Category Archives: Gardening

Cooking Matters

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One thing about my job, is that it is always something new. I have worked in tobaco prevention and education for most of my time with the health department and continue to do a component of that with half my time, but I have also started to branch off into the “healthy eating, active living” (HEAL) side of things which is basically community obesity prevention and interventions. Both obesity and tobacco use cause the majority of preventable deaths and disease -cancers, heart diseases, strokes, diabetes, etc. So it is definitely important work.


Recruiting for the cooking class at Milliken’s Beef and Bean Day

Even before this new assignment at work, I’ve always been interested in nutrition and good food. But I’ve never been much for the cooking side of things. Eventhough I know that people who cook more at home tend to be healthier than those who eat out, I still just never got that into cooking.I love to eat good, whole, homemade, delicious and nutritious food, but always thought of cooking as a pain and only something Britton and I had time to do on the weekends. The work week usually meant (and sometimes still means) a quick throw-together of pasta or rice, frozen vegetables and fish or chicken.

It is still hard to fit in time to cook, but ever since I have been coordinating and collaborating to help facilitate a program called “Cooking Matters” in Milliken I’ve been intrigued with trying a few new things. In Cooking Matters we have a nutrition professor from CSU (Fort Collins) as well as another health educator helping to teach the course which is primarily geared at the underserved populations.

Everyone always has their usual bag of tricks when it comes to preparing food (like our evening throw-togethers), so a healthy cooking class helps to open your eyes to the wonders of all sorts of foods.


Cumin-Would be nice to grow in the garden -I wonder if it would do well in PR

In fact, I think I’ve found my new favorite spice: cumin! I’ve never even paid much attention to it until in the class we made hummus -which is just basically pureed garbanzo beans, garlic, salt and cumin -so easy! And the cumin makes all the difference! It is also what makes Mexican food so delicious. Not only that, but this spice, like many spices boasts health benefits as well such as being a good source of iron, helping with digestion, and even cancer prevention!

Anyhow, we had a bout of cold, rainy weather this week and weekend, so for fun, we stayed in and cooked up a bunch of food. Some of these included:

Hummus with pita chips
Pearl Barley and vegetable chicken soup
Chai tea
Enchilada lasagna -slice up whole grain tortillas into strips about the size of lasagna noodles -do not cook! In a cooking pan sautee chicken, add enchilada sauce, can of tomatoes, lots of spices like cumin and oregano, sliced bell peppers (and jalapenos if you like it hot), black olives, etc. Put this mixture on top of the strips of tortillas in a large dish (13×9) and layer as you would lasagna. Add shredded cheese and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Uncover for another ten if you like the cheese browned. Let sit for a bit. Add fat free greek yogurt or sour cream if desired on top.
Apple Crisp –Made with about 5 fresh apples with the skin still on sliced to about an 1/8 inch. Pumpkin pie spices (ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon), brown sugar and a tiny bit of flour. For the topping (the crisp): A little butter, brown sugar, quick oats, flour and more spices mixed together and put on top. Then bake in the  350 degree oven for about 30-45 minutes.


Slice of Carrot Cake!


Betty Crocker’s Homemade Carrot Cake –Made with 3 cups or about 8 freshly grated carrots and applesauce in a 1 to 1 complete exchange of the oil and decreased the sugar from 2 cups to 1 1/2 cups. Also added nutmeg, ginger, and cloves in addition to the cinnamon that was called for. Added chopped walnuts. And made the cream cheese frosting Betty Crocker called for (but made with lower fat neufchatel cheese). This was SOO good. And not too terrible nutrition wise!


Yum! Lasagna

Then last night we cooked up traditional lasagana only we used ground turkey in place of beef and added a lot of vegetables.

Cooking is still a pain with all the prep work of chopping and dicing, recipe reading and substituting and of course the cleaning up afterward, but the results are sooo delicious and so much better than any pre-processed options out there.

So while I started out as the reluctant coordinator of this cooking class, I am definitely turning into a convert! Plus I’ve been able to meet all sorts of nice people in the class as well. I would suggest to anyone who has “food issues” -like being overweight, picky, or a fast-food fiend that the best help is a cooking class! Very practical and fun! You control what is in your food and therefore what goes into your body. It is a freeing feeling. Cooking matters! It really does! 🙂

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Insta-Lawn

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At one of our rentals, the backyard was just pure dirt. We had been wanting to put in a yard but thought we would wait until about a year after since we had done so much work to it. Well, this was the one that was abandoned prior to the end of the lease term, so when we got new tenants in, we let them know we would like to put in a grass yard in the back, but only if they would be willing to water it (since they pay water).  After they settled into the routine of living in the house, they got back to us that they would like the lawn and would be willing to water extra for the first month or so.

So we got to work. We ordered the compost to amend the soil and tried to line up a rototiller from my brother who does landscaping. Then we ordered the sod. Sod is much more expensive than grass seed, but it creates an insta-lawn. One moment it is dirt, and the next it’s a yard. Kind of like putting down carpet or something. So Britton worked from home on Friday and once his work day was over he was over shoveling compost into the yard.


A big pile of composted cow poo

Once the compost was transfered to the yard, it was time to till it in. That’s where the roto-tiller came in. We hauled it over but once we figured out how to start it, the tires locked up and it wouldn’t move at all. That meant: hand shoveling to till it. So the three of us -Britton, me and Martin our tenant were all out there until dark tilling the backyard.


When the roto-tiller broke

Then Saturday morning Britton worked by himself installing the sod. When he came home he was worn out! But I came over to see the outcome and it looks great!

Here are some before and after pictures:


Dirt Yard Before


After: Backyard with grass


Before: Britton is raking the tilled compost to flatten it before laying the sod


AFTER


AFTER!

We just hope that our tenants keep it well watered for the first week/month. At least we put it down in September when the weather is not quite as intense. The tenants seemed very happy with the results as did we, which is great for everyone!

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Falling out of Summer

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The weather has had a pretty big change here.  As I say that Puerto Rico just experienced Irene!  So I suppose change is all relative.

Once a year Cassie and I like to camp out in our backyard in a tent that was given to us as a wedding gift.  I spent quite a bit of time camping up in the mountains when I was growing up.  While it was fun, it’s one of those things that I have done quite a bit so it isn’t something that I feel I need to do.  Sleeping outside under the stars with Cassie is a lot of fun and we don’t have to drive, pack food, pack clothes and figure out all the details involved with a ‘camping trip’.


Our Tent

I used to also camp out in my backyard as a kid and across the street at my friend Matt’s house.  It was a lot of fun and I am sure parents enjoy it because your sleepover (loud kids) is outdoors!

We figured we had better get our once a year backyard camp out done because we have entered into the Fall season (maybe not officially, but you can feel it).  The weather is cooler, the veggies are ripe and the growing season is slowly coming to an end.  We’ve been getting more food from our garden lately too.


Fruit, Vegetables and Eggs

With the change in season we are starting to think about Puerto Rico too!  I hope there isn’t too much damage to the property, but if there is we can just fix and mend like we usually do!  We really enjoy our summer here in Colorado, but the winter is so long it will be nice to have a place to go where we can plant, pick garden and camp out!

I hope all our friends are doing well in PR after Irene.  The few Facebook posts we’ve seen indicate it wasn’t too bad and I hope that is the case.  I’d actually like to be down there for a tropical storm / hurricane at some point.  Just for the experience of it.  Not a major one of course!

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Colorado Fruit Trees

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The yard has burst to life in this summer heat. We have been gradually trying to shift our yard into a perennial food source instead of either having an annual garden (which we’ll do also) or just a lawn of grass and flowers that are nice but not edible.

So here is an update of some of our trees and some new additions:

Last year, 2010 we planted a fruit cocktail tree. This is what it looked like:


Fruit Cocktail Tree of Plums, Nectarines and Apricots in 2010


Today! It has grown about 4 feet in a year!


It even has plums already!

Our peach tree is doing well too. It hasn’t grown as tall as the fruit cocktail tree, but it’s gotten really full and bushy. I was noticing that the leaves of the peach tree are similar to mango trees. The fruit is somewhat similar too in color, taste and texture. I wonder if they are related botanically. Things that make you go hmm.


Here it is (to the right in front of the porch) last year


Peach Tree Summer 2011

We also planted some apple trees. We have two “Lil Big” Honeycrisp apple trees which are extra dwarf apple trees that are expected to only grow 6 feet max. The other apple tree is a 5-in-one apple tree. There are supposed to be five varieties of apple grafted together like the fruit cocktail tree. That maximizes our small space in the backyard to be a diverse food producing area. Still no apples or flower blooms yet though.


The Lil Big Apple Tree is in front and the 5-in-1 apple tree is behind

In addition to the trees though, we do have tomatoes coming in. The pepper plants are doing ok and I think we might get some cucumbers too. Also Omeleto is an egg-laying machine. Even though her eggs are smaller than the old chickens, she lays a lot more consistently. I love leghorns for this quality. Plus since we hand raised her she is not as skittish as old Omelette was. Summer is such an awesome time in Colorado. Lots of food, fun and flowers too! I wish I could do this year-round. Oh, wait. We can…in Puerto Rico! 🙂 I can’t wait to check on our fruit trees down there. We planted a mango tree, corazon tree, and guava. Hopefully they are growing good now!


Green Tomatoes

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