Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition – Page 59

An Earth Day reminder

With most places having Earth Day celebrations over the weekend, I lost track of the fact that today, April 22, is officially Earth Day.

As perhaps a little reminder from the universe to not take natural resources for granted, I turned on the kitchen faucet this afternoon to just a tiny little trickle of water that quickly faded to nothing.

With dinnertime fast approaching, I grabbed some leftover bean cooking liquid to cook the lentils and set to chopping veggies. Over the next hour, I probably attempted to use the sink no less than ten times — to wash hands, rinse off a dish — you name it, it felt like every time I turned around I needed water for something, and I just couldn’t get it through my head that turning the faucet was not going to yield water.

I’ve had this same experience when we’ve had power outages — go into a room and flip a light switch, just expecting the light to turn on as usual, but, nothing.

Clean, running water, power at the flip of a switch — so many things that I take for granted on a daily basis . . . .

Ironically enough, we ended up buying bottled water on Earth Day. My MIL swung by the store and grabbed a few gallons for us on her way to drop off Gabriel.

With no warning on the outage or obvious cause, I was prepared to be without running water until morning at least. Instead, it felt like no sooner had I popped the top on the gallon of water and poured glasses for dinner, whoosh, we had water from the tap again!

It’s hard when we live in a country that has seemingly plentiful resources, but every now and then, we are reminded to be grateful, and, perhaps, to renew our attempts to use those resources carefully, in a manner that sustains the planet we all share.

Friday free-for-all

All things go in cycles — for quite awhile there, my writing was very food-centric, almost to the exclusion of anything else. My concerted effort to post more on the bicycling-side of things perhaps worked too well, as my food-related posting feels a bit sparse of late.

I blame this in part on my slightly blah feelings on cooking in general, as I’ve been feeling unmotivated and [finally] a bit tired of eating primarily from our frozen and root-cellared stores. After a number of months, it began to feel like the same food all. the. time.

Fortunately, spring is here (today’s blustery weather notwithstanding), and abundant fresh, local produce is just around the corner. We’ve already had a few small spinach harvests (from the plants that grew under the low tunnels all winter), and I can’t wait for more.

In the meantime, I finally caved and bought a head of broccoli at the grocery store. That broccoli is the first non-garden, non-local produce (other than onions, garlic, and frozen corn and peas) that I have bought in I don’t know how long. It’s easy to focus on the [still many] foods that we don’t grow ourselves or buy local, but in reality we’ve taken some pretty big steps to lighten our food footprint.

Back on the biking side of things, after debating whether it was worth thirty minutes in the car to meet a Craigslist seller (to buy a life jacket for Sir’s upcoming beach trip), I contacted the seller to set things in motion. Rather then me going to her (over six miles away), she suggested a meeting point conveniently located about two miles from us.

I happily ditched the car for a lovely (though windy and chilly) bike ride and returned home with a worn-once (looks brand new) life vest. Sir approved the purchase and happily wore the vest for the rest of the morning (you never know, our second story apartment could flood — better safe than sorry!).

He’s carrying the pump for my exercise ball, which he pretends is a vacuum cleaner (complete with cute sound effects). Something about the life vest and pump-vacuum combination makes me think of Ghostbusters, though I can’t say quite what, having only watched the movie once, a long time ago. For those of you more familiar with the movie, does my association make any sense?

Savvy [Tri]cyclist

I spent most of Saturday afternoon on my bike with a fellow CyclingSavvy instructor, ground-truthing the route for the Tour of St. Louis that I will be co-leading as part of our May workshop (details and registration here — please join us for a course that will change the way you think about riding on the roads!).*

Given the gorgeous weather, and the fact that I had the entire day to myself since Gabriel was at the garden, I thought nothing of biking to and from our meeting place (Kaldi’s Coffee on DeMun). Well, I thought nothing of it until after we rode the route for the road tour of mid-county, by which point I had covered the six miles to our meeting point and the ten miles of the tour.

My body said, “We’re finished now, right?”

Um, not so much, given that I was six miles from home. I went into autopilot at that point, choosing the most straightforward route and slowly pounding it out, bit by bit.

Unfortunately, I was too tired and zoned to stop and chat with the couple heading the other direction on their bikes, riding on the sidewalk and looking thoroughly distressed about the fact that the sidewalk was ending and they were about to have to ride on the road (the very low traffic four-lane road where they could operate their bicycles peacefully and happily in a lane all their own, in reality much safer than their previous location).

Apparently, my regular weight lifting, intermittent mile or two treadmill runs, and casual bike jaunts with Sir did not prepare me for a 22-miler. I arrived home a thoroughly pooped pup.

No rest for the wicked, though, as I immediately jumped into dinner preparations (stewed tomatoes), knowing that a [garden-tired] Matthew and Sir would be arriving soon.

Turns out I was not the only one who spent a large portion of the day spinning my wheels . . . .

When I wrote last, I’d completely forgotten that my MIL found a tricycle at a thrift shop when she was in Florida in December. Talk about a pimped ride: metallic pink with chrome fenders and black streamers, plus not one, but TWO bells. Someone’s riding in style! (Someone also received his birthday present several months early.)

*Whatever your cycling experience, this course has something for you, as summed up so well in the course announcement email:

Beginner cyclists will learn why sidewalk cycling increases risk, what Missouri & Illinois laws say about bicycles and cyclists, how to signal and communicate with motorists, practice critical bike handling skills, and proven techniques valuable for a lifetime of cycling.

Intermediate cyclists will discover the importance of intersection integration, how to best handle multi- and single-lane roads, strategies for inclement weather, taking advantage of traffic flow, emergency maneuvers, and much more.

Advanced cyclists will fill the gaps in their own understanding of how traffic works, learn how to better manage traffic on single-lane roads, discover how lane positioning actually helps motorists, and many concepts that are difficult to master through self-learning. “I wish I had taken it sooner,” say many of our advanced participants.

Strider’s maiden voyage

Aside from a few failed attempts to show Gabriel how to use his balance bike inside the apartment, it sat in basement storage since Christmas. I’d been waiting for good weather to let him try it outside, and yesterday I finally made it happen.

His readiness also changed in the last three months. While he’s not yet ready to pull his feet up and coast on the downhills, he quickly figured out how to balance the bike while walking with it. I feared our first outing would be short-lived when he took a little fall and bumped his face on the bar end, but we wiped the the tears away and continued our trip around the block.

It appeared to require quite a bit of concentration, given his rather serious facial expressions. After a bit, he loosened up and started making his motor vehicle/kitchen appliance “rrrrrrrroooommmm” noise.

In the end, I was the one who cut the outing short, due to thirst, hunger, and readiness for a break from the sun and the heat (why is it that we seem to go straight from winter to summer here?). Sir’s desire to venture further, and my desire to not, led to a teary ending, as well as both he and the bike arriving home in my arms. Fortunately, one of the two is light weight!

Despite the teary ending, I’m looking forward to more balance bike outings in the coming months.

I do still wonder about getting him a tricycle — I can see it being fun as well, and learning how to pedal (something he can’t do on the balance bike) is also an important skill for riding a bike. We’ll see . . . .

A pseudo bike date

Sunday night we had a long overdue date night. I’d read about Fork & Stix, a new Thai restaurant, in one of the recent foodie magazines (don’t remember if it was Feast or Sauce), and it’s been high on my list since then. The restaurant’s location just off The Loop meshed well with another item that was high on my to-do list: ride the Kona Ute [longtail bicycle] at Big Shark.

We arrived to a packed bike shop thirty minutes before closing time. With no hope of getting help anytime soon, we hunted for the Ute and MinUte. We finally found the MinUte, which I mistook for the full-out Ute, near the back of the shop. After a few minutes of standing there drooling on the bike failed to draw any sales associates, Matthew went to hunt someone down, while I decided to take matters into my own hands.

The bike was up on a small rack, so I decided to take it down for a better look. In the course of doing so, I discovered that the front tire was completely flat — couldn’t ride it like that. Sensing closing time approaching, I wanted the bike to be ready to ride, so I grabbed a nearby floor pump and started attempting to refill the tire. My do-it-yourself efforts finally drew the attention of one of the mechanics, who came over and said he’d take the bike back and get it ready to ride. Fine by me.

After what seemed an age — I guess the tube wasn’t holding air, so he had to change it — he rolled out the MinUte, and we headed out for our test ride.

We had a few goals for this test ride: 1) Get me on the Ute; 2) see if the larger (20″) frame would work for me, since that frame size would be better for Matthew; and 3) see how the bikes felt with weight on the cargo racks.

We were two for three on those goals. Unfortunately, after going nowhere for over a year, the Ute sold sometime in the month since Matthew rode it, so I didn’t actually get to ride a longtail. The MinUte (i.e., mini-Ute, a regular bike with many of the heavy-duty cargo features of it’s larger sibling) gave me the chance to try the frame size (the 20″ was fine for me).

We then loaded the bike with human cargo, each taking a turn with the other as passenger on the rear rack. An adult human passenger (especially with no foot rests or official hand-holds) is probably the trickiest cargo possible, with a high center of gravity and the natural inclination to react to, and attempt to compensate for, the bike’s movement, instead of leaving that task to the driver. I enjoyed being a passenger, but felt pretty unstable operating the bike with Matthew on the back.

This really is the smaller of the two bikes. The angle here makes it look extra long, but I really thought the MinUte was the Ute at first. The panniers, which come standard with the bike, totally rocked.

Now, for the dinner part of the date. Fork & Stix is a small Thai restaurant, specializing in northern Thai cuisine. We started our meal with the vegetable tempura appetizer and an order of [two very tiny] spring rolls.

For our main course, we shared two dishes, Khao Soi (above), a soup which is a northern Thai specialty, and Pad Thai, a more familiar southern Thailand dish (all their other northern Thai dishes featured pork, so the Khao Soi was our main vegetarian option for trying northern Thai food).

Both dishes were quite tasty, and it was fun to try something new. It was not the best Thai food ever (Matthew recommends a restaurant in Salt Lake City for this), but a good meal nonetheless.

I think our next Thai outing will be to King & I, a restaurant I’ve never visited, due to Matthew’s being less-than-impressed with the food on a visit many years ago. Given recent reviews I’ve read, I think it’s worth another try.

I would have loved to cycle to the bike shop and our dinner destination, but a tight schedule that involved dropping Sir off at grandma’s, [Matthew] sneaking in a thirty-minute gardening blitz, and getting to Big Shark before they closed at five left no time for that. In some situations you can travel faster on a bike than in a car, but this was not one of them.

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