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Join Us for the $5 Challenge & win a Prize

September 16th, 2011

As you know, I’m a big advocate for good, healthy local food. I keep up to date on what’s going on in the agricultural world, as well as the local and slow food movement. When Slow Food initiated their $5 Challenge I thought it was a great idea. I’m always trying to tell people that eating local seasonal food is not more expensive and this challenge sets out to prove just that. The goal is to cook healthy meal for less than what you would spend for a meal at a fast food restaurant. They emphasize that the food should fit the Slow Food ideal “food that is good for those who eat it, good for farmers and workers, and good for the planet.”

THE CHALLENGE: This September 17, you’re invited to take back the ‘value meal’ by getting together with family, friends and neighbors for a slow food meal that costs no more than $5 per person. Cook a meal with family and friends, have a potluck, or find a local event.

WHY: Because slow food shouldn’t have to cost more than fast food. If you know how to cook, then teach others. If you want to learn, this is your chance. Together, we’re sending a message that too many people live in communities where it’s harder to buy fruit than Froot Loops. Everybody should be able to eat fresh, healthy food every day.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED: Sign up for the challenge! You can cook a meal with friends and family, find a local event, or host your own event. When you sign up, we’ll send you $5 cooking tips.” Sign up for the challenge! You can cook a meal with friends and family, find a local event, or host your own event.

This isn’t really a “challenge” for me. We’ve been eating local, seasonal, slow food for quite a while. We even try to eat this way when we travel and when we’re on the run.

I’ll be getting together with a few friends tomorrow night and I’m in charge of the meal. Later today, I’m off to Local Roots to see what kinds of meals I could prepare for $5 a person. Of course I could make the entire meal with ingredients from my garden and some of the venison from the freezer and it would cost me only about $2 per person. But I think I’m going to purchase the ingredients for this challenge.

I have a few meal ideas knocking around in my head, like:

    • Crispy Sticky Chicken Thighs from Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life
    • Braised Beef Sandwiches like those ones I blogged about
    • Simple Roasted Chicken with seasonal vegetables
    • Pasta Primavera featuring homemade noodles with local eggs topped with seasonal vegetables and local cheese
    • Beef Roast with roasted root vegetables
    • Homemade pizza with various toppings & local cheese
    • Beef Stew with a crusty homemade peasant loaf
    • Caramelized Onion Soup topped with crusty bread and local cheese and a side salad
    • Ratatouille from seasonal vegetables
    • Mushroom Lasagna with local mushrooms and cheese with a fresh salad

    Having a small edible garden is a great way to save some cash on your food bill and it’s the ultimate slow food. I have a collection of Botanical Interests seed packs to give away to one lucky reader. All you have to do is comment a great meal idea that would cost less than $5 per person using “food that is good for those who eat it, good for farmers and workers, and good for the planet.”

    So, who’s in? Any great ideas for inexpensive, delicious meals?

    Here’s a great Q&A with Josh Veirtel about the $5 Challenge and how it came about.

When Do I Take Down My Hummingbird Feeder in the Fall?

September 15th, 2011

If you put up a hummingbird feeder in the summer you may wonder when you need to take it down. It has been rumored that if you leave it up the little birds will stick around delaying their migration, but this is not the case. There is no need to worry that you’re keeping them around. It’s actually a good idea to keep the feeder up well into fall for the opposite reason. Even though the hummingbirds that frequented your feeder all summer may have left already, migrating birds from farther north may use your feeder for a quick pit stop on their way south.

Here at Chiot’s Run we leave the hummingbird feeders up until mid to late October (I wait 2 weeks after seeing the last hummingbird). They get taken down and washed in a non-toxic soap every 3 days and then they’re filled with homemade organic nectar. Making your own hummingbird nectar is quick and easy.

Simply mix 1/4 cup organic sugar with 1 cup of filtered water in a cup or bottle. Mix until combined, fill feeders, store any extra in the fridge (although I make just enough to fill the feeders each time). Contrary to popular theories, you don’t need to boil the water or use hot water.  The nectar does not last longer if it is boiled since bacteria is introduced the first time a bird drinks.  It is also not necessary to add red food coloring either.  In fact the red coloring can be detrimental for the little birds.  I make sure I use organic sugar and filtered water because birds are more sensitive to toxins (read through your oven manual and they say to never clean your oven with a bird in the house and think about the canary in the coal mine).

To give the little hummingbirds a helping hand you can also make sure you have some late blooming flowering in the garden. Nicotiana, or flowering tobacco does very well at seeding down and blooming through frost here at Chiot’s Run. I also have Cardinal Climber vines and a few other nectar rich flowers for them.

Keep those feeders up and have some late blooming flowers in your garden for the little birds traveling the LONG way down for the winter!

Do you feed the hummingbirds in your garden? When do you take down your feeder?

And Just Like That….It’s Fall

September 14th, 2011

Monday I spent the day cleaning out the closets, pantry, the floors and doing some general cleaning. It was quite nice outside, warm and sunny in the morning with thunderstorms in the afternoon, but I needed to get a few chores finished inside. By early evening, it was quite breezy while we were out on our evening walk. It felt like a beautiful late summer evening. Tuesday morning we woke up to a cool crisp morning and leaves scattered around the lawn. It no longer felt like late summer, it felt like fall.

It’s funny how that is, one day feels like one season and overnight it changes. There comes that day in spring, when you walk outside and you can smell the earth, winter is gone. A few months later you wake up one morning and it no longer feels like a damp cool spring day, it’s hot and humid, summer has arrived. Summer is replaced with the refreshing coolness of autumn and the winding down of the garden. Winter replaces the musty smell of fall on that day you notice there is no longer any distinguishable scent in the frosty air that burns when you take a breath.

It’s usually a feeling or a smell that triggers the change of seasons for me. It certainly feels like fall here at Chiot’s Run. The mornings are cool, the days are bright and sunny, the dying plants make a very specific rustling sound in the breeze, the air is filling with the smell of damp decay, signaling a time of rest and renewal. The coming of fall is filled with satisfying garden chores: clearing out the gardens, building compost piles, mulching, wrapping hydrangeas, planting cover crops and maybe a few last winter vegetables. I’m happy that it’s fall, even if it’s not “official” yet.

What things signal a change in the season for you?

A Few Beauties from Renee’s Garden

September 13th, 2011

Last year I was lucky enough to win a gift certificate from Renee’s Garden in their photo contest. It was really great to leaf through the catalog this spring and choose a few lovely things to grow in the garden. I chose mostly seeds for ornamental plants since I had already ordered my vegetable seeds. After planting them early this summer we had a big hailstorm and many washed away, but a few managed to survive. I was so happy to find some of them blooming when we got home from vacation.

Cardinal Climber Vine turned out to be quite a lovely vine. It’s vigorous and it’s tiny reddish pink blooms are like miniature morning glories. I wish they had started blooming earlier because the hummingbirds are supposed to love them, but they will all be migrating very shortly. I must start these indoors next spring to they bloom earlier. I planted them at the base of the gutters on my garage and on the side porch by the kitchen door. I’m hoping they set seed so I can save some to plant next year.

The Double Rose Bon Bon Cosmos are so fabulous, much more showy than the standard ones that spring up in my garden each year. They were a beautiful surprise in the lower new garden are when we returned home from vacation. I’ll be ordering more of these for sure. I won’t bother saving seed because they’ll probably revert back to standard zinnias if I try.

Sadly, I also planted seeds for Gulfwinds, Summer Peaches and Summer Romance Alyssum along with Shirley and Falling in Love Poppies and a few different kinds of larkspur of which all the seeds got washed away. I was really disappointed because I really love alyssum. I did get some marigolds that survived.

The Signet Starfire Marigolds did beautifully in both my new front garden and in one of the raised beds in the back. I must admit I usually am not a fan of marigolds but surprisingly I really love these little marigolds.

When I was getting the link for Renee’s I noticed they’re having a 40% off sale on their “packed for 2011” seeds. I think I’ll have to take a look at the list and choose a few more beauties for my garden next year, probably a few things I’ve never grown before. One of the things I really like about Renee’s Garden is that the packets don’t come with thousands of seeds in them. I like getting just enough for a home gardener like myself. The varieties they sell are tested for small home gardens. No doubt I’ll be sitting down here in the next few days with my seed box and figuring out what beauties I want to order for my garden next summer.

Did you plant any new beauties that you were especially fond of in your garden this year?

On Being Prepared

September 12th, 2011

Mr Chiots and I are campers, we love to tent camp and now we enjoy camping in our little camper. As we were traveling across the country we stayed in some campgrounds that were very nice with showers, laundry and swimming pools, but the majority of the time we were in campgrounds with pit toilets and some had no running water. We had no internet or cell phone service for most of our trip. We actually appreciate that part of camping, it’s a great way for us to take time off from our busy technology oriented life.

Camping is great preparation for those time when you’re without power because of a storm. You learn how to cook unconventionally, live on small amounts of water, and to live without electric, phone, TV, internet and refrigeration. You learn what supplies are necessary and which are not.


September is National Preparedness Month and I thought it was important to take some time to encourage any of you that haven’t to come up with an emergency plan and to get your emergency supplies in order. For an in depth post, head on over to Your Day to read up on Preparing for Emergencies. Head on over and share your emergency plans.

Are you a camper or do you prefer more plush accommodations when you travel?

About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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