We Have Compost! Worm Update

I think it's time for an update on our super cheap DIY worm bin, don't you?

Despite some hiccups as we got the hang of maintaining the correct moisture level in the bins, we have had success! A couple months ago the first bin was getting pretty full, so we decided to rest it (that's when you stop adding new material so you force the worms to finish off everything that is in there and turn it into nice compost). I made a second worm bin (same method as my first) and transferred about two dozen worms in there so that we could keep composting our kitchen scraps while the first bin rested. I continued to turn the compost so that it didn't get too damp or packed down, but otherwise tried to leave the resting bin alone. And this past weekend, it looked done!

To sort out the useable compost and get the worms back into a worm bin to do more composting for us, I dumped the finished bucket into a large empty planter pot. Then, handful by handful, I put good stuff into another pot, things that need more time back into a worm bin, apricot pits that somehow made it in went to another pail (the worms can't eat them so they just take up space) and worms themselves got tossed back into the two worm bins.

Here's a nice fat worm:

And here is some good compost being sorted:

Now we're letting the second bin rest, while we continue to feed worms in the first once again. 

I'm very happy with how this experiment has been working out. I wish we had room for a larger worm bin, since especially on big canning days the worms can't handle all of our scraps. But it's certainly better than nothing, and these little guys divert the majority of our kitchen waste from the garbage, instead turning it into wonderful food for our veggie plants. And on a normal (non-canning) week, we really only need to take the kitchen garbage out if there's packaging from raw meat in there! I think this means that when either our complex gets green waste pickup, or we get a house with large compost capabilities, we will definitely be able to bring kitchen waste close to zero. Yay!

I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with worm bins -- any great advice or stories? Please share!

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Apartment Gallery Wall

My sister Laurel will be starting grad school next week. Since she is planning on staying in the same apartment for the next two years, we finally had the chance to do some fun decorating! (We couldn't do much when she was in the dorms, then she studied abroad, and then was only in her last apartment for 6 months -- not enough time to do much decor.) Last week I drove out to Sacramento to help her put together this gallery wall. I'll walk you through our process here.

The layout of the apartment naturally pushes the majority of furniture towards the wall on the left, which the complex painted an avocado green as an accent:

The wall opposite stretches into a somewhat awkward entry hallway, and also has the door to the balcony on it (as well as leading to the bedroom, bathroom, and linen closets, which you can't see here). With Laurel's furniture, the flow of the room worked the best with no furniture on it. The best way to take advantage of a completely clear wall? A floor to ceiling gallery!

 

We started by laying out the art she already had. She also wanted some shelves, since her small bookcase was already full and she hadn't even bought her books for this semester! After a shopping trip to Home Depot for shelves, as well as stops at Cost Plus and Target to get some more variety in frames, we figured out our composition on the floor. After many tries and lots of rearranging, we finally had something we liked.

The next step was to hang it all up! We started with the larger middle shelf and the painting directly above it. We then moved outwards, readjusting as needed when we got close to the ceiling, or to the thermostat and light switches which we had decided would act as boundaries for the collage.

Laurel's style when it comes to hanging pictures is very different than mine (or Sean's). Sean is an engineer, and very much needs things to line up; I tend to break lines more often but I still gravitate towards more orderly arrangements. Laurel likes things even more random than I do! With the collection of differently styled and sized frames, and so many different finishes throughout the room (yay for second hand furniture!) it really works. We were able to achieve a nice visual balance without any symmetry, and most importantly Laurel loves it!

Next up, Laurel and our mom are going to finish slipcovering her chair (you can see a little bit of it in the bottom of the picture above) and then more fun details for her living room! After looking at Pinterest together we've defined the look she wants for the apartment as "nautical with modern lines" -- basically beach inspired but modern and clean with a good dash of Restoration Hardware inspiration. It's going to be a lot of fun pulling the whole apartment together. Thanks for letting me help you decorate, Laurel!

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Recap: Summer 2013

It's the end of summer break. Sean is back at school tomorrow, and I start again on Monday. Although summer was a bit anticlimactic since he has a regular job and I had a fairly regular internship, it's still a bit sad to get "back to the grind" and a bit scary to think that soon we'll be dealing with proposing and doing our master's theses! But before real life takes over again I thought I'd take some time to reflect on how much fun we did have this summer despite "grown up" work schedules.

We volunteered with Village Harvest, picking oranges, apricots, apples and more. We made jams, preserves, applesauce; baked bread, turnovers, cake and cookies. As Sean's interest in where food comes from grew, so did his confidence in the kitchen. After years of having a hard time cooking together, we truly enjoyed cooking and baking together this summer!

Our balcony garden was fairly successful, giving us beautiful plants and a decent amount of food.

We spent time in beautiful Monterey...

...and celebrated our first anniversary under the gorgeous redwoods of Felton (in the Santa Cruz mountains).

We went on lots of hikes, and checked off a few state parks on our list. (On our honeymoon we made a goal of visiting each of California's state parks together while married. At our current rate, we'll finish around our 40th anniversary.)

We spent time with friends, hosting dinners and attending dinner parties. We went to a play, the aquarium, and our own local parks. We spent some great time with both families, everything from my sister's graduation in June to relaxing pool time with Sean's sisters.

It was a wonderful summer. Here's to an equally amazing fall!

Packed Lunches for Adults, Round 2

My first post on packing healthy lunches for adults was so popular, I'm back with Round 2! Below are some examples of how I pack healthy lunches for myself, working in an environment with no reliable access to a microwave. Here we go...

turkey wrap, sugar snap peas, crackers, yogurt with honey and fresh berries

 salad, carrot sticks and plain yogurt with honey

 roast beef on half of a homemade hamburger bun, carrot sticks, yogurt with honey and trail mix

 sandwich on homemade sourdough bread, carrot sticks and trail mix

 bean and corn salad, watermelon cubes, and homemade granola bar

 sandwich on homemade bread, homemade granola bar, watermelon cubes and cucumber sticks

 chicken sandwich, bell pepper strips, homemade applesauce and trail mix




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And Then We Made Applesauce...

We had another great harvest with Village Harvest last weekend. If you remember from my post about apricots, Village Harvest is a nonprofit that harvests food that would otherwise go to waste, and donates it to community food banks and shelters.

Sunday morning, a group of about a dozen volunteers picked Gravenstein apples at the Phleger Estate (part of the Golden Gate Parks system). According to our great liaison with the park system, these Gravenstein apple trees were planted in the 1930's. There were only six Gravenstein trees, but old trees are huge and produce lots of fruit. Five of us worked on the biggest tree for nearly the entire 3 hour picking time. And all told, 975 pounds of Gravenstein apples were donated to a local food bank. Wow!

 these buckets just hold the "volunteer fruit" rejects - we were so busy loading the good fruit into the van that we missed the chance to take a picture of what 975lbs looks like

The rest of the orchard is full of other apple varieties, most of which will ripen in the fall. I can't wait to go back to this beautiful park later this year.

Gravenstein apples are one of those varieties you never really see in stores. They bruise incredibly easily, so make shipping difficult. They also mature mid to late summer, rather than during the fall harvest. They are a good apple for baking and making applesauce.

Because of how easily the Gravensteins bruise, there were a lot of "volunteer fruit." That means anything that might still be useful, but is unsuitable to send to the food bank. We were sent home with 32 pounds of apples -- and just like those apricots from last month, they all had to be processed immediately. What better way to preserve imperfect apples than by making applesauce?

 32 pounds of apples

First we had to wash all these apples, many of which had fallen on the ground at the orchard (which is open to redwoods and home to deer and other wildlife). Best way to wash pound after pound of apple? Fill the sink with water and a little white vinegar, dump them in and start scrubbing!

It took the rest of the day for Sean and me to peel, chop, and process all of the apples into applesauce and spiced apple preserves. We ended up with 11 pints of applesauce, 12 half-pints of spiced apple preserves, and a few tiny cans of applesauce that are perfect for lunches. Not pictured below are some more tupperware containers full of applesauce that went straight into the fridge -- we actually ran out of empty canning jars on this one!

In addition to applesauce and preserves, Sean decided to make an apple pie. He used Martha Stewart's recipe, and it was delicious! He sure does spoil me with his new found baking obsession!

We were so eager to eat the pie that we forgot to take a picture of it after baking. Trust me, it was delicious!

What are your favorite ways to cook with apples? Please share any great ideas, as we head into the fall apple season!

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Easy Homemade Granola Bars

Homemade granola bars have become one of my favorite go-to real food snacks for on the go. (Huh, say that sentence five times fast) Made with all natural ingredients that I have accessible all the time, and endlessly adaptable, these bars taste great, are filling, and have both protein and fruit!

These bars are also incredibly easy to make, which makes them a perfect way to get kids involved in the kitchen. Let small kids stir the dry ingredients while you measure, and let bigger kids take more control over everything from measuring to altering the recipe to include their favorite dried fruit.

I found the original recipe in the January 2013 edition of Martha Stewart's Whole Living. Her recipe is here. But, in order to show you how endlessly adaptable this recipe is, here is how I made it this week:

Homemade Granola Bars

Ingredients:

1 cup crushed shredded wheat (you know, the dregs at the bottom of the cereal bag that no one wants to eat - this is how to use them up)
2 cups oatmeal
1/2 cup dates
1/2 cup mixed raisins and Craisins
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp Kosher salt
1/2 cup peanut butter (use your favorite nut butter)
1/4 cup honey (yes, less than the original)
1/2 cup apricot puree (any fruit puree will work)
3 Tbsp orange juice
4 Tbsp ground flaxseed meal
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Oil an 8x8 pan.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine cereal, oats, dates, dried fruit, cinnamon and salt. Mix to combine.
3. In another bowl, combine flaxseed meal and all wet ingredients. Mix well so that no large clumps of peanut butter remain.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry, and mix well. Add more fruit puree if needed to get a nice batter-like consistency throughout.
5. Press mixture into 8x8 pan and smooth out the top. Be sure to press it into the pan evenly so that the bars won't crumble after baking.
6. Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.
7. Let cool completely, then cut into squares. I do 9, if you have young kids you may like to cut them smaller. Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Have fun making Martha's version or mine, and then experiment with your own combinations! Let me know if you come up with some delicious new version, I love trying new combinations since I make a batch every couple weeks.

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Traveling with Real Food and Minimal Waste

Last weekend, Sean and I spent a few days at a cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains. It was a wonderful romantic getaway for our anniversary, with day trips out to Monterey for the aquarium and Santa Cruz for the Boardwalk, as well as time spent "in camp" hiking the state park and wading in the river.

 the river near our cabin



One of our goals for this getaway was to continue our efforts of eating a real food diet, as well as drastically reducing our waste. I recently borrowed Zero Waste Home from a friend, and we've been more inspired than ever to eliminate our waste. We certainly weren't perfect at achieving either zero waste or only real food, but here is what we did and what we learned for next time:


Friday dinner: BBQ at the cabin. Chicken sausages (some packaging), grilled veggie packets (aluminum foil was recycled, need to buy a grill basket to avoid the use of foil in the future), and sourdough flatbreads. I portioned out the dry ingredients for the flatbreads ahead of time, so all we had to do was mix the amount of sourdough starter in with the dry, a little water and olive oil, and then let them rise and grill!

 balls of flatbread about to rise

While spending time outside the cabin grilling, we got to know our "camping neighbors." It was interesting to me hearing the men compare their dinners. The conversation was something like this,
"What are you grilling?"
"Ribs, you?"
"Tri-tip. What about you Sean?"
"Oh, we've got chicken sausages, veggie packets and some homemade sourdough flatbreads."
That's my gourmet grill chef!

Breakfasts: honeydew melon, hard boiled eggs, homemade sourdough toast with homemade kumquat marmalade (melon rinds and egg shells would be compostable if the facility had green waste bins, but sadly they did not)

Lunches: we packed our lunch each day using leftover sausages from the first dinner either sliced onto some sourdough bread or rolled into leftover flatbread. Carrots, oranges and homemade granola bars were brought from home and packed into reusable bags

For dinner on Saturday and Sunday we ate out. We were careful about portion size so that we didn't need to bring any leftovers home with us.

This was our first trip while being actively conscious about eating a real food diet, so it took a bit more upfront planning than we were used to. There were a number of things we brought from home that previously would have just been purchased at the market near the cabin, like eggs and bread. By bringing from home, we could control the ingredients (no additives in the bread) and feel confident in the source (we buy our eggs direct from a farmer at the farmers market). It also reduces waste since there was no double wrapped bread packaging or disposable egg carton (ours get returned to the farmer each week).

We did buy milk there, and unfortunately the only options in the correct portion were non-recyclable containers. I'm hoping we start seeing more recyclable or reusable options in milk packaging across all sizes.

We're already working on ideas for our next trip to help us eat clean and reduce our waste at the same time, even when away from home.

If you have any tips for eating real food while traveling, or reducing waste on the road, please share in the comments! I'd love to hear more ideas.

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