Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Hungry in Chattanooga

So, Chattanooga.  Where were we?

Sadly, I spent most of my visit to “the highest rated aquarium in America” searching for food, since the planners of the Pro Walk Pro Bike networking party felt the need for the food to be spaced out ALL OVER the place.  Lucky for the aquarium inhabitants that I’m not a pescatarian.

This guy, on the other hand, holds no qualms about eating fish.  By the time I found the station with great vegetarian options and refueled, I felt totally wiped out.

I skipped the after party on the Delta Queen in favor of the private party in my hotel room — a little thing I like to call sleeping.  By invitation only, of course.

I woke up bright and early on my last day in Chattanooga for a bakery run (or, more accurately, a bakery bike).  If I’d had any foreshadowing of what was to come, I would have stocked up even more.

The closing plenary of Pro Walk Pro Bike 2010 was scheduled from noon until 2:00pm (and the last breakout session ended at 11:45am).  We shuffled into the room shortly before noon and were met with the sight of a decidedly unlunchlike set-up: just chairs.  No tables and no food.  What???

Stay calm.  Maybe they would talk for an hour and then feed us at 1:00pm.  Not ideal, but I could handle it.

But no, there was no lunch, and everyone else seemed equally baffled and annoyed by this turn of events.  Especially when the closing remarks dragged on PAST two o’clock.

The St. Louis contingent finally managed to escape and make a much-needed lunch stop (was it even lunch at this point?) before embarking on the bus ride back to the Lou.  All-in-all, Pro Walk Pro Bike 2010 was a decidedly amazing conference with an anticlimactic and disappointing finish.

And the thing was, it didn’t have to end that way.  At one point during the closing plenary, one of the speakers had the entire (hungry and tired) audience on our feet, a crowd of people working to push this movement up to and past its tipping point, with our fists in the air, responding enthusiastically to his prompts:

“What do we want?”

“More walking and biking!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

And that’s how I want to remember Pro Walk Pro Bike 2010 in Chattanooga.

Not okay AAA

Click here to sign the petition letting AAA know that cutting the already small amount of funding for transportation alternatives is not okay!  You can make a difference in less than 60 seconds.Continue reading “Not okay AAA”

Change in the air?

I use the Yahoo home page to sign into my email account, and every so often one of their “news” headlines catches my attention, as this one did today: Generation Y Giving Cars a Pass.  Chalk this one up in the good news category 🙂

It’s small, but it’s a start, and I hope it continues to catch.  Policy makers and transportation planners take note: we don’t want more roads or bigger roads.  We want accommodations that make us LESS car dependent, that expand transportation options and make walking, biking, and public transit easy and convenient.

If it rains on your parade . . .

. . . climb back into bed and let the thunder roll.  Then get up and do some baking.

Sunday morning, the day of the third of four St. Louis Open Streets events, we woke to rain and thunder.  We were scheduled to volunteer as roving route marshals starting at 7:30am, meaning we needed to leave by 7:00am to bike to the volunteer tent.  We woke up early, checked the weather, ate breakfast, and decided that it didn’t make sense to head out into a thunderstorm.  Would there really be anyone on the route anyway?

Tired from Saturday’s long day of gardening, we climbed back into bed to see if the rain would let up so we could venture out.  The rain did not let up, nor did the thunder, not until 11:00am at the earliest, well after our volunteer shift passed.

We rolled out of bed the second time and started in on some baking and cooking: apple crisp, cornbread, and chili — perfect foods for a rainy day.

Though they never officially canceled Open Streets, I’m sure the weather more or less had that effect, which is too bad given the time and work that went into the event.  Also, on the tails of my awesome week at the Pro Walk Pro Bike conference, I was really looking forward to seeing large numbers of people out biking and walking the streets of St. Louis.

There is good news.  We have one more shot at Open Streets this year, the fourth and final event scheduled for Saturday, October 9th.  I’m hoping for some fabulous fall weather and a large turnout.

Butter with a side of vegetables

If you’re looking for decadent vegetarian comfort food, The Barefoot Contessa’s “Vegetable Pot Pie” is your dish.  While the vegetables make this somewhat healthy, don’t be fooled, it has TONS of butter.  (I’ve concluded that if a recipe doesn’t have at least a pound of butter, it’s not a Barefoot Contessa recipe.)

In our most recent rendition, we made this with vegetables almost entirely from our garden: butternut squash, carrots, onions, potatoes, green beans (subbed for the asparagus), and parsley.  The only non-garden veggies were the fennel (which we tried to grow) and the “small frozen onions” which I really don’t like that much anyway and may just omit next time.

My pastry chef makes the pie crust with 100% whole wheat pastry flour — healthy and so much tastier and more interesting than plain old white flour!

A few notes:

  • We skip the Pernod (an anise flavored liquor).
  • Don’t skip the saffron!!!  It’s pricey, but a little goes a long way — it’s important to the flavor here.
  • To make it vegetarian, we use veggie broth or stock instead of chicken stock.
  • We tend to be generous with the amount of vegetables.
  • To make it healthier, eat a small serving of the pot pie with some lighter side dishes to round out the meal.  I served this with a tomato salad last week.