The most recent issue of Rural Missouri carried a short article on composting. I never seem to get around to building a compost pile, but i compost all the time on the fly. I compost straight into the garden or pasture. The less materials have to be handle the better in my book. BUT, on a small scale with limited space for growing plus needing a place to ditch those apple cores and coffee grounds, backyard or porch composting is awesome!
Lots of ship to home meal kits out there on the market. Anyone using these services? What do you think? i’m thinking of ordering one just to try for fun and see what they are like.
Here’s a link to a comparison article from Money, but there are several comparison checks on the internet using different companies and services.
There is little doubt this situation is just as bad in the US and around the world. Yet the big food companies (not food producers) tell us we’ll all starve if we don’t buy their products to produce more food. It’s a pack of lies. We waste far too much food. What we have is a distribution problem and in the first world countries we have so much food that we are incredibly picky.
Food waste is a subject i feel is important – as a cattle rancher and mom, i hear a lot of people complain (in the US) about the high cost of food, yet most producers (meats, eggs, chicken, vegetables, fruit) barely scrape out a living. The facts are that the cost of production continues to skyrocket, yet, by and large, the producer’s income has remained stagnant while the consumer’s cost has risen only a little. The margins are very thin and oftentimes only the much aligned farm subsidies provided by the govt are the difference between going another year and losing the farm. We could utilise our resources much more efficiently and produce a great deal more foodstuffs. But there is no reason to do so. Food is so cheap, we would simply lose money.
That huge pile of parsnips that Mr Fearnly-Whittingstall is standing in front of could consumed by cattle or sheep or just returned to the soil to be ploughed back in, but will it? For sure, the food you throw into your bin at home will go only to the landfill.
Interesting article – Neat how survival/frugal living/done-for-centuries lifestyles are now becoming ‘haute‘! Doesn’t everyone already do this?! Well, maybe not the fancy recipes, but food should never be wasted. Egg shells and coffee grounds make awesome soil amendments. Whatever parts of plants you simply cannot stomach can be turned into compost or fed to the chooks. Or feed all those scraps to worms which you can use to go fishing. But don’t ever let food go to waste!
“All the comments to the article are spot on and i can add nothing to them. I thought most people already knew this stuff, but apparently not if the article is accurate in stating the 40% of our food produced goes to waste. Then again, I have personally seen family members throw out a bowl of perfectly good fruit simply because one item had a soft spot on it! I had to choke back my admonition!”
Tia’s Terrific Tummy Satisfying Pancakes and Organic Oat bran pancakes for supper (tea) tonight at Refuge Ministries in Mexico, Missouri.
Probably everyone already uses this little trick, but i just today thought of it: use the boiled egg slicer to slice the strawberries. Wow, fast and easy!
Toppings for the pancakes
Maple syrup
coconut flakes
dairy whipped cream
pecans
blueberries
strawberries
powdered sugar
Harvest jam
Pumpkin butter
butter
corn syrup
Cheers!
tauna
PS
Yes, there will still be cucumbers
Tia’s Terrific Tummy Satisfying Pancakes
4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons baking powder
4 eggs
2 tablespoons vanilla
3-4 cups milk (it’s up to you for desired thickness)
Combine dry ingredients, then add liquid ingredients stirring just until moistened. Pour onto hot griddle turning when bubbles form on top and bottom is light brown. Cook just until done. Don’t overcook. I like them somewhat raw. Top with butter and syrup, jam, applesauce, or fruit. This recipe makes about 30 six-inch pancakes. Yum!
Find pomegranates in the fresh fruit section of your local grocery store now! But hurry–the season is nearly over! Pomegranates I purchase at Twin Oaks Produce, located just west of Brookfield, Missouri, for only $1.89 each, are sweet and juicy!
Granted – they are not local to north Missouri, but they are very tasty and certainly good for you. Check out this handy fruit chart to compare nutritional values of popular raw fruits:
Even a cursory search on the internet will produce oodles of sites touting the health benefits of eating pomegranates. Here’s one I found: Powerful Health Benefits of the Pomegranate. There are instructions for removing the arils on this page, but all i do is cut the fruit in half, parallel to the crown, then cut in half again. Bend skin backwards to make aril (seed) removal easier. It just takes time – no hurry – it’s definitely worth the effort.
It seems most of the commercially available pomegranates are grown in California. Pomegranate trees can be grown in less favorable climes, but with limited success or smaller fruits. Pomegranates are picked ripe, so no need to wait for it to ripen. As far as I can determine, pomegranates are still non-GMO, but correct me quickly if I’m wrong!
One of my favorite smoothies is a combination of about 1 cup pomegranate arils, 2 cups baby spinach, and up to 1 cup coconut water (enough to get the smoothie to blend easily). Delicious and healthy.
Our trip to Israel in the fall of 2011 (for Sukkot) would not have been complete without a wine tasting and visitor tour to Rimon Winery.
Rimon (pomegranate) orchard is located on the mountain next to Moshav Kerem Ben Zimra, amidst grape vineyards and other fruit plantations. The winery has visitor center that attract thousands of tourists annually from Israel and abroad.Rimon Winery – Creator of award winning wines and many other products – located in Upper Galilee, Dalton, Israel
“All the comments to the article are spot on and i can add nothing to them. I thought most people already knew this stuff, but apparently not if the article is accurate in stating the 40% of our food produced goes to waste. Then again, I have personally seen family members throw out a bowl of perfectly good fruit simply because one item had a soft spot on it! I had to choke back my admonition!”