Chicken and Egg

My mother-in-law gave me this for my birthday and I am SO excited!

10 Tips to Eating Sustainably

My brother in law sent me a copy of Natural Awakenings this spring. It's a free booklet he gets monthly in Connecticut. This list is from it's March 2011 edition. There's a lot of "top ten" lists out there, but I have had this little scrap of paper saved for a while, so without further ado....

10 Tips to Eat Sustainably, Healthy, and Smart
1. Buy certified organic and local when possible.

2. Always choose certified organic when shopping for the "dirty dozen":
peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, pears, grapes, spinach, lettuce and potatoes

3. When buying local, but not organic, ask the farmer, "Why not organic?" He or she may be doing something close.

4. When joining a CSA, ask the farmer if he or she ever adds non-local food to the basket. If so, ask where it comes from and how it is produced.

5. At a farmer's market, ask the management how they choose their vendors. Must they be local or certified organic? How are they screened?
* this totally does not apply at my, or similar, rural farmers markets *

6. If buying "natural", learn how the producer defines it. The government has a very vague definition of what "natural" means.

7. Eat less meat. This lowers your resource consumption significantly.

8. Plant something edible - anything from a garden to a window box.

9. Learn about good sources of healthy foods available each season.

10. Take a cooking class. Eating prepared and processed foods is not sustainable and poor for your health!

And now... I just stumbled upon a lovely blog - Lemonbasil - that I shall now follow - but here's a lovely post about How to Eat Sustainably On a Budget!

Our Largest Radish Ever

This is apparently called a Spanish Radish. I am struggling to know what to do with it. There are several more where this came from, but I didn't have the bravery to look too closely this morning.





















Help me Rhonda!

Subsidize Vegetables! Tax Soda!

Ah! I recently used food subsidies as a project for a decision making and problem solving class I took! We could have totally written this article!
No we couldn't have. We are not New York Times writers.
Anyway, I was enthralled to say this least to see this on my NPR news feed!

Please go read this informative article by Mark Bittman. Link is below, but hiding. Sorry.

Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables

Fill my plate...

Half full of fruits and vegetables!!!!













I am entirely too excited about the new USDA food icon for balanced eating!
What a better reason and opportunity to buy more of the local fruits and vegetables that are increasingly available at this time of year.

I wish Gillespie Farm was still producing strawberries. Shamefully, I ate every last quart I bought and didn't make any jam. I not only didn't freeze any fresh strawberries either, but also used the remainder of last years stock to make sorbet during our heat wave, which has made our usual bumper crop of red raspberries and blackberries tiny and water deprived. Sigh.

I must return to our latest sorbet churning on the counter - peach cherry. Yum.
Thank you Bangor Daily News for this great blog picture and your article.

Eat Maine Foods!

With great improvements on their map and website navigation, this website is only getting more helpful for those of us who are seeking local farms from which we can buy our food. I am adding them to my Twitter feed as well.

Saturday Sandwich

I bet you can guess what we did to escape the heat this afternoon!?

PLANET BOX!!!!

OMG! Check these out! I am so flippin' excited to have found them! Now I just need to find a couple hundred bucks so I can buy one for each of the kids before school starts!

Planet Box Lunchboxes!

Old Farm Letter Head

Favorite things

We fit together like puzzle pieces.

What caterpillar is this?

This caterpillar was found on the trunk of a dying Ash tree that SP cut down.


















For all intents and purposes, we were pretty sure by appearance not to touch it. Those hairy caterpillars can leave some nasty rashes. I have a video of it but I am not sure they will upload.



















The funny thing about it though, is that when we used the stick to move it back onto the wedge we noticed the red underbelly that was edged in some flecks of almost chartreuse green.


We took these picture on a piece of the ash wedges Shane cut out, because it was SO unbelievably camouflaged on the tree trunk. See!


















I'm still asking, what they heck will this guy turn into?

Sunday Sandwich

Finally, a picture again! This one to commemorate tomorrows important event.
No not the 4th of July. It is the 5th birthday of Baby! How time flies!