creamy, hearty risotto, which I paired with roasted root vegetables (garden potatoes and beets, plus local sweet potatoes).  Risotto recipe coming soon, once I get it out of my head and into the computer — which I hope occurs before I forget what I did 😉

Y not?

So, after hem hawing around for a couple of weeks, or more like a month, given the date on this post, I finally bit the bullet and [re]joined the Y yesterday.  This involved some serious bundling before the 3/4 mile trek from my apartment.  The conditions were about as blizzard-like as things can get with only an inch of snow — the wind was doing its best given the paltry amount of precipitation available.

Properly dressed, the walk wasn’t bad at all, and I probably spent less time outside than some people spent scraping their cars.

I made immediate use of my new membership with about an hour of weights, upper and lower body.  My goal is to hit the gym three days a week — Fridays, Sundays, and one weekday evening.

I returned home to lunch #2 (I ate a small snack, AKA lunch #1, before the gym), leftovers of a fabulous soup that I made on Friday night.  After a bit of a cooking hiatus, I’m back in the swing in the kitchen — more details to come, including a recipe or two.

Our big blue bin

On Monday or Tuesday night, Matthew informed me that St. Nick had brought us something extra this year.

For the last two years, we had curbside recycling pickup, and our landlord paid the low rate that the city subsidized. With the start of the city’s new recycling dumpsters in the alleys, they dropped the subsidized curbside service.

Problem was, the city is rolling out their program slowly, and while some relatively nearby alleys had their bins in November, the only info I had said that they all should be in place by March 2011. I was preparing for the reality of having to drop our recycling off somewhere for up to 4 months (and the idea of driving somewhere to recycle really rubs me the wrong way), so I was super excited to hear the news about the bin in our alley.

The only thing that kept me from running out to see it right when Matthew told me was the fact that I was comfortably curled up on the couch and the temps outside were under 20 degrees.

Despite my excitement, I would be remiss if I did not point out, as I’ve mentioned before, that recycling is only a stop-gap measure, and not an ultimate solution to our problem of over-consumption and too much waste.

Environmental sustainability really depends on us practicing the other R’s: Reduce and Reuse. I’ve also heard mention of a fourth R, Refuse (as in refuse disposable packaging, containers, etc.), which I see as being part of Reduce.

Sprouted

We didn’t grow spaghetti squash this year, so I bought a couple of small ones at the farmers’ market several weeks ago.  They’ve been sitting on the counter, waiting to be used.

I’ve been eating A LOT of pasta lately, so in an effort to mix things up a bit, I decided to prepare a spaghetti squash.  I cut into it, and was surprised to see that the seeds had sprouted.

Since many types of sprouts are quite tasty, I tried one — ick!  Very bitter.  Fortunately, the squash itself was fine.  I just scraped out the sprouts along with the seeds, and proceeded with the prep:

  • Cut in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds.
  • Place cut side down in a glass dish with about an inch of water.
  • Microwave for 10-12 minutes, or until squash is tender.
  • Let cool slightly, then use a fork to scrape out the spaghetti-like strands.
  • Season to taste with olive oil, salt, pepper, herbs of your choice.
  • Also good topped with olives or capers.