Posts Tagged ‘Fruits Vegetables’
Starting Where You Live
With much of the country shaking off the last remnants of winter it looks forward to the opening of Farmer’s Markets; the burst of colorful vegetables, the smell of fresh produce and the variety of foods that can be found. But, with these new beginnings I can’t help but think back a few years to when I was working on a nutrition program with a local youth organization. The goal of the program was to encourage kids to eat a more healthy diet full of fruits and vegetables.
My goal was to get the kids to try fruits and vegetables, grown in our county, that they may have never eaten before. The primary teacher of the program encouraged the kids to dip their veggies in Ranch Dressing or sour cream based vegetable dips and their fruit slices in a sweet cream sauce or caramel. Not exactly what I would call healthful eating. Were our goals at odds? Were we at cross purposes?
When I was growing up my mom always insisted that food was best eaten plain or almost plain so the natural flavors and goodness could shine through. There was never any reason to drown carrots or celery in Ranch Dressing or slices of apple, pear or peach in sweetened sauces. Their freshness and natural sweetness was their own dressing.
Over the next few weeks the class grew. More and more kids joined us for the daily lecture on nutrition. But, more importantly, each day those kids sat down at the table and “ate” the fruits and vegetables we put in front of them. Most of what we served was locally grown, but not much of it was out of the ordinary.
Still, I think there is a greater point to this story:
Honey Bee Crisis = Food Crisis
Over the last three years more than one in three honey bee colonies has died nationwide, posing a serious risk to our natural food supply. One cause for the losses is a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder, or “CCD.” When a hive experiences CCD, honey bees mysteriously abandon their hive and die. Researchers don’t know exactly what causes CCD, but believe some contributing factors may be viruses, mites, chemical exposure and poor nutrition.
Why is this a crisis? Because, honey bees are responsible for pollinating one-third of our country’s natural foods. Think about it…one out of every three bites of food an average American eats has been pollinated by a honey bee. These industrious workers are responsible for pollinating more than 100 different varieties of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, and they provide 80 percent of the country’s pollination services. The honey bee is responsible for $15 billion in U.S. agricultural crops each year because they fly up to 15 miles per hour and visit about 50 to 100 flowers on each pollination trip. It takes 2 million flower visits, covering 55,000 miles to make one pound of honey. When a honey bee returns to the hive after finding a good pollen source, it gives out samples of the flower’s nectar to its hive mates and performs a dance that details the distance, direction, quality and quantity of the food supply. The richer the food source, the longer and more vigorous the dance.
What can homesteaders do to preserve the hum of honey bees and thereby help sustain their own gardens and production? Plant a seed! It’s that simple. Read the rest of the story »
Food Storage Fundamentals
One of the goals of any homestead is to ultimately provide homegrown fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy. And a “suburban homestead” is no different. But, we all have to eat while the homestead “gets off the ground”. Along with that, we should always be prepared to survive what ever natural disasters frequent the area of the country we live in. One way to do this is with long-term food storage.
Now, more than ever, the topic of food storage is being discussed from coffee houses to corner offices. The more information we hear about the depth of our economic challenges, the length of time it will take to fully recover and the predictions about food shortages, the more families are turning to storing food.
With all the information swirling around the actual process of figuring out what to store, how much to store, where to store it and what to store it in can be quite daunting.
The websites below give great information about the entire process.
The University of Utah website gives a concise easy to understand overview of the need and process of food storage; while the food calculator you’ll find here is a great tool to figure out “how much” of each food item your family should store.
Food Storage Made Easy is a fun website that can address all your questions about food storage. It also has a lot of great examples and photos of what a food storage pantry looks like.
I haven’t mentioned food storage containers mainly because I prefer the more frugal approach of getting food grade buckets from donut shops or deli. If that’s not your style, you can Google food storage containers, there are lots of choices.
The best way to make it through any disaster, whether natural or man-made is to be prepared. But, remember this is a process that can be done over time; adding storage items to your weekly or monthly shopping. Or, whenever you find great sales on the foods your family enjoys. It doesn’t have to be done all at once.
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