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As the primary process comes to a close, it’s time to turn our eyes to the November presidential election. It’s not too late to let your voice be heard; it’s not too late to register to vote, and to vote for change.

Obama ‘08

Looking for something that indulges your shopping fix, your gardening fix, and supports a great local cause? Then check out the Boulder County Master Gardener Ginormous Plant Sale this weekend!

Each year, Boulder County Master Gardeners start flats of seeds and divide unusual perennials from their own gardens to sell in the plant sale. A selection of water-wise favorites including grasses, flowering perennials, vines, and shade-tolerant perennials is also purchased from local nurseries. In addition, Plant Select® perennials will also be available, providing sale-goers with a good combination of the unusual and local favorites. Master Gardeners will be selling perennials, Plant Select plants, xeric plants, ornamental grasses, alpine plants, and more, while Growing Gardens focuses on annuals, heirloom vegetables, and herbs.

The sale is this weekend, May 17-18, from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm in the parking lot of the Public Health building at 3450 North Broadway in Boulder.

We use the funds to sponsor scholarships for Master Gardeners to attend conferences; purchase books for the library; purchase equipment for the program; fund special projects such as the Garden to Schools, Heritage Orchard, Balfour, Jail Garden, and small fruit trials; under-write the cost of classes for MGs, so that we don’t charge Boulder County folks for participation.

So stop by this weekend, check out the spectacular selection of plants, talk to a Master Gardener, and help support this wonderful program!

Today my daughter, Lily, is two years old. I’ve been feeling under the weather, so I took an opportunity to rest by napping with her this afternoon. As we snuggled up in my bed, her head tucked into its favorite position between my arm and my breast, I thought about the day of her birth. Lily is a child who knows what she wants and is not afraid to ask for it (it has been suggested that she is the spitting image of her mother in that respect). So minutes after her birth, I put her to my breast, she latched on, and, with the exception of a few trips to the bathroom and the occasional snuggle from Dad or the grandparents, she remained that way until we left the hospital just over a day later. Nurses who were not even assigned to our care popped in to see if it was true that she was on some sort of nursing marathon. I laughed, assured them that it was OK, and nursed on. We have spent much of the last two years this way, and I will be the first to admit that there have been many times when I was ready for a break.

I was reminded this week both why I have continued to nurse for as long as I have and how I managed to do so.

Why?

As if all the World Health Organization (WHO) breastfeeding recommendations, proof of health benefits of breastfeeding, and the obvious joy Lily experiences while nursing were not enough, this month the Foundation for the Study of Infant Death concluded that breastfeeding also reduces the chance of SIDS (or, as the British call it, cot death). And researchers in Canada and Belarus also finished a comprehensive study, for the first time controlling for education and socio-economic factors, that showed that breastfed children are smarter, and perform better in school than their formula-fed counterparts.

How?

Although the difference in IQ points and academic performance were the main thrust of the story, I was struck by another of the study’s conclusions:

Those in the breast-feeding encouragement group were, on average, breast-fed longer than the others and were less likely to have been given f*rmula in a bottle.

At 3 months, 73 percent of the babies in the breast-feeding encouragement group were breast-fed, compared to 60 percent of the other group. At 6 months, it was 50 percent versus 36 percent.

In addition, the group given encouragement was far more likely to give their children only breast milk. The rate was seven times higher, for example, at 3 months.

If simply encouraging breastfeeding has such a huge and measurable impact on the success of breastfeeding, why do doctors still continue to pass out free formula at prenatal and well-baby visits? Why do so many store owners, airline stewardesses, and other members of the public ask breastfeeding mothers to leave or cover up?

Why am I so lucky to live in a place where I am surrounded by other women nursing toddlers? This is the real answer to how I’ve managed to breastfeed my daughter for two years: support from other breastfeeding mothers.

Yes, my supply was so immense after Lily’s birth that she literally choked on my let-down. But I had someone there to tell me that it wouldn’t last forever (and it didn’t). Yes, Lily rubbed her tender gums on my nipples when she first started teething, the discomfort of which, especially at night when I was trying to sleep, was agonizing. But again, someone was there to commiserate and to offer advice and support. Lily has had periods of twiddling, pinching, poor latch, and marathon-nursing. But I have been able to find all the support I needed from my local API support group, various online groups and forums, and blogs like this one. It has helped me not only survive the past two years, but enjoy them in a way that would not have been possible if I had gone it alone.

I received an email from EWG today about their new efforts in the realm of pet health. Their new web site, Pets for the Environment, is a resource for people looking to extend their environmentally-conscious purchases into the realm of supplies for the four-legged members of the family.

Along this line, I have recently gone a bit overboard on the “use the whole animal” maxim. No, I’m not plucking chickens to plump up my pillows, but I did stumble upon a use for the rather alarming parts that fall out of a whole chicken when an unsuspecting mostly vegetarian do-gooder first attempts to rinse the darned thing in the sink: home-made dog treats.

You see, we recently added a German Shorthair Pointer to our family. Durango is, as we like to say, long on legs and short on brains. However, he has proven in obedience class to be a discerning consumer of dog treats and has turned up his nose at even the trainer’s most “unctuous” (her word, not mine!) treat, which was some sort of beef sausage stuff that smelled truly vile. Dogs are easily motivated by things they really, really want (just watch our dog try to get a drink out of the kid’s water table or get a soda can off of a high table), so finding the perfect dog treat has been on my mind. Although he seems to like “Newman’s Own” treats well enough (especially if Lily feeds them to him), he doesn’t LUUUUURVE them, and that is what I am looking for in a dog treat.

Perhaps that is why, when I fished a chicken liver out of the stock I was making with a chicken carcass late last week, I decided to give it to Durango. The pup nearly vibrated with glee before gulping it down and proceeding to whine and beg until I basically gave him the whole darned thing (with a corner cut off for our lovable, but a little overly-”fluffy,” kitty, Mystic).

At last I had found the perfect treat! But what would the other pet owners think if I showed up for class with a treat bag filled with chicken livers. I myself find the things rather beautiful, if slimy, uncooked, and revoltingly pale and smelly once cooked.

So I called upon my buddy Google and realized that the “secret” that chicken liver is really dog speak for crack is not secret in the dog world. The recipes for liver dog treats abound and so I decided to purchase 2 pounds of chicken livers (for a total of $4) and try some out.

Liver Bait #2 - This is the easiest recipe I found with just two ingredients: liver & garlic powder. Simply coat the liver in garlic powder and bake for 10 minutes at 450, slice, and freeze. If you’re doing a whole liver, I’d recommend slicing first or else increasing the baking time.

Liver Dog Treats - I love my dog, but I have two little children, a part-time job, I volunteer a lot, and, oh yeah, I blog. So I don’t have time to be Betty Crocker. This recipe is fast (< 5 minutes to mix)–just put a pound of liver, an egg, 1.5 cups of flour (perhaps more depending on how juicy the liver is!), and 1/4 t of oregano and yeast (or garlic) in the food-processor, mix, and bake in a 9×9 for 30 minutes. I greased and floured the pan and I’m glad I did because these stuck a little bit and would have been worse if I hadn’t!
The dog absolutely loves these treats and the second recipe makes enough to fill about half of a gallon Ziploc with bite-sized treats. Guess I’ll have to leave that other pound of liver in the freezer until later…

My son, Gabriel, started preschool this past year at a local home-based Waldorf preschool. Although I knew little about Waldorf at the time, I was drawn to the gentle teacher at the preschool and had a gut-feeling that she was the right person to be my son’s first official teacher. One of the great things about Waldorf, besides its adherence to principles of play-based and creative learning, is the use of natural materials in toys and crafts.

This fall, I felted some wool at the preschool into a “meteor ball” for Gabriel and started looking into the craft projects I might be able to do with the children with wool and other natural materials. We dyed play silks and Easter Eggs, and even tie-dyed some silk. But then some research into the types of dyes used in food coloring made me wonder whether this was really a substance I wanted in my kitchen or my children’s toys.

I found a Natural Dyes Seed Collection on Seeds of Change and decided to try to grow my own natural dyes this summer. Having a brand-new landscape gives me lots of extra bed space that I can use for this rather experimental project. So far, I have Hopi Red Dye Amaranth (burgundy dye) and marigolds (orange-yellow dye) started in the basement and a packet of Bull’s Blood beets (red dye) to put out this weekend. I also hope to round out my colors with Hopi Black Dye (purple dye) sunflowers, some saffron that I have kicking around from a large bulk purchase (and which I’ve already used successfully on play silks and Easter eggs).

When I found a local source of very inexpensive wool at the Boulder Farmer’s Market ($1 an ounce, and an ounce is a good-sized ball of wool!), I bought quite a bit and upped my research. I needed to know more about this process than what I found on the seed packets. Gabriel’s preschool teacher provided a book on natural dyes and although it focused on using brazilwood, cochineal, indigo and other dye materials not readily available here in Colorado, it did introduce me to the concept of mordants (to this point, I have only used vinegar to fix my colors in the cloth I have dyed) and went over the general process of dying (which is not unlike what I described when I posted about dying play silks with Kool-Aid). Mordants like alum, cream of tartar, and washing soda, help the dyes “bite” into the fabric. Natural dyes tend to be lighter and less intense than man-made dyes, so these mordants help intensify the color and make them more long-lived in the fabric.

Some additional dye plants I found in my reading include:

• Black Walnut husks (brown dye that doesn’t require a mordant)
• Yellow onion skins (orange dye)
• Purple onion skins (green dye)
• Cherries (red/pink dye)
• Roses and Lavender, according to Pioneer Thinking, with a little mint and some lemon juice to activate the alkaloids can make both a brilliant pink dye and a very tasty pink lemonade.
• Rose hips (red/pink)
• Red cabbage (red/purple)
• Dandelion flowers (yellow)
• Hollyhocks (mauves, pinks, and rusts depending on flower color) - And according to Gardenbed.com, you can make paper from the Hollyhock stems. Sounds like a fun summer project with the kiddos!

This article on dying wool with natural plant dyes has information about how to prepare the dyes that I think would apply to other types of natural dye plants.

I’d also like to look into growing some of the more traditional dye plants like woad (blue) and madder (its roots made the dye used to make the British Army’s coats red!), since I have the time and inclination.

Have any of you tried a natural dye for a craft project? What did you use and how did it turn out?

Although I’m not as yogurt-obsessed as Suzanne over at Live Active Cultures is, I am picky about my probiotic goodies and have been perfecting my low-maintenance (i.e. no fancy yogurt maker or complicated steps) yogurt recipe over the past six months or so. I think I’m ready to go prime-time with it, so here goes:

Ingredients:

1/2 gallon 2% or whole milk (you could try this with skim or fat-free, but I haven’t!)
1/4 c plain yogurt (try Greek yogurt sometime for something fun and different!)

Instructions:

Heat milk over medium heat in a large soup pot. Stir occasionally to prevent the milk from scorching. Once the milk reaches a simmer, stir constantly until the volume is reduced by about a third, which takes about 30 minutes. Note that this step is not mandatory, but will give you a thicker, creamier yogurt. If you like your yogurt rather thin, just heat the yogurt to a simmer, simmer for a few minutes, and proceed. Remove milk from heat and transfer to a glass bowl with a lid. Let the milk cool until it’s around 120 degrees.

Yogurt-making is not an exact science, so I usually do this without a thermometer and just wait until I can stick my finger in the milk without yelping. When it reaches that warm, but not too hot stage, add the yogurt starter (which can be a quarter cup of leftover yogurt from the previous week’s batch once you’re making your own yogurt all the time–this stuff improves with age just like sourdough starter!) and put the lid on. Let it sit at room temperature for 8-12 hours or until set and then transfer to the fridge.

Note: If your house is really cool in the winter months, consider wrapping a towel around your glass bowl to keep it warm enough for the cultures to multiply. Likewise, I try to always make yogurt in the evening in the summers so that there is not a lot of direct sun warming the kitchen up too much.

I serve this either with home-made granola or with a spoonful of jam and the kids love it. It’s also great for smoothies, although because it lacks the stabilizers and other junk sometimes added to store-bought yogurt, it liquefies rather quickly in the blender. It will last about a week in the fridge, longer if your milk is really fresh.

But wait, you say, I’ve been paying $5 a tub for organic yogurt these past months or years, surely it can’t be this easy. It is this easy and even if you use organic yogurt for starter and organic milk for your base, this is seriously cheaper and takes less time that it would take you to run to the store to restock! And it doesn’t require disposable packaging, and it isn’t loaded with sugar, strange chemical stabilizers, or artificial flavors. Did I mention that it’s delicious?

View this week’s other fabulous “Make it From Scratch” carnival entries at Creatively Me!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the choices we make in our day-to-day lives and what is really important. I’ve been drawn to trying to protect the Earth one way or another since I was little. My sister, brother, & myself created “The JA Club” (all of our initials are JA) when I was in elementary school and we did things like go around the neighborhood and pick up trash.

My early endeavors into recycling were more motivated by the money we could get for turning in collected cans than by a strong desire to save the planet, but I’d like to think that was part of what lead me, a few years later, to write about the importance of the environmentalist movement in my college entrance exam. In college, I did lots of the usual college things–I helped my living unit participate in a campus-wide recycling initiative (no gas money this time though!), joined Greenpeace, and wrote letters on various environmental initiatives.

During that time, I decided for a variety of reasons to become a vegetarian. Now, more than a decade later, I’m reconsidering that decision in light of new information and a commitment to local eating. As my husband put it, being  vegetarian is really a part of our world-view and so even transitioning into eating local, free-range, grass-fed organic poultry is bittersweet and something I’m sure Matt would never have done if left to his own devices.

But it’s something that I feel compelled to do for the following reasons:

Meat Replacements are…Bad for the Environment!

This has been my real sticking point and there’s just no other way around it. The meat replacements that have become staple foods in this household are just not good for the environment. They are over-processed. They are shipped long distances in gas-guzzling refrigerated trucks, planes, or train-cars. They contain ingredients grown and marketed by  environmentally-irresponsible companies. They are now largely owned by some of those same environmentally-irresponsible companies.

For example, did you know that Boca now uses soy produced, processed, and marketed by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)? It’s sad, but true. Even if I opted for Boca’s organic soy line (organic soy foods, by definition, cannot be  from genetically-modified soy beans), I would still know that in some ways, my grocery dollar was going back to supporting Kraft (who owns Boca) and ADM, and I just can’t stomach that. Why? Because, as one of the largest middlemen between farmers and consumers in the United States, responsibility for the current crisis in food production and distribution rests firmly on their shoulders. I could write a book about this topic, but Michael Pollan already has, so go read the Omnivore’s Dilemma if you dare.

Quorn products, much beloved in this household for their texture and versatility, are soy-free, but are also very processed and travel long distances to get to Colorado. Morningstar Farms is owned, like so many others, by a major (and majorly bad!) corporation: Kellogg. Take a look at who owns most organic food labels.  Gardenburger is owned by Kellogg and also does not exclude the use of GMO soy, although it does, like Boca, have an organic soy product line.

Even locally-produced White Wave is not an environmentally-friendly soy source. Sure, they’re organic, but they’re owned by Dean, which also owns Horizon, which, frankly, although organic, uses factory farming techniques that are not just bad for cows, but bad for those of us who prefer clean air and unpolluted water.

Meat Replacements Do Not Support the Local Economy

And let’s talk a bit about “locally-produced.” I can’t find any information on where White Wave’s soybeans come from. As popular as the local food movement is here in Boulder County, I can’t imagine nearby Broomfield-based White Wave wouldn’t be touting their use of local soy unless they were, well, not using local soy.

The fact of the matter is that I can get free range, grass fed, organic chicken and dairy products because I am lucky enough to live in a place where there are both consumers and farmers who value this type of food. It seems downright irresponsible not to take advantage of it if the environment is as important to me as I’ve said it is.

Did I mention my pets love chicken livers? 

So this week, I purchased, thawed, cooked, and boned a whole chicken for maybe the second time in my life (if you extend this to poultry and recall my turkey cooking experience from Thanksgiving 2007, that makes three birds that I’ve thus handled). I made Mole Chicken, made stock with the carcass, and although I couldn’t bring myself to eat the organ meats, the dog and the cat were in heaven (enough so that I’m considering making their treats out of chicken livers from now on!). And the children love the chicken. Gabriel more so than Lily, but he also has more teeth than she does

Eating (Vegetarian) Humble Pie

Another reason that it’s taken me so long to post on this topic is that there is a certain amount of humble pie to be eaten. During NoMeatPo Week earlier this year, I wrote rather elegantly on why we were vegetarians (I was serious when I said this has been part of our world-view for many years). And I still strongly identify as a vegetarian. I doubt meat will ever be a daily part of our diet and I know already that despite the natural red meat that is available here in Colorado, we will not be experimenting in that direction.

In the end, I’m happy with our choice to eat more local food, even if that does mean getting rid of some of our usual meat-replacement staples, going back on some strong statements about vegetarianism I’ve made in the past, and relearning certain cooking techniques. And I will still argue with my last breath that if you’re going to get your meet from McDonalds or from conventional producers, it is definitely better for the environment if you eat lower on the food chain, even if that includes eating Boca, Quorn, or other meat replacements.

This morning, I found myself staring out the window at breakfast. At first, I couldn’t figure out why, and then I realized that I was looking for Juncos. These little ground-feeding birds visit our yard all winter long, eating seeds dropped from the feeders by other birds (or scattered on the ground intentionally by us because we love them so!). Every year, we know winter is coming because of their arrival, and every year, when something unknowable in the air tells them it’s time to move on, I am just a little bit sad.

The funny thing is that, although we notice their arrival immediately, noticing their absence usually takes a few days. Every year, they move on quietly, without ceremony, and I find myself searching my memory, as I did this morning, wondering when I last saw them. Was it just yesterday, or have they been gone for a whole week, or longer?

These subtle transitions from winter to spring, from baby to toddler, from one stage to another, happen all the time without our notice. Can you remember the last time there was snow on the ground, or the last time your baby really looked like a baby instead of a little girl or little boy? I can’t. And I can’t remember the last time my son, now 3.5 nursed. It’s been bothering me, like there should have been special music queued or a photo taken to mark the event. But life doesn’t work that way. He nursed off and on for months after Lily was born, but now he hasn’t for, well, I don’t know how long and I probably never will remember.

Every year when I know the Juncos are about to fly, I tell myself I will see them when they go, that I will mark the occasion. And every year, I miss it. But realizing that they’re gone reminds me not only that spring is finally here (at last, I can garden, at last, we can put away the mittens and boots!), but that I should savor each moment of each day, because who knows what change might be happening, oh so subtly, right before my eyes.

Please also take a look at the other WW submissions.