Bare Simplicity

Recently I have begun a second blog to explore simplifying our lives. I may eventually move my adventures in cooking there as well, but for now I am keeping up the two blogs. If you wish to follow my adventures in DIY-ness, building community, local shopping, green/energy saving trial and error, growing our own food, organizing, paring down, tiny houses and the like, you can find my posts on Simplicity at baresimplicity.blogspot.com I suspect some of you will enjoy the article about harvesting our own Aloe.

Honeyville - Adventures in Shopping

Today Patch and I decided to combine various errands we needed to run, and go on an adventure. We stopped by Honeyville, a store which sells survival gear, freeze dried and dried foods, food storage and cooking supplies, and more. If you've watched the show American Preppers, you have probably seen an ad for them, and they are right down the street from Patch, so we recently checked it out. We have been buying small containers of some of the foods to see how we like them.

While there today we bought a small radio which can bearged by solar power, hand crank, or can run on AAA batteries. It also can be used to charge a cell phone or other device through a micro USB in it's side. We tried it out, and it's very cool. Patch plans to use it and create a Faraday cage for when she's not using it. Can't be too safe. It was only about 35 dollars, and she will use it quite a bit, so it's well worth the cost, and a great addition to our emergency kits. We have been creating one for each of us in each car just in case of an emergency. Back in CA we had one in each car plus a bag for each of us in the house just in case of a major earth quake. Since I experienced being just blocks from ground zero of the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, we were super careful, but since moving to AZ we stopped being prepared for earthquakes as they are so rare here.  Still, you just never know what could happen, so we decided recently to build new emergency kits and have 3 in each car, one for each of us. Hopefully we will never need them, but if we do, they're there. And part of that is emergency rations, and other easy to store food which is part of why we stopped by Honeyville.

While there, I met a lady, Chef Tess, who had just given a lesson on baking with the items available in the store, and we had an awesome conversation about solar ovens. She uses hers all the time. Patch and I have been wanting to build a solar dehydrator and possibly a solar oven. After all, why spend money on a new dehydrator (ours died) when the sun is so plentiful here in Laveen, AZ? It only makes sense and as Tess said, it saves money on the utlities you're not using. At first she built her own out of cardboard and tin foil, but after a while she bought a solar oven. I plan to make our dehydrator a bit more long lasting than cardboard, but even so her DIY version lasted her 2 years, so that's a good thing. She says the one she bought there works much more efficiently (understandable) but I think we could build one ourselves for cheaper that is just as good. I will post about how it goes when we try. In the mean time, you can check out her blog at http://cheftessbakeresse.com.

Another fun thing we found was "Cranberry Beans." And I've been trying to expand the foods I eat, so I grabbed a small bag on sale. I'm putting them to soak tonight and will make some tomorrow. We will see what they're like, but I love beans so I suspect they will be delicious to me. The real test will be if Patch and Carlie like them and I found a recipe for them that sounds delicious, so hopefully they will enjoy them as much as I do. After all, I hear that beans are one of those carbohydrates that are good for Diabetics, plus I'm told they're good for digestion, heart health, and more. Hopefully it will encourage us to have more than just the occasional re-fried beans or black beans from a can and to move towards cooking from dried beans, which I'm told are healthier than canned. We will see.

Last but not least we got a small can of freeze dried peaches and a can of freeze dried blueberries. It turns out a serving of blueberries is much lower in carb count than the peaches. Not too surprising since the nurse in my diabetes class encourages us to eat berries. They are tasty, which also didn't surprise me, so we'll be buying a couple larger cans in the future to add to our emergency food storage. All in all, a good shopping trip!

Growing our own food

Over the last few years we have been learning to grow our own food. Patch and Carlie do the heavy lifting, and in the past we sort of let Patch try her hand at farming, but this year I have gotten more involved. I am dedicated to growing more produce to make it less expensive to eat healthy foods, and also because then we know exactly what goes into our food rather than wondering when it's from a store.

On top of that, it's really satisfying to eat something which you have nurtured and worked hard to grow in the desert environment of Phoenix, AZ. So this year we are having some good success with an Artichoke (above left) a tree which is 1/2 peach and 1/2 plum and will soon have some great peaches for us.  Beneath the shade of the peach and plum tree are 4 pots of berries which we thought we had lost due to too much sun, but after moving it under the tree and watering it by hand they have begun to revitalize!

This year we planted cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic and jalapenos in pots for the first time, and grapes are growing up a trellace outside my bedroom window which will be delicious AND help provide much needed shade and protection from the heat in a room which gets more than it's fair share of both.  Not far from the grapes grows a nectarine tree which was just planted this year. We should be able to pick it's yummy fruits in about 3 years.

We would like to also harvest our own eggs (like they are talking about tomorrow here: http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/events/raising-chickens-in-your-backyard-6) but suspect our HOA is against it. We will see. But because we are trying to live as sustainably as possible, we are investigating methods which use less water, provide more protein, etc. Currently we are doing a lot of container gardening as shown above, and there are 2 raised beds which are not yet in use this year, but which will be planted soon with whichever seedlings make it. We have been making our own compost and striving to grow organically, but I would like to improve this and make it a  more sustainable circle of life through a process called Aquaponics. I've joined a few aquaponics groups such as this one: http://www.phoenixpermaculture.org/group/aquaponics and have been investigating. I even wrote to gardenpool.org to see if we can get a tour and learn about their successful aquaponic efforts in Mesa, AZ. We hope to use the back yard farm skills we are learning along with green building practices to create a more sustainable food source for our house, and probably enough to share with others.   I will post here as we continue learning as we grow.

Rustic Lime Potatoes and Gardening Thoughts

I've been looking at a lot of recipes which include butternut squash so that I could use up the rest of the squash leftover after the making of corn chowder. I hate tossing out produce even tho we do have a compost bin to put them in, and knew the squash would go bad if I didn't use it this morning.

All left over produce in our home be it rinds or uncooked unused fruit and veggies eventually end up in our garden. We use home made compost to help add nutrients to the dry, desert soil. Last year we only managed to grow a few tiny mutant carrots and a lot of pumpkin that the dogs ate before we could harvest it. This year we are hopeful for more success since there is now more healthy nutrients in the soil from a year of composting. Even the hybrid plum/nectarine fruit tree which we planted last year is starting to blossom and sprout it's leaves! Perhaps we will taste home grown plums and nectarines this year.

Growing our own fruits and vegetables will really cut down on the cost of eating whole, organic foods not to being the most locally grown you can get. Gives me a chuckle to think of all the gas saved and elbow grease spent..  It also allows us to choose NOT to put harmful chemicals on our food. Knowing where my food is coming from has become more important to me as I realized that I had eaten a lifetime of pesticides etc. And although part of me felt like tossing my hands up and saying it's too late now, I've seen enough people regain their health after improving their way of eating that I just have to give it a try.

This morning, I was wanting to use up the leftover squash tho, so all the compost bin got were the rinds and some seeds. Maybe some of the seeds will take sprout in the compost and I can transfer them into the garden. It's happened before, so who knows.

But enough of that! In looking at the various squash recipes in the gluten-free vegan, I found myself inspired. One recipe called for orange juice. We are out of oranges, but we do have lime juice on hand because I love the flavor of limes. I hear there is a lime flavored olive oil that would probably be great in this recipe...I'll have to keep my eyes open. I wasn't sure how much lime to put into this meal because I didn't want to overwhelm the sage and thyme, but it came out great. The following is the delicious meal I had for breakfast. I'd say this would make a great side dish for a main meal.

Rustic Lime Potatoes:
(serves 4-6)
4 medium red potatoes
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2 medium butternut squash
macademia nuts
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon sage
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Clean and cut red potatoes into large chunks. I cut each potato in half, each half into fourths and then halved the larger cubes. Seed, peal and cut butternut squash into chunks of a size similar to the potatoes.

Preheat oven to 350. Mix olive oil and herbs in medium mixing bowl. Add potato and squash chunks and stir until herbs and oil coat thuroughly. Add 1/4 cup lime juice and mix well.

Pour entire mixture onto a baking sheet and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until soft. Stir periodically making sure all sides stay well coated. I stirred after 5 minutes, and then about every 10 minutes. Poke largest chunks with a fork to test for firmness. I felt it was done properly when the texture was soft but not squishy as this is how I like my potatoes.

Serve with macedamia nuts sprinkled on top for a nice little crunch, their delicious flavor, and of course the added protein. I use them sparingly; these little babies do have quite a bit of fat in them. They'd be eve better. chopped up and sprinkled on top

Carlie has been avoiding my gluten free meals almost as if she's afraid they're going to be tasteless or somehow "too healthy" tasting, but we spoke about it today as we read a gluten-free Italian cookbook, and she decided to give my breakfast a try. She went back for seconds, so it must have been good!