Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Oven extravaganza

I really hesitate to use the oven in the summer, but I live with a baked-good fiend.  To minimize the impact, I try to save up baking projects to avoid heating up the apartment for one tray of cookies.

As a concession for over a week of gross, unseasonably hot weather at the end of May/beginning of June, St. Louis granted us some slightly cooler temps on Sunday.  With quite the backlog of baking, the oven extravaganza swept through our apartment after lunch.  The menu featured zucchini bread, peach-cherry pie, granola, and butterscotch bars.  We used local peaches and zucchini (frozen from last summer).

Health notes: As usual, we baked with 100% whole wheat pastry flour (it is difficult for me to eat baked goods, even nice, homemade baked goods, made with white flour — they taste too sweet and lack the depth of flavor that the whole wheat provides, not to mention the nutritional benefits of whole grains).  We also somewhat reduced the sugar in most of the recipes.

Our oven extravaganza two weeks ago featured more varied cuisine: kale chips, roasted pumpkin seeds, chocolate chip cookies, sunflower seeds, beets, and granola.  I’ve been curious about those kale chips for quite awhile now — they were quite good, and a fun alternative if you’re inundated with kale from your garden or CSA share.

However, during Sunday’s baking, I noticed that most items took longer to bake than usual.  Our pans filled the oven, but not so much that it should have restricted airflow.  Maybe it was the semi-frequent opening and closing that came with having multiple items with different baking times and needs (e.g., the granola needed to be stirred every now and then)?  Did we really save any energy?

Next time, I will track exactly how long we have the oven on, and compare it to how long it would take to bake each item, one-at-a-time.  The fact that the oven only preheated once, compared to four times if we baked Sunday’s items in separate sessions, must translate to SOME savings.

Between the monstrosities

How to lose a car in a small parking lot — photographic evidence for this post:

If you look very closely, you might be able to see the tail pipe.  It’s not like I drive a Smart Car, or anything else particularly tiny, it’s just that some things are TOO BIG!  While you could argue (and I might even agree sometimes) that such vehicles are useful in certain situations, driving back and forth to work every day just isn’t one of them.

Well said

Driving back from our vacation a couple of weeks ago, we stopped for gas.  At a BP station.

The other option at that exit wasn’t really any better.  Most major oil companies are far from lily white.

The thing is, this really isn’t a BP issue.  It’s an oil issue.  Oil for gas, yes, but also for all of the plastic and petroleum that pervades our lives in so many ways.

Click here to read Jeff McMahon’s post on ways to respond constructively.  All the outrage and sadness  in the world helps not at all if we don’t make some changes.

“If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got” (Anonymous).

Flighty Friday

As I write this, our brick oven apartment approaches 85° F. Not quite hot enough for my yoga session to technically be “hot yoga,” but we’re getting there.  It doesn’t feel too bad under the ceiling fan, but between the heat and the music from downstairs that I’m trying to block out, serious writing eludes me.

"Feels more like summer" rolls

Try your hand at homemade spring rolls for a cool summer meal.  Don’t forget the peanut dipping sauce!

Sunbrella

The hat alone just wasn’t cutting it.  Enter the sunbrella . . . just watch out for the creepers.

And so it begins

Free outdoor summer fun in St. Louis arrived last night with the first Wednesday night concert at the Botanical Garden.  One of the big perks of bike riding is attending events without having to worry too much about parking, traffic, etc.

Instead of rushing to get there early, we cooked a nice dinner (featuring local black beans and salsa so delicious that I could just eat it by the spoonful).  After a bit of digesting, we biked over to The Garden.

We arrived to find the bicycle racks full.  No worries, on to the Forbidden Light Posts.

Background: Until about a year ago, when The Garden finally installed decent bike parking, the bicycle rack was a classic fail: wheel bender style, not bolted to the ground, sitting in the middle of the parking lot with obvious signs that it had been hit by cars in the past.  Look my bike up there like a sitting duck?  No thanks.  Many other bikers obviously felt the same way; we preferred the safer and more secure alternative of locking our bikes to the light posts.  The Garden disapproved and sent their minions in golf carts to inform us about the “proper bike parking.”  Uh huh.  After several failed attempts to communicate like reasonable people and explain to security why their idea of bicycle parking was unacceptable (and several attempts to contact higher-ups at The Garden to discuss ideas for remedying the issue, which received no reply), we resorted to simply ignoring the security guards and going about the business of locking our bikes to the Forbidden Light Posts.

Whether it was through our civil disobedience, or the contact attempts, The Garden finally got the memo.  Since the installation, I have enjoyed the new bicycle accommodations on many occasions, but last night, with the “lot” full, we resorted to old patterns.  (This is not a complaint in any way — I love indications that lots of people are bicycling.  A full bike rack sends a powerful message!)  No one gave us trouble, which was good, because what would they have suggested?

We suggest doubling the amount of bicycle parking.  While  the current amount is more than enough (at least right now), for business as usual at The Garden, the bicycle parking will continue to fill to overflowing during special events.  For a relatively small investment of money and space (especially compared to car parking), they could accommodate all of the bicycles we saw last night, no light posts needed!