Cooking with Fresh Ingredients

I hear that most of our food travels an average of 1500 miles to get to your plate.  Tonight, the spinach in the lasagna roll-ups and the lettuce in our salad traveled about 40 steps.  I know exactly what chemicals were used to treat this food: NONE.  It is pretty gratifying to see food you grew in your backyard on the table for dinner, so I thought I would share this with everyone.  
Amber says she really likes the improved flavor of the spinach as compared to store-bought!
Oh, and I’m celebrating the fact that I have a wonderful wife that can make such a delicious meal, and all I had to do was unload the dishwasher to get to enjoy it.

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Garden Update: April 18, 2010

It’s been cold and drizzle all day, but I went ahead and built a new structure to hang more topsy turvys.  I have 4 now, and room for 3 more.  If the tomato plants do well this year, I might buy a few more for next year and save space in my raised beds.  A few near-miss slips, but no accidents, and now all of my tomato seedlings have been planted.  I’ll have to plumb up the drip system water to these new upside down planters in the next few days.

Sugar Snap Peas

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Bunny Rabbit

Comet was acting strange this morning, hanging out by our bedroom window, which he never does. I opened up the blinds and saw a big fat rabbit digging around in the straw and mulch under the fig tree. The rabbit worked on this project for about an hour, and Comet was watching the whole time. A few hours later the area looks like normal, the rabbit covered everything up just like it was. I think we might have some new babies soon.

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Joel Salatin – Polyface Farms

Amber and I had a date night tonight.  We went to “An Evening with Joel Salatin” at the Plano Arts Center.  All the food was provided by local sources, and was prepared by some very talented chefs.  We had a good time and got to sample lots of great food.  The highlight for me was getting my picture taken with Joel.  I really appreciate what he is doing with his business, Polyface Farms.  Not only is he running a profitable, sustainable, responsible farm, he is also a great inspiration and is making a positive impact.  Check out some of the videos of his farm.

Here is a video Carol took of Joel speaking:
Continue reading

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Lone Star Tea Party

Last night I met about 6 other folks from Allen and we drove down to the AirHogs ball park.  I say drive, but my neighbor Rodney pampered us in a 45′ conversion coach.  We had everything we needed to live like rock stars for the evening!  There were some really great speakers, including Thomas Paine (Bob Basso), AlfonZo Rachel, 4 of the local talk show hosts guys, and several others.  The speakers were good to hear from, but being around thousands of other everyday, middle-class Americans who understand what makes our country such a special place and are moved to stand up in the name of the US Constitution and liberty is a very special thing.  The highlight of the evening for me was getting to shake the hand of Alfonzo.  As soon as I saw him drive up in a golf cart I went right over to him to say hi.  I was pleased that he was so nice and let me take a picture.

Me shaking hands with AlfonZo Rachel

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Garden Update: April 13, 2010

Lots of activity in the garden right now. Cucumbers, beans, cowpeas, sunflower, corn, and watermelon are all coming up from seed. I ate my first snack of sugar snap peas, they were very tasty. Most of the strawberries I planted in my wood boxes are dead, I let them dry completely out this winter. Shame on me for that. I’ve also had 4 pepper seedlings die. They were all tiny ones that had not been transplanted into the large peat pots. I guess they didn’t have the root structure to survive outdoors yet. Dang.

Sugar Snap Peas

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Right and Left Not So Important

When BO took office last year, I was sad for several good reasons, but one thing I felt was true: “we just traded one group of elitist leaders for another group of elitist leaders”. If you were a BO supporter and aren’t still blinded by your prejudice, then I think you can see that he is more of the same. Who were the big winners in the Obamacare bill? (the big insurance companies) Who were the big losers? (the middle class and the workers)
Although we spend lots of energy arguing topics framed by the Left vs Right paradigm, this is not what is most important. Focusing on liberal vs conservative (or any other similar labels) is counterproductive to what is really most important, what is best for us all.
The founding fathers of the US had money and power. They were the elite. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by going against power and creating the framework that became the USA. But, they did it anyway. If they would have failed they would have been killed as traitors. But, they did it anyway because they had wisdom most of us are without. They were trying to create a system that would create liberty and wealth for ‘the people’ (the middle class), not just for the elite.
This article is a must read. Check out the graph and refer it to people who claim we are becoming more socialist or communist. Things are becoming worse and worse for ‘the people’, but describing this as a move toward socialism is not accurate.
By focusing on the wrong things, I think we are missing the biggest problem. We are allowing the elite to control the wealth and most everything else. The path we are headed for (or already on) is exactly what our founding fathers were attempting to escape! As long as ‘the people’ are satisfied/pacified and don’t take an active (and vigilant) role in our government at all levels, we will continue to lose freedoms and wealth.

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Bryson and the Big Puzzle

Bryson put together a 33 piece puzzle with a little assistance from mom and dad.

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Video: Bryson’s Bubble Mower

The amount of toys Bryson has is embarrassing.  Amber has been gathering up and organizing all of his outdoor toys and Bryson wanted to play with his bubble lawnmower.  Even though he has never used it with bubbles, he knew it made bubbles.  We convinced him to play with it without bubbles for about 2 minutes, then he started asking about them.  I said “I don’t think we have any bubbles for this”, and 30 seconds later he had the special bottle in his hand and was trying to get it open.  I wanted to see it work, so I installed it for him.  He went through the entire bottle!

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No More Chicken Wire

When I created the bed next to our patio last year, I didn’t want to spend much money on a fence to keep the dogs out, so I just created a quick fence out of some t-posts and chicken wire. It created a problem with the wife, but I promised I would fix it later. We received a coupon in the mail for Home Depot, so today we used the coupon on a nicer looking metal fence. I have it in place, but need to create some spacers to correct the heights of some of the sections, and I need to do a few more things to keep the gates all aligned when in the closed position. It does look much better than the chicken wire though. I cut one of the panels and welded it back together to make a custom size, and it works, so I impressed myself using the welder. Go Brian!

Before 1

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Chicken Wire, effective, but not pretty.

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