Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Iowa, you’re tempting me

Some recent (and ongoing) conversations at our apartment involve the future and where we see ourselves, in terms of careers and family, yes, but also WHERE, physically.  Liveability factors large into these place discussions.  Sounds simple and obvious, right?  Everyone wants to live somewhere “liveable.”  Finding that place, a bikeable/walkable community, with meaningful employment for two, affordable housing, good schools, and room for a garden provides a bit of a challenge.

Enter my home state — IOWA!  A friend sent me a link to this PBS story on Dubuque, Iowa.  Click here, or click the image below, to go to the PBS website and watch the short video.  The mayor and [some of] the people in Dubuque, really GET liveable.  This looks really good.  Anyone in Dubuque want to hire two public health professionals with knowledge of liveable communities?

Just dip it

A little elf  prepared this meal — I found it ready and waiting when I got home from work one evening last week.  I took a few bites, and, though it was quite good, knew my meal needed more veggies.  I sliced up zucchini “chips” and chopped some broccoli as an additional dipper.  Much better.

Start with a layer of refried beans, top with chopped tomatoes, corn, [spicy] cheese, salsa, and green onions (the last three ingredients were local).  Compared to our normal meals, this one involved a good bit of “prepared” food: canned refried beans, canned tomatoes, frozen corn, and tortilla chips.

Try one or more of these options for a  fresh, locavore version: homemade refried beans made from locally grown black beans, chopped garden tomatoes, and/or local corn off-the-cob.  If you really want to get crazy, you could make your own tortilla chips.  Or eliminate the chips altogether and stick with fresh veggie dippers.

This not-quite-seven-layer dip, with the veggie addition, makes an ideal quick, tasty, healthy meal.

Hibernating

Are there any animals that hibernate in summer?  If so, I want to be one of them — crawl into a dark, cool cave and not emerge until the temperature returns to somewhat sane levels (i.e., below 80-degrees).

On Friday night, we biked over to Local Harvest Cafe for dinner.  We shared their vegan Green Plate special and a bowl of chilled borscht.  Borscht is basically beet soup, which sounds weird (at least I’ve always thought so and never tried it before), but this soup was amazing!  Mmm, I could eat bowls and bowls!

After dinner, we hit up Tower Grove Park.  I morphed into a little park creature (i.e., put on my Five Fingers), and we played frisbee for awhile.  Before calling it a night, we visited our community garden bed and harvested some beets, carrots, and rutabaga.  Some of those beets are destined to become borscht!

From the time we returned home Friday night, until my 6:15am run this morning, I entered hibernation mode.  I didn’t leave the apartment, other than short jaunts to water the plants on the porch, for over forty-eight hours.  What can I say — I took the heat advisory seriously, but all good things must come to an end.

Happy summer solstice!  (But, Weather, I really don’t need 100-degree heat to convince me it’s summer.  I believe you, okay?  Can you just back off a little now?  Please???)

Attitude shift

Deconstructed pie

After I wrote the previous post, I did a lot of thinking along the lines of, “Who am I to complain?”

For two hours of my morning, and the expected price tag, a competent auto body specialist fixed the window problem, and I moved on with my day.

I returned home and put together a lovely lunch of leftovers, then combined my feet and MetroBus to get to City Greens Farmer’s Market.  Biking in full half-past-noon sun in the 103-degree heat index lacked appeal.

With the walk/bus option, I can either use a sun hat or my sunbrella to avoid sunscreen. Around here, many people are happy to use light rail (MetroLink), but either have tons of excuses for not using the bus, or seem to never consider it, which is a shame.  Metro upgraded their website and the trip planning feature now links to Google Transit — pretty user friendly.

While I was out and about, I encountered a few things that put my “problems” into perspective, and reminded me to be thankful.  Although I don’t practice it daily, I like No Impact Man’s idea of making a gratitude list.  Here’s mine for today:

  1. Circus Flora (St. Louis’ own one-ring circus) — we went last night.  The artists display such an amazing combination of athleticism, grace, strength, and beauty.  I love watching bodies in motion.
  2. My legs that carry me when I walk or bicycle for transportation.
  3. My family.
  4. Local farmers who work hard (for not much profit).
  5. Homegrown blackberries, featured in deconstructed pie 🙂

Car, ugh

The power windows on my bicycle never give me any trouble 😉  The ones on the car are another story.  On Wednesday afternoon, the left front window displayed a new trick it learned — the trick where it does not go up.  Well, eventually it went up; with a lot of coaxing and long rest breaks, it went up a little bit at a time, until, finally, closed!  I immediately pushed the window lock button to prevent an accidental lowering.

Based on my highly technical over-the-phone description, my front and rear (yes, that one is misbehaving, too) left-side window motors need to be replaced, to the tune of perhaps $400.  So that’s how I get to spend what would be a car-free Friday.  Sigh.  This contributes yet more fodder to the “I want to be in a job where I can bike commute again” fire.