Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Finally

I finally found one of the environmental clips that MTV used to run back in 1989. Believe it or not, this is one of the things that originally inspired me to be environmentally conscious and set me on the path of the lifestyle I want to have. Let me know if you find more of these. I thought they were really good.

The Book

I finished the Barbara Kingsolver book and it was excellent. Of course now I have all these ideas swirling around in my head of things to do.
Remember I was saving jars to can with? Well, I wasn't making much progress but I started cleaning out the shed on my property and the previous owner had the same idea. So I have a bunch of jars, all shapes and sizes. Some of the odd sizes I won't try to can with but I'm wanting to store things and save seed from my hopefully heirloom french breakfast radishes (fingers crossed) so they will come in handy. I love having jars full of good things to eat, canned goods, beans and rice.
Also, I'm going to look into a cowshare agreement so I can get fresh milk as I want to try making my own butter and yogurt and such.
Must be lunchtime, I'm hungry talking about food.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Books

I am a total bibliophile. I read books like they are going out of style. Perhaps they are. Anyway, I just started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and already I love it. It talks about how disconnected we are from our food supply. Not knowing how it grows or where it came from or how much energy it takes to get it to our plate. It also looks like it's going to talk about how we as a nation have forgotten how to do things. Most people don't even know how to grow things, produce things, without it being shipped prepacked to us. That in particular is one of the things I'm concerned with. I may write an essay on this topic soon in the future but it really concerns me that people have relegated good cooking, or preserving food, or growing your own food to "experts". You don't have to be an "expert" gardener to grow some of your own food just like you don't have to be a chef to cook good food to eat. We need to take back some of our skills from the so called "experts".