A diary of a consumeristic family and their journey to becoming skinny hippies by learning, stumbling and practicing simpler, greener, more organic ways of living.
I think this will be an every Saturday thing where we give a shout out to the organic vendors at our local farmers market. Since we have people from all over the US and some other countries around the world visiting our blog, please feel free to give a shout out to your favorite Farmers Market Vendor in the comment section. Don't forget to include links to them.
Farmers Market Shout-out for May 28th 2011
We are giving a Skinny Hippie shout-out toGrassfields Cheese (<----Link--) because they sell organic beef, pork, chicken, eggs, and of course cheese. We buy our beef from them and it taste great! If you want meat from them and plan on picking it up at the market you must pre-order from them ahead of time. Look for their sign and straw hats. They are always smiling and fun to talk to. Make sure you tell them that you heard about them on our blog. They have no idea who we are but I would like them to.
10pm on Friday night and I am sitting here like a kid on Christmas Eve filled with anticipation for the farmers market tomorrow. Never in my life did I think that the highlight of my weekend would be picking up organic fruits and veggies. But I do love it. I love going to the market and talking with like minded people. I love watching my plants grow, making compost and reading up on the some cool organic growing methods. I love working the dirt. I may be a nerd but I love it.
Here is a little tour of our garden. We planted about a month ago and things are starting to come up. Enjoy.
I know I mentioned in a previous post that my kids are in danger of turning in to chicken nuggets. They love their nuggets, and this momma loves heating them up if we're having a busy day. I threw them away with my pantry makeover (after looking at the label and wondering if they were really that bad. They are) And I had been wondering what to make for lunches for the kids that don't have pesticides or lots of preservatives, and are easy for me or the babysitter to make. Matt mentioned in an earlier post about a fantastic chicken place that was at our farmer's market, Ottos' Chicken, and they sell all natural, free range chicken with no growth hormones or other nasty stuff. Tonight after work I made homemade nuggets out of the breasts and I was amazed by the difference. I made the nuggets last week from chicken I got in a big frozen bag from Meijer, and just the texture alone was different. The frozen ones were rubbery and had a lot of "yucky stuff" that I would slice off or wonder what exactly it was. These fresh ones had no bad stuff, they were seriously appetizing to look at and they cut so nice! I didn't have to saw at them with my knife. I made enough nuggets to freeze in 3 bags for 3 lunches this week, so I'm pretty excited about that. I had to sample one to make sure they were okay, and they are the most delicious nugget I have ever had! Seriously. And really I made enough for 4 lunches but they were so good that I had a few and Matt had a few. If you're wondering what the recipe is I'll put it at the bottom of the post.
I've also been wondering what to make for us for dinner, and ended up beating my head against a wall. Figuratively of course. I discussed my concerns with Matt and we came up with a great solution. When I grocery shop I spend all the $120 for the week and we usually have food that sits in the pantry for a long time...which is bad for several obvious reasons. I didn't think it would be possible to eat organically or naturally on our budget, and I was getting super frustrated. Here's what we came up with: the kids really aren't picky on what they eat, so for their main lunch course they will have homemade mac-n-cheese (I'll put that recipe on the bottom too if anyone cares, it's also super tasty!), a peanut butter sandwich using organic jelly (eventually my own homemade), organic bread and Natural Jiff (for the record I had one today for lunch and it was so good), chicken nuggets or a grilled cheese sandwich with organic bread and natural cheese. Not too shabby and if I'm only buying quantities for 7 lunches it's not too expensive. For breakfast they either have scrambled eggs, Stonyfield Farms organic yogurt (I got the blueberry in the big tub, it's SO good) with homemade granola (or Good Life Granola which is made in Holland and delicious), or oatmeal (I make it in the crock-pot and it's super tasty) Again, minimal costs. For dinners we found the grass-fed beef and chicken at the Holland Farmer's Market, and Meijer carries an organic line of food and lately when you buy 3 or more organic items you get a coupon for $3 off your next Meijer organic purchase. Pretty sweet. To fill in the sides and snacks we'll have fruits and veggies and potatoes that are grown in our backyard, or bought organically until we have some to pick. I also have added the graham crackers in to our weekly rotation and plan to experiment with more snacks too. Since apples are sprayed with like 23 different kinds of pesticides I will no longer be buying regular apple juice but will buy the Meijer Organic one, pour it in my pitcher, add water and make it last longer. So far so good! It might seem like eating healthy is impossible or way too expensive, but the reality is that it just takes careful planning and the end result is food that you can eat and feed your children and you won't feel guilty about it. Now on to the recipes:
Homemade Chicken Nuggets
I got 1 pound of frozen chicken breasts from Otto's Chicken (it translated to 2 breasts)
-Cut the chicken into nuggets (or tenders) however big or small you want them.
-In one bowl beat an egg with a little milk (by beat I mean stir really fast with a spoon so it's a nice liquid)
-In another bowl mix bread crumbs, a little garlic salt, a little Italian seasoning and a little Parmesan cheese. I don't know the exact measurements, but like I said, you can't go wrong. I have a lot of bread crumbs and just pinches and dashes of the other stuff :-)
-Dip the chicken in the egg/milk mix and then coat it in the bread crumbs and place on a cookie sheet. I sprayed mine with Pam because they stuck the last time I made them.
-Bake them at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes flip them over and bake another 7 minutes.
Crock-Pot Oatmeal
I throw this in our crock-pot before bed and we wake up to delicious oatmeal! Perfect for mornings when Matt and I have to work, we just scoop it in to our little containers and there's still enough for the babysitter to feed the kids. I personally like brown sugar but you can play around with fruit and such.
-1 cup of oats, I used Meijer Naturals
-4 cups of water
-pinch of salt
-1/4 cup of brown sugar
Heat on LOW overnight, and in the morning stir in some milk if you need to and add more brown sugar if you want and enjoy! I bought a smaller crock-pot for the oatmeal because I hate cleaning our big one and I was afraid it would all stick to the sides. They sell great little ones at Van Wieren Hardware on the north side for $18.
Mac and Cheese
-14 ounces of chicken broth
-1 1/2 cups of elbow macaroni (I used organic ones)
-3/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
-2 Tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese
Put the chicken broth in a pan over medium high heat. When the broth begins to boil, stir in the macaroni. Bring it back to a boil and cook for 10 minutes (or until the macaroni is tender). Remove the pan from the stove but DON'T drain it. Stir in the cheddar cheese and sprinkle the Parmesan over top just before serving (you can skip this step if you want).
So why should you go to a local farmers market over the supermarket? Think about this: I bought 3 hour old asparagus that was organically grown , that means no gmo's (genetically modified organisms), no pesticides, and no chemical fertilizer. When you buy asparagus (or any produce from the store) it is around a week old and could have come from across the country, even across the ocean! Store bought produce is most likely a product of a gmo (don't want gmo's and have an iPhone? there is an app for that! Get it here.) and has been sprayed with nasty pesticides and grown using chemical fertilizer (unless labeled as certified organic from the USDA). I can talk to the person that grew my food, while many of the BIG produce companies are owned by a rich greedy person that you will never ever talk to. There are many other reasons you should go to the farmers market, like supporting local business, better tasting food, better on the environment, great selection, and still other reasons.
There is also cheese, flowers, honey, natural maple syrup, granola, bread, furniture, lawn and garden supplies, arts and crafts, and many other items.
Not Every Vendor Is Created Equal
Farmers market does not mean organic. At our market we have 4 or 5 organic vendors. These are the only vendors we will buy our produce or meat from. The fact that the other vendors are not organic does not mean they are "bad". They are still local, they most likely do not practice "factory farming" all and all their produce is healthier and taste better then the store bought produce. But if you want your produce and plants to be free of gmo's, pesticides, and chemical fertilizer be sure to look for organic vendors.
I'll leave you with some pics from our first trip to the farmers market. Thanks for reading and God bless!
Grass Killer that is. I found a nifty little tip on killing grass organically. Vinegar. Last night at about 9pm, while the grass was still wet from the rain we had earlier in the day, I sprayed the new area for our 2nd garden with vinegar. By noon today all the grass was dead! ~see pic below~ The vinegar was more effective than Round-up and way cheaper (gallon of vinegar $2.50, gallon of Round-up $15.00), plus it is natural and safe. Very pumped about that!
Speaking of killers, I have been diet coke free for a week tomorrow! I have been drinking mostly water but also an all natural lemon-aid that Keely makes thanks to her cousin Salli. It is very good! Also, we have freed our home of all high fructose corn syrup! I have been eating veggies and all things organic. I have to say that it was a lot easier than I expected. I am baby-stepping with the veggies but making progress. I can't see myself going back to my old way of eating. It may be mental but I already feel better, lighter.
Again speaking of killing, there is a rabbit that has decided to wage war with me! Last Friday I came home from lunch and walked my garden, everything looked fine. Later that day while mowing the lawn I noticed that all the heads of my broccoli plants were gone. All of them! So I went out and bought more fencing and made my garden a fortress. I also tried to convince my wife to let me buy a $200.00 air rifle with a silencer but she was not having that. I know that organic means to have an environment where creatures will share the space with my garden and eat my food, but come on, ALL my broccoli? That is just selfish! The old street me is taking the rabbits actions as a sign of disrespect and I am fully prepared to start a turf war with Buggs. Stay tuned.
Well that is all for now. I guess the take aways are use vinegar to kill your grass and weeds and never trust a rabbit.
~Matt
12 hours before this picture it was all nice green grass. Thanks to vinegar it is dead!
The saying "blissfully unaware" is very true. I say that, because right now I would like nothing more than to drink an ice cold Diet Coke while eating a nice slab of High Fructose Corn Syrup. I say that because while checking the labels of some of the snacks and bread we consume on a daily basis, HFCS is top on the list, and in some cases it's the 2nd ingredient. I think we learned in health class that ingredients are listed in order of the quantities, so things listed first have the most....so with that coming in 2nd place it can't be a good thing to eat.
So anyway, I went to the grocery store last night and it took me almost 2 hours. Seriously. I was reading labels, looking for stuff I've never purchased before, and I'm happy to say that I planned to go over our grocery budget this week because I had to stock up on some stuff (and I have no clue what I'm doing), but I didn't do too bad. I'm not entirely sure how it's going to go this week or what we'll eat, but we shall see. Meijer has an organic and a natural line, and they were both on sale plus you got a coupon for $3 off your next shopping trip so that was pretty cool. I went home and boxed up the stuff in the pantry to bring to our church food pantry, and since I don't like throwing things away we've been slowly depleting our stash this week. Today? Today we went all natural....which is not to be confused with au naturel mind you. It takes a lot more thought and prep, but I think we'll get in a routine and it will become the new normal. I made some pretzels and some graham crackers and the kids loved both of them! I forgot to buy the big pretzel salt so they're not salted, but Matt loved them anyway. We had egg salad for lunch with fruit kabobs, and neither child has had any juice today. I bought a bottle of organic apple juice but said we have to treat it like gold so we're drinking water. The kids usually drink a couple glasses of juice a day so it will just take some getting used to! My daughter loves water but my son? Not so much. I was reading the top 10 list of fruits that have the most pesticides and apples is on that list so I figure if the USDA recommends buying organic apples, I should probably give my kids organic apple juice so they're not drinking pesticides. You can see the list yourself at the side, it's called the Shoppers Guide to Pesticides. This is getting a bit out of control, but like I said, I'm hoping it will become the new normal.
I made these graham crackers and they turned out great! Much better than the picture, trust me.
It said to roll these pretzels into the shape of pretzels and I think that while I get an A for effort, I most certainly get a C or D for presentation. Oh well. Next time I might get creative and make them the shape of something else!
And one more tip for you that I found. I usually wash our fruits and veggies in just water, sometimes I use soap when I'm washing apples but just a good soaking it usually all I did. I found a great natural way to clean them and get rid of a lot of the surface pesticides:
Natural Fruit and Veggie Wash
1 cup of water
Cut a lemon and squeeze out enough for 1 Tablespoon
2 Tablespoons of vinegar
Mix in a spray bottle and spritz away! Plus it smells pretty good.
For everyone that knows me I can only imagine that they are laughing out load and thinking to themselves "whatever!". I have the worst eating habits. Still do. My brother makes jokes about how when we were kids mom would feed me Hostess for dinner while everyone else at "real" food. Get ready for this... I have never once had green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, and the list goes on and on. I have only had a tomato 2 maybe 3 times that I can recall and carrots a handful of times. My whole life I have just eaten what I wanted. I never thought about what I was putting in my body. I just didn't. My thought was if it were bad for me the government would not allow it to be on the market. I'm not fat. I have a slender build and a little pot belly but nothing serious. I thought it healthy eating came down to quantity not quality. As long as I did not eat 24/7 and stayed somewhat active I would be fine, right?
Reconciliation
I'm a fighter. When I was younger I was a street fighter. As I got older I started fighting injustices, poverty, and unfair systems. I hate (strong word, but it is true) when something causes a unjust, disadvantage for others. I hate when I or others are lied too. And my wife and I have decided to try to live our lives and give our time to making wrongs right. It is the work of Reconciliation. Reconciliation is defined as; restore friendly relationships between or cause to coexist in harmony.
- Stay with me this will get back to growing food - I explain all this because I am trying to speak to my friends, family, and others that are like me and dismiss the voice of the few yelling out "SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE!' I would dismiss people talking about the importance of organic food and simple systems of living as, well, hippies. "Hippies" for me growing up was a bad label for someone to have. My dad would always say "those damn hippies". It stood for people complaining about something just for the sake of living "earthy". To me they just hatted technology and advancement. But if you know me, if you are like me and say I don't care, need to think about, or believe this whole sustainable living, organic, natural, whatever you want to call it way of living, you need to stop and please listen. The way our food is made, governed and marketed is unjust and harmful. It is not just harmful to you and your family, but to your neighbor, to other countries and to the world. There is real danger here and just going with the flow and letting others govern your life and controlling your knowledge on the topic of food will not make it go away. You will pay in this life time for looking the other way. It is not down the road 3 generations from now, the time has come.
If your faith calls you to care about the poor, over looked and weak in the world, then you should care about food and food systems. If you just care about others because of your morals, you should care about food and food systems. If you hate being used and lied to, you should care about food and food systems.
For me, my Christian faith calls me to the process of reconciliation. Restoring relationships. Putting things in harmony. That is what my garden and my families transition to a sustainable way of life is about. It's not an ideal or a trend. It's about making things right, being a voice for the voiceless, and when I as I learn along the way I am called to teach others. It's just the right thing to do.
Going Beyond Gardening
In the short time my garden has been so much more then just planting food. I mentioned before that the garden in my backyard is a community garden. It is my garden and TJ's garden, and Sam's garden, and Ross and Monica's garden. Any food left will go to all of our neighbors in our community, so it is their garden as well. Every Tuesday I get to work with my neighbors in the garden. We laugh and talk while we get dirty together. My garden is growing community.
For me personally it has helped with my stress level. For all that know me, they know I am always stressed and take everything seriously. I have a hard time unwinding. Working the ground has helped with this. I feel good doing the right thing.
As a community developer I can see how smart gardening can help support my under-resourced community. It can provide ways for families making a low-income to feed their children good food while saving money. The process can be duplicated and connected by neighbors on every street providing the means so no family would have to go hungry. Every child could have a lunch for school and families could lesson their dependency on government programs. Community gardens provide education opportunities for children outside of the school. The list will go on and on.
When we are in right relationship with how we grow food we are at the core of our being. I know that sounds "hippie", but it is true. Every religion I can think of teaches that humans are responsible for taking care of the earth and the plants in it. So if you think growing food is not something that you should be doing or supporting, you would be denying the core of how you were created. When you are right with your food and how it is made there is a inner peace that builds inside you.
Impact
Besides the current food systems impact on your life and besides the impact growing your own food would have on your family, community and your cycle of influence, impacts are felt worldwide. Currently, there are a few companies in America that control how we grow, market, and regulate food here. The have created a system that makes them very rich and others unhealthy here in America. These companies have paid politicians to ensure policy favors them and them making money. The politicians are making money without caring for other Americans. But our system is affecting the most poor in the world. Our policies here have wiped our food industries in third world countries causing them to depend of food from America, which makes the food companies even more money. By ignoring what is going on we harm the most weak in the world. It is partially the consumers fault because we are lazy and prefer to have others think for us. We have better things to do like play with our iPhones and plan vacations. Or is that just me. I know I am the guilty one.
Are You Still Here?
I don't know if anyone reading this will get this far, but if you did I want to thank you. I also want to leave you with ways to further educate yourself on food and food systems. The goal of this blog is to pass on what we learn as we go forward. Here are websites to some movies about food and food systems. Watch them. You will learn and may even become motivated to start a change. These movies did that for us. I am glad I my eyes are open and I am trying to learn. We don't know how this will play out in our lives but we do know something will change.
If I was to be generous with myself I would say I'm a mediocre cook. Baking? That's another story, I love to bake and could survive on baked goods alone if there weren't four other people in my family who might disagree. There are so many times I go to the grocery store, come home and still have no clue what to make for dinner! So much to everyone's delight we eat pasta. Again. I'm ashamed to admit I don't read labels and if you are what you eat my kids would surely be chicken nuggets. I'm getting better at finding recipes and trying new ones, as long as they don't have too many ingredients and aren't more than 2 or 3 steps.
When we decided to start this journey I thought yep, we're going to be super skinny hippies if all we eat are fruits and veggies! I surely can't stomach a carrot for breakfast, not even if it was fried in pancake batter and dipped in syrup. It's obvious to me now that organic and healthy eating doesn't just apply to what's growing in my backyard. A simple Facebook message to my cousin, Salli, resulted in a fantastic website full of recipes (I've linked it on the side, it's King Arthur's Flour). I did a little googling and found some really cool ideas for budget-friendly, healthy eating. I've started paying attention to the labels in the house right now and it's shocking what's in there! I figure if I can't pronounce or spell it, I really don't want my beautiful children eating it. So this weekend I am going to purge my cupboards and pantry and start experimenting and try to think outside the box for our meals and snacks. Some things I can recreate organically, like pop tarts and chicken nuggets, but some things we're just going to have to suck it up as a family and eat something else. This is all on a budget of course, my husband and I both work for non-profits so we have to watch what we spend. Since we're blogging friends and sharing I can tell you that we have a weekly budget for groceries of $120, so I will share any tips and finds with you. I do most of our shopping at Aldis and get what I can't find at WalMart. Part of our goal with this blog is to share information so I'm going to leave you with a couple recipes I got from other people to try if you're interested. I'm drinking a glass of the juice now and it's fantastic, and I fully intend to try the veggies...and make Matt eat them. Now, if anyone knows a way to get organic Diet Coke, I'm all ears.....
-Keely
Lemonade, courtesy of my cousin Salli
2 quarts water
1 cup lemon juice
1 cup sugar
Garlic Roasted Veggies, courtesy of Matt's friend Angela
Any fresh, raw green vegetable
Lots of fresh chopped garlic
A little Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
Toss this together and spread on a baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes (or until veggies have black on the tips)
Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and enjoy! You can also add pine nuts or freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
One would think that when one is planning to go organic one would not spray harsh chemicals where one plans on planting ones food... but then again I would not be where I am today when it comes to food habits if I took time to think in the first place.
MISTAKE #1 - Using Round-Up to kill grass.
When Keely and I decided to build a garden we decided to go big. There was an old flower garden in our background that the previous owner took care of and loved for probably 30 years...I took a lawnmower to it last summer. The flower garden was not big enough for what we thought our needs were so we planned to expand it by killing the grass next to it, doubling the size. I did what any blind consumer would do and headed to my local Lowes and bought a mega size bottle of Round-Up and started to spray away. Two days later the grass was dead and I started to till away.
MISTAKE #2 - Using commercial fertilizer and weedkiller on the lawn.
As soon as the semi-warm Spring weather peaked it's head out I went to my local big box home improvement store and picked up a big bag of Scott's Fertilizer with crabgrass killer and threw the hypnotizing yellow pellets all over my yard. For a blind consumer it might be hard to see what the big deal is. But when you plan on using your grass clippings for food in the form of compost and as weed suppressant in the garden it means you are feeding your composter toxins which will then cause you to feed your plants toxic compost. Not mention that America's obsession (mine included) with obtaining the perfect lawn is a major player in polluting our streams and waters.
So these are my two big hand to the forehead mistakes that I have made right off the bat. But we are learning and I hope you can also learn from my mistakes. If anyone can add to practical ways people can care for their lawn without pouring toxins on it please share.
I thought I would leave you with a little story line of pictures and the birth of our first garden.
Enjoy,
~Matt
The old flower garden
My poisoned grass, soon to be our new extension, but first my son has to show me how to work the tiller.
You can see by this picture how much we extended the garden.
Here it is all cleared.
This is a community garden in our back yard, and here is the community! This was planting day.
Hello! My name is Matt {this is where everyone says "hi Matt}. I am a hardcore consumer. I am 33 and up until this point in my life everything I eat comes from a package and then into the microwave, a fast food chain, or who knows where. I have lived on high fructose corn syrup my whole life and was totally fine with it. On a average day I drink 4-5 cans of Diet Coke and would drink more if my income allowed. When I was younger this diet suited me just fine, but now that I am older I find that I am tired all the time and napping more than my children. My wife Keely on the other hand is not as bad as me. She eats semi-alright food including fruits and vegetables, something I never eat. But like me she too is addicted to Diet Coke. This is a joint blog so you will hear from Keely often. We have three children ages 3, 2, and newborn. Yes we are busy.
So Why Skinny Hippie Diary?
A few months back Keely and I watched a video on Netflix called Food Inc. What we saw shocked and disgusted us. If you have not seen this movie, you need to. We did not like what we saw and did not like the idea that we were feeding toxins to our children. Then we watched a movie called Food Matters. A bit less shocking but very practical ways to live wiser and healthier. These two movies combined by a number of friends, family, and church members that in the recent years and months that have been diagnosed with cancer moved us to make a change. We felt moved to find a simpler way of living and eat more like God intended us to. For us the first step was to try to grow our own food and grow it using organic methods. When we made this decision to try to live our lives differently I jokingly said we are going to turn into "skinny hippies". The funny thing is the joke became our goal. This blog is a diary of our life as we move from blind consumer to becoming skinny hippies.
Birthing Pains
When it comes to gardening, recycling, living simple and "being green" we are babies. And like babies learning to walk we are going to fall down, bump our heads and stumble our way through this change. This is the #1 reason for the blog. We started our journey by hitting the web looking for info and how to's. It is a bit overwhelming. Take composting for example, we knew it was good to do but do a google search and you'll find a million different ways and opinions on how to compost. So we felt we could help other consumers that are looking to make a change by documenting what we are trying, what works and what doesn't work, and showing all of our mistakes along the way so others don't feel so dumb. For consumers like us, you can feel like an alien when trying to make the change. We are already having friends and family make jokes at our expense. This blog is for others to come to and say "thank God I'm not the only one who did that". Now being that we are babies you might not want to try what we are doing but we intend to post links to other sites that do it right and explain it in ways that makes sense to us.
Community
I'm a Community Developer by trade and my wife and I moved into a "under-resourced" community intentionally to experience community with others that might not have as many options that many of us do. We intentionally engage others in our community, building relationships with the intent that we can learn from others and share with others. That is also what Skinny Hippie Diary is for. We want you to view this as your community, respond to our posts, make comments and suggestions, and share your findings with others. When we do "life" together we can accomplish so much more. So please do not make this blog one-sided by just reading what we have to say. Speak up! We need to hear from you.
So we hope you enjoy, laugh, relate and learn from our mistakes as we move from consumers to skinny hippies :)
