Happy Monday! So excited to share this post with you...
There is a quaint little restaurant called The Farmhouse Cafe & Tea Room tucked in the hills of Brown County about 35 minutes outside of Bloomington. It's kinda out of the way, but totally worth the drive. I treated my mom to a birthday lunch here and we loved everything about this place.
It's a beautiful little tea room and they have great patio space and places to eat on the porch too. They have wonderful chicken salad sandwiches and seriously the best lemonade I've ever tasted!
They have old barns filled with garden accessories and greenhouses overflowing with plants. It took a lot of restraint for my mom and me not to buy every cute thing we saw. The plant selection is great with lots of hanging plants, flowering plants for landscaping, hostas, rose bushes, annuals, perennials, and even fruit trees.
This is a perfect place to bring a group of friends and enjoy a lunch out on the patio and then spend some time walking around the grounds.
Earth Day is coming up in a couple of days. Ever since I can remember, Earth Day was a favorite of mine. My mom can tell stories about how my activism for the Earth started at a very young age. I was obsessed with making sure no one on ever littered and I would cry about the trees in the Rainforest that were being cut down. I would even on occasion make all of my neighborhood friends pick up trash on any given Saturday. I would drag bags of trash into our driveway and my mom would have to figure out what to do with all of it.
It's no surprise that taking care of the planet is still important to me now. As I've gotten older and run a household, I'm finding out that taking care of the planet is harder than just reduce, reuse, recycle. We live in a society that is built around consumption and all this consumption is doing harmful things to the planet. Here are some small things that you can do in your everyday life to help out.
Reusable Grocery Bags
Reusable grocery bags are how I really started getting into running a greener household. They are relatively cheap and once you start using them, you will never go back. I can fit SO much more groceries in one of those sacks then I can in five of those tiny, flimsy plastic ones. If you are like me and you have a tendency to forget your grocery bags at home, keep a few in the trunk of your car. I have a few different types of reusable bags, but these are my favorite!
Drinking Tap Water
Where do I start with this one? Bottled water is an industry filled with craziness. We have water (which Americans already have access to) shipped across the country just so we can have it in bottles and have the chance to prefer a certain brand over another. The amount of money in oil spent to make these bottles and to ship them is insane. Next time instead of reaching for the convenience of a plastic bottle that will be thrown away, grab your own water bottle and fill it up yourself.
Making Food From Scratch
While making food from scratch has several great benefits, cutting back on artificial ingredients, tastes better, costs less, and cuts back on plastic packaging.
Biking
My husband and I recently purchased bicycles. We love them! We are fortunate enough to live in a bike-friendly town and we can't wait to ride bikes more often in place of driving cars around town. This takes a little more forethought, like finding bike routes, leaving enough time arrive at places and thinking about the weather.
This is a few years old, but a nice little Earth Day gem. The Story of Stuff!
Yesterday Victoria and I spent a couple hours putting in our first seeds in our little slice of earth. We drastically overestimated how much space we would have and decided to not plant cauliflower and beans because we were running out of room.
We loved there was a garden expert there and she was helpful with some things we weren't so sure of. She gave us the advice of putting compost in each row that we dug instead of spreading it all over the plot. Speaking of compost, I learned yesterday that compost is not always just ready to put on the bed. You have to wait until its far along in the decomposing process. You can still use it (which we did!) but you have to sift it before it's ready to use. Lesson learned: sifting compost is hard work. I kept getting the sifter too compacted and then nothing would sift through the bottom of it.
I was kinda dreading the first plant because sometimes it's hard to get into the swing of things and unnerving when we weren't always sure of what we should be doing, but we had a quite a refreshing morning in the garden.
Cutest thing that we saw while we were there was a dad riding bikes with his three little kids to the garden. The little kids were so excited to be there and couldn't wait to help pick some lettuce. It gives me hope that there really are families out there that still care about creation and think it's important to get kids excited and involved early.
Our gardening adventure begin on Sunday! We have been waiting for this day for weeks now. It will be here soon and the bad news is... it's suppose to rain. And of course, not just a little rain, but a lot of rain.
Victoria broke the weather news to me on Tuesday and told me not to get my hopes up for planting on Sunday. There is a 30% chance of rain. I'm crossing my fingers that the percentage will diminish as we get closer to Sunday.
I'm not as nervous about getting a late start to planting because of how cold, in true Indiana fashion, these last couple of days have been. So, when the weather cooperates hopefully we will be ready to do our tilling and planting.
I hope by early next week, I will have a post filled to the brim with pictures of our first work day in our garden.
Today we remember Jesus' death on the cross. I've been reflecting on this passage all day:
"But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed." -Isaiah 53:5-
It is a day in our liturgical calendar that is marked with sorrow and pain. It's hard to leave a Good Friday service feeling good or hopeful about anything, but the sacrifice on the cross had to happen so mankind could be healed, reconciled and made whole.
I'm so grateful that this isn't the end of the story. It gets better...
During my junior year of college, I took a class on edible plants. We spent most of the semester forging through the woods and identifying plants that we could eat. Our final project was to create a presentation about nature that was interesting and entertaining... these ranged from someone making persimmon pudding to playing edible flower BINGO. My project was about butterfly gardens and the benefit of them. I basically did it because I thought flowers were pretty and I wasn't all that interested in edible plants.
There was a student in the class that was very intrigued by edible plants and the benefit that they could have in feeding communities. Her project is one that I will never forget. She drew a huge tree in the center of the poster board and starting with the closest to the tree she drew plants that would do well in all shade and the row after that she drew plants that worked well in shade and were compatible with the plants in the previous row. The whole poster board was filled with mushrooms, vegetables, fruit and flowers that all were interconnected. All these plants had these characteristics that made them great planting buddies. I remember after she was done presenting our professor told her how beautiful and harmonious of a project it was. I didn't get it at the time how important it was to have a mindset like hers. I understand it a little better now.
So when I think of garden layout, my mind goes to that poster board in front of the class with plants drawn in pencil. We are going to be planting our peas on one end of the garden (to give them room for staking), tomatoes will have their own little area with cages around them. Carrots and lettuce will be planted next to each other in rows. There are still some that we haven't figured out where we want to put them yet.
How about you, any method to where you plant your vegetables in your garden?
As I expressed last week, my hopes for Menu Monday is for it to become a post that will help all of us think creatively when it comes to feeding ourselves and our families with in season food. Since, I don't have any garden loot to cook with yet, I thought I would post a fun healthy snack that is in season year round.
These pita chips are a snack food regular at our house. They are quick, easy to make and delicious. I use this pita bread recipe to make the actual bread. When I don't have time or the ingredients, I just use pita bread from the store.
I use to think that there was no sense in making bread from scratch. It looked daunting and quite honestly, I didn't think I had the time for it. So, I kept buying loaves of bread from the store. Then one day, this wonderful blog came into my life and showed me that making bread didn't have to be so scary. If bread making still seems difficult, start with quick breads and work your way up. Homemade bread tastes better and they don't have all the chemical preservatives that store bought bread has in it.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, for brushing the pita chips
2 Tbsp Red Pepper Flakes
1 Tbsp Dried Italian Seasoning
1 Tbsp Garlic Salt
1 tsp Cumin
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut pita bread into triangles. Spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Use a pastry brush to coat each chip with extra virgin olive oil. Sprinkle spices over each chip. These chips can be on the spicy side, so feel free to adjust the seasoning to your liking. Bake for 7 minutes or until crispy.
