Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

Action item

From this NYTimes article about Tuesday’s UN conference on climate change: “Mr. Obama struck a note of urgency, saying: ‘The security and stability of each nation and all peoples — our prosperity, our health, our safety — are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out.'”

I say, a little less talk and a lot more action.  If this is urgent, take meaningful action now Mr. President and Congress!

I just sent an email to the White House urging President Obama to take action.  Click here to send your own message.

Pear preserves

Last weekend, we visited my husband’s grandparents and acquired a large quantity of rock hard pears from a neighbor’s tree.  What do you do with rock hard pears, you ask?  You make pear preserves, of course, which is what I did this Saturday.  As a warning, this task is not for the faint of arm.  No matter how good your knife, cutting over twelve pounds of rock hard pears is intense.  By the end, I felt like I would be unable to pick up a knife again, ever.

After all the pears were cut and cooked into preserves, the canning commenced.  I sterilized and filled the jars (6 pints and 2 half pints) and started placing them in the huge pot of boiling water.  I placed all of the pint jars in the pot, along with one of the half pint jars.  As I went to get the last half pint, I heard a kind of popping sound from the pot.  Probably not good.  My fears were confirmed as I looked into the pot and saw the water becoming cloudy.  The half pint jar had broken.

Unsure what to do, I used the canning tongs to lift the jar out.  When I did this, instead of merely seeping out, the contents of the jar, gushed out into the water.  It pretty much looked like someone had vomited pear chunks into my pot.  The canning had to go on, so I gingerly set the only remaining half pint jar into the pot with the intact pints jars and waited an excruciating eight minutes or so for the water to return to a boil and boil for five minutes, terrified that I would hear another pop at any minute, signaling the destruction of more of my hard work.  Fortunately, that did not come to pass, and after boiling for five minutes, I retrieved seven intact jars of pear preserves from the pear vomit pot.

Weekend update

Once again, we made it from Sunday through Friday without the car, but it made an appearance again on Saturday.  I think that habit will be hard to break as long as we are commuter gardeners, but it does make me think crazy thoughts like, “Do we need to own a car at all?  For as seldom as we use it, couldn’t we just rent a car once a week?”  Perhaps . . . .

Saturday was full of gardening and food preservation.  I canned pear preserves (to be discussed in a future post) and prepped more fresh basil for freezing.  We will be enjoying lots of pesto in the coming months — no complaints here!

Sunday dawned rainy, great for all the little seeds we planted yesterday, not so great for biking to church.  I resolved to bike in spite of the rain and ended up staying relatively dry, due to convenient breaks in the rain that corresponded with my travels (and due to my fenders).  In the afternoon, we needed to run an errand that involved exchanging a long handle of a tool with interchangeable heads.  When I say “run” an errand, I do mean literally.  The store is 1.25 miles from our apartment, but we weren’t sure how to safely and securely attach a seven foot pole to a bike.  I was highly opposed to driving, so I suggested walking, which became running (well, jogging actually) to save time.  No doubt we looked highly ridiculous, running through residential neighborhoods carrying a seven foot long red pole.

Mission complete, we returned to begin a cooking/baking extravaganza, including roasted beets*, vegetable pot pie, and apple pie**.  This was our first time making the vegetable pot pie with all local vegetables: potatoes*, butternut squash*, carrots*, green beans*, sunchokes**, and onions**.  We love this pot pie recipe, but before you are fooled into thinking that this is a super healthy dish, in the interest of full disclosure, this recipe has 3 sticks of butter in the crust and filling.  Three sticks in a recipe that’s meant to serve four people!  We stretched it into six servings — this means I consumed a half stick of butter in one meal.  Oops!  Maybe we’ll go with even smaller serving sizes in the future.

No biking for you

Yesterday I biked to work as normal in the morning, fully intending to bike home in the afternoon, despite the little detail that I was donating blood.  No big deal, I’ve given blood plenty of times before and always bounced right back.  The warning, “Do not do strenuous exercise or lift heavy objects for at least 12 hours [after donating],” was written for other people, not for me, right?

For better or worse, I never got to test whether or not their warning applied to me, because I got sidelined much earlier in the process.  I was reclining on the cot, donation almost complete, when my vision started to blur and my head got fuzzy.  I could hear them saying my name repeatedly, but it took me awhile to realize that I was supposed to respond.  The staff quickly lowered my head, raised my feet, and placed cold packs on my neck and forehead.  And I was back.  And feeling ridiculous for almost passing out.

Fortunately, I completed my donation.  (They took the “lightweight” amount of blood.)  However, after spending 40 minutes on the cot recovering (including one relapse), walking back to work with my teeth chattering (when it was not cold), and feeling really drained the rest of the day, I was perfectly happy to take public transit home.

*Note: I’m not sure what made this one time different than the 20+ other times I have donated blood, and I will certainly not let this one time deter me from donating in the future.  However, in the future I will NOT assume that I will be able to complete a 6-mile, moderately strenuous bike ride just six hours after donating.