Archive | July 2012
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Raspberry Pie Bars: Gluten and Dairy Optional
It rained this morning, really rained, summer thunderstorm rain. This means I have hours to pick our ripe raspberries before they start to mold in their raindrop coating. When the rain changed to sprinkling, I dashed outside and filled my freezer trays with fresh berries. But there were still more – I needed to make […]
Zero Waste Grocery Shopping Tips
As part of my ongoing effort to reduce the amount of new plastic entering my life, I’ve developed a shopping system to avoid some common plastic packaging. First of all, I buy in bulk whenever possible – 25 pound bags of rice, pinto beans, flours, all of the staples I can find this way, to […]
Best Berry Dessert: Keep it Simple
So, what do we do with all those berries we grow? Mostly we eat them fresh, seconds after we pick them. This time of year, post-strawberries and pre-blueberries, I send my kids out to graze the raspberry canes for their first breakfast each morning, and they help themselves during the day whenever they’re hungry for a […]
Berry Thoughts
There are a few things that balance out our gray, wet early summers here. One of them is the giddy jolt of pure joy we all get when the sun finally comes out and another is the berries. Strawberries, raspberries, salmon berries, thimble berries, red huckleberries, evergreen huckleberries, blackcap raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, salal berries, gooseberries, […]
Fennel: Grow Your Own Straws & More
Fennel – It’s Not Just Food Any More We have a perennial fennel plant in our garden, not a bulbing variety but one that sends up incredibly tall stalks and a frothy haze of delicate fronds each spring and summer. Last year, I meant to harvest the pollen and seeds but didn’t manage to catch […]
Our Cracked Crockery Crop
or New Life for Broken Dishes During our recent dumpster diverting vacation with the Pioneering the Simple Life clan, we set aside chipped and broken ceramics and glass. These imperfect pieces aren’t sold at the Rotary Auction and they can’t be donated to any local non-profit that we know of, so we set them aside […]
What We Did with Our Summer Vacation
The girls and I took last week off to join my fellow Trash Backwards co-founder Liesl Clark in turning an entire 40-yard dumpster’s trash backwards with our bare hands (gloves might be prudent, but I prefer skin-to-trash contact). My hometown is host to what is sometimes described as “the world’s largest rummage sale”; while I […]
