Our little butterfly garden is going to be certified as an official Monarch Waystation! I found a website tonight called "Monarch Watch" and poked around, only to find out that they have a certification program. They need as many people as possible to plant milkweed and other nectar plants for the Monarchs since they are losing so much of their natural habitat. Butterflies are yet another casualty of modern farming practices; sigh. The evil corporations that brought us genetically engineered crops made it possible for farmers to use Round Up as much as they want; it won't kill the corn or whatever the farm is growing. What it does kill is milkweed. Get the connection? No milkweed, no Monarch butterflies. Well, all in the name of profits, right?
Anyway, the website explains it better than I can given I'm coming down with a cold and my brain is foggy anyway, so go check it out for yourself. Remember anything underlined is CLICKABLE and will lead you to something interesting!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Meatless Monday Report
Our first "Meatless Monday" was a success! We had Black Bean Patties with rice, applesauce, and carrot salad for lunch and Pasta and Bean soup with a baguette for dinner. The kids were happy, DH and I were happy, and I don't think anyone was even tempted to sneak any meat products. It was a vegetarian day as opposed to vegan since we had mayo (made with egg) in the carrot salad and DH added butter to the pasta and bean soup. No creatures had to die for us to eat yesterday, though, so that's a good thing, and definitely a step in the right direction for my family.
One of my fondest hopes for my kids is that one or more of them will turn out to be vegetarian (or vegan). I'd be so proud! :)
On a side note, I did have kind of a funny moment at the grocery store. I realized I needed to buy chicken for today, not a meatless day, but it was Monday. Does "Meatless Monday" mean I can't buy meat on Monday, either? Of course I have to decide for myself, and I decided it would probably not be honoring the spirit of our promise if I buy meat on Mondays, so I didn't. If we didn't have what we needed already in the freezer, we would have to figure something else out.
One of my fondest hopes for my kids is that one or more of them will turn out to be vegetarian (or vegan). I'd be so proud! :)
On a side note, I did have kind of a funny moment at the grocery store. I realized I needed to buy chicken for today, not a meatless day, but it was Monday. Does "Meatless Monday" mean I can't buy meat on Monday, either? Of course I have to decide for myself, and I decided it would probably not be honoring the spirit of our promise if I buy meat on Mondays, so I didn't. If we didn't have what we needed already in the freezer, we would have to figure something else out.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Beat-the-Blahs Basic Black Bean Patties
Here it is, at long last, our favorite vegan recipe. We usually eat this once a week and pair it with a carrot salad, rice, and applesauce. I use the applesauce like an actual sauce and spoon it right over the bean cakes and rice.
Beat-the-Blahs Basic Black Bean Patties
From Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out
By Jon Robertson with Robin Robertson
Reprinted with permission from Robin Robertson
“These incredibly tasty patties can be served with a variety of sauces. It all depends on what flavor you’re in the mood for. The spicy peanut sauce works great, but so do the salsa and barbecue sauce.”
One 16-ounce can diced white potatoes, drained
One 15.5-ounce can black beans, drained (and rinsed, if possible)
1 tablespoon dehydrated minced onion
1 teaspoon dried parsley
¼ cup dried bread crumbs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1. In a large bowl mash the potatoes and beans with a potato ricer until broken up. Add the onion, parsley, and bread crumbs, and then salt and pepper to taste. Mix until well combined.
2. Divide the mixture into 6 equal portions and use your hands to shape into patties.
3. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook the bean patties until golden brown on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels and serve hot with your favorite sauce.
Makes 6 patties.
Apocalypse Chow is one of my favorite cookbooks since it has recipes that use non-perishable ingredients AND, since the recipes are delicious and filling, oh, and vegan, it has opened my eyes to the possibility that we might just be able to start phasing meat out of our diet. It also has lots of advice about emergency preparedness and how to, as the title states, eat well when the power goes out, which is a situation you can easily find yourself in living in a hurricane prone area. The power not only can go out, it can go out for an extended period of time! Unfortunately the book is now out of print.
Fortunately Robin Robertson has several other cookbooks. I'm currently enjoying reading through the recipes in Vegan Planet. I haven't tried any of them out yet because I haven't had it very long, but several of them look promising for our Meatless Mondays.
PS: I actually tried to do the picture thing for the Black Bean Patties but they didn't come out well so I'm not posting them at this point. My photography skills need some work if I'm going to live up to the food blogs!! ;)
Beat-the-Blahs Basic Black Bean Patties
From Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out
By Jon Robertson with Robin Robertson
Reprinted with permission from Robin Robertson
“These incredibly tasty patties can be served with a variety of sauces. It all depends on what flavor you’re in the mood for. The spicy peanut sauce works great, but so do the salsa and barbecue sauce.”
One 16-ounce can diced white potatoes, drained
One 15.5-ounce can black beans, drained (and rinsed, if possible)
1 tablespoon dehydrated minced onion
1 teaspoon dried parsley
¼ cup dried bread crumbs
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1. In a large bowl mash the potatoes and beans with a potato ricer until broken up. Add the onion, parsley, and bread crumbs, and then salt and pepper to taste. Mix until well combined.
2. Divide the mixture into 6 equal portions and use your hands to shape into patties.
3. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook the bean patties until golden brown on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels and serve hot with your favorite sauce.
Makes 6 patties.
Apocalypse Chow is one of my favorite cookbooks since it has recipes that use non-perishable ingredients AND, since the recipes are delicious and filling, oh, and vegan, it has opened my eyes to the possibility that we might just be able to start phasing meat out of our diet. It also has lots of advice about emergency preparedness and how to, as the title states, eat well when the power goes out, which is a situation you can easily find yourself in living in a hurricane prone area. The power not only can go out, it can go out for an extended period of time! Unfortunately the book is now out of print.
Fortunately Robin Robertson has several other cookbooks. I'm currently enjoying reading through the recipes in Vegan Planet. I haven't tried any of them out yet because I haven't had it very long, but several of them look promising for our Meatless Mondays.
PS: I actually tried to do the picture thing for the Black Bean Patties but they didn't come out well so I'm not posting them at this point. My photography skills need some work if I'm going to live up to the food blogs!! ;)
Friday, July 24, 2009
Caterpillars!
We have caterpillars on our milkweed, and LOTS of them! The Middle Child counted 15 of them yesterday all in various sizes. We can't wait to see our first chrysalis. You can see two of them in the first picture and one in the second hanging from the back of a leaf, where we find them most often. They are just like The Very Hungry Caterpillar (except they only eat milkweed).
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Meatless Mondays
Here's a break from the museum posts for a moment to bring you this public service announcement about Meatless Monday. Meatless Monday is a movement trying to get everyone to pledge to go meatless on Mondays which will benefit the planet by reducing the amount of meat we consume and therefore the amount of meat produced. The website contends that the meat industry is highly inefficient and uses vast quantities of our natural resources for very little relative return. It's also a health initiative since our high consumption of red meat in the US contributes to many illnesses such as cardio vascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.
If you've jumped on the green bandwagon, if you take your own bags to the grocery, if you have fluorescent light bulbs in your lamps, if you recycle, if you use recycled products or you've made any type of commitment to help our planet, then this is a natural next step for you. (Unless you're already a vegetarian or vegan, of course, for which you have my applause!) My family has a favorite vegetarian meal that we will be scheduling for Mondays (and I'll type up the recipe for the main course for an upcoming post) and I'll be hunting for more recipes on my favorite vegetarian/vegan websites. The kids are even on board- we talked about it at dinner today and everyone agreed that we won't eat meat on Mondays anymore, and they watched while I filled in the pledge on the website.
I've always admired people who've made the commitment to be vegetarians and I've kind of wanted to move in that direction for a long time but I like my dead cow, unfortunately, and I don't know what I'd EAT if I gave it up. By going at it one meal at a time, and now one whole day at a time, I can move in that direction and figure out what my family will eat at a more manageable pace. The new term that's being bandied about now is "flexitarian" and that's what I'm aiming for. Not vegetarian fully or all at once, but moving towards the vegetarian end of the spectrum in our overall diet both for the health of my family and the planet.
If you've jumped on the green bandwagon, if you take your own bags to the grocery, if you have fluorescent light bulbs in your lamps, if you recycle, if you use recycled products or you've made any type of commitment to help our planet, then this is a natural next step for you. (Unless you're already a vegetarian or vegan, of course, for which you have my applause!) My family has a favorite vegetarian meal that we will be scheduling for Mondays (and I'll type up the recipe for the main course for an upcoming post) and I'll be hunting for more recipes on my favorite vegetarian/vegan websites. The kids are even on board- we talked about it at dinner today and everyone agreed that we won't eat meat on Mondays anymore, and they watched while I filled in the pledge on the website.
I've always admired people who've made the commitment to be vegetarians and I've kind of wanted to move in that direction for a long time but I like my dead cow, unfortunately, and I don't know what I'd EAT if I gave it up. By going at it one meal at a time, and now one whole day at a time, I can move in that direction and figure out what my family will eat at a more manageable pace. The new term that's being bandied about now is "flexitarian" and that's what I'm aiming for. Not vegetarian fully or all at once, but moving towards the vegetarian end of the spectrum in our overall diet both for the health of my family and the planet.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Musée de l’Orangerie, part 4 of 13ish
Musée de l’Orangerie, Wednesday, May 13:
This small museum located very close to the Louvre in the Tuileries Gardens contains my favorite work of art from the trip, Monet’s Water Lilies. According to the audio guide the two rooms containing the Water Lilies were designed by Monet himself specifically to hold those pieces. They took my breath away. (The Eldest laughed at me for crying over paintings, but they moved me!) There are other works at the Orangerie; they are all a blur, but I will never forget the Water Lilies.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Musée d’Orsay, part 3 of 13ish
The Eldest looking at the sculptures of the women from every continent.
Me on one of the walkways; there are a lot of stairs to get to the upper rooms, which are located around the sides of the building leaving the center open.
The railroad clock; you can't sense the scale from this picture but it's giganto!
Some of the elaborate architectural detailing. This isn't one of the exhibits, it's part of the ceiling!
The nymph sculpture; I think she's charming.
There were a couple of rooms with home furnishings. (You can see me in the mirror; mostly The Eldest said "move, you're in the picture", but she got me inadvertently this time!)
Musée d’Orsay, Tuesday, May 12:
This was one of our favorite museums; it's so much more manageable than the Louvre since it's much smaller and I like the art from the time periods it covers. When we biked by the outside of the d’Orsay our tour guide told us the d’Orsay picks up where the Louvre leaves off chronologically. When we got there we found that the art starts outside the museum with the native women sculptures, one from each continent. (Pictured above) Inside, we saw a ton of impressionist works including a self portrait by Van Gogh. (I was disappointed that Starry Night wasn’t there since it was on tour; I found out later that it was an earlier version of Starry Night and not the famous one from 1889. I would have liked to have seen it anyway.) We also saw Whistler’s Mother which surprised me because of its size; it’s huge! I really liked it though; I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time studying it but the colors were so crisp, even though he mainly used blacks, grays, and white, and there was such richness and detail, even in the curtains. The museum itself is a converted railway station that was built back in the day when these kinds of things were treated like luxuries. They left many of the railway station trappings such as the large clock, and although there aren’t any train tracks, you can see where they were by the alley like depression that runs through the middle of the bottom floor, which is now full of sculptures. The rooms off to the sides of the main display area, presumably where the rich folks waited for their trains, are full of elaborate architectural detail. This was no government issue, standardized boring train station; this place was ELEGANT. (And still is.)
One of the more unexpected exhibits was the scale model of the Opera District. It’s designed to be viewed from the top and is placed down in a well in the floor with Plexiglas over the top of it so you can walk over it, and it’s huge! It takes up a very large space. There’s also a cross section of the opera house as well that’s fascinating in its intricacy; I was enchanted. I was also enchanted, as so many have been before me, by the Degas sculpture Little Dancer, Age 14 they have on display. She is so small and lovely; I was happy to find a pink T-shirt with her image on it to send home to The Middle Child. I also liked the sculpture of a young girl or nymph pulling her hair back as if she just rose up out of the water; she has such an impish look on her face. (Pictured) I remember so many of the works at this museum; while I enjoyed and appreciated the older works at the National Gallery and the Louvre, for some reason I responded more to the art work from the time period covered at the d’Orsay.
Me on one of the walkways; there are a lot of stairs to get to the upper rooms, which are located around the sides of the building leaving the center open.
The railroad clock; you can't sense the scale from this picture but it's giganto!
Some of the elaborate architectural detailing. This isn't one of the exhibits, it's part of the ceiling!
The nymph sculpture; I think she's charming.
There were a couple of rooms with home furnishings. (You can see me in the mirror; mostly The Eldest said "move, you're in the picture", but she got me inadvertently this time!)
Musée d’Orsay, Tuesday, May 12:
This was one of our favorite museums; it's so much more manageable than the Louvre since it's much smaller and I like the art from the time periods it covers. When we biked by the outside of the d’Orsay our tour guide told us the d’Orsay picks up where the Louvre leaves off chronologically. When we got there we found that the art starts outside the museum with the native women sculptures, one from each continent. (Pictured above) Inside, we saw a ton of impressionist works including a self portrait by Van Gogh. (I was disappointed that Starry Night wasn’t there since it was on tour; I found out later that it was an earlier version of Starry Night and not the famous one from 1889. I would have liked to have seen it anyway.) We also saw Whistler’s Mother which surprised me because of its size; it’s huge! I really liked it though; I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time studying it but the colors were so crisp, even though he mainly used blacks, grays, and white, and there was such richness and detail, even in the curtains. The museum itself is a converted railway station that was built back in the day when these kinds of things were treated like luxuries. They left many of the railway station trappings such as the large clock, and although there aren’t any train tracks, you can see where they were by the alley like depression that runs through the middle of the bottom floor, which is now full of sculptures. The rooms off to the sides of the main display area, presumably where the rich folks waited for their trains, are full of elaborate architectural detail. This was no government issue, standardized boring train station; this place was ELEGANT. (And still is.)
One of the more unexpected exhibits was the scale model of the Opera District. It’s designed to be viewed from the top and is placed down in a well in the floor with Plexiglas over the top of it so you can walk over it, and it’s huge! It takes up a very large space. There’s also a cross section of the opera house as well that’s fascinating in its intricacy; I was enchanted. I was also enchanted, as so many have been before me, by the Degas sculpture Little Dancer, Age 14 they have on display. She is so small and lovely; I was happy to find a pink T-shirt with her image on it to send home to The Middle Child. I also liked the sculpture of a young girl or nymph pulling her hair back as if she just rose up out of the water; she has such an impish look on her face. (Pictured) I remember so many of the works at this museum; while I enjoyed and appreciated the older works at the National Gallery and the Louvre, for some reason I responded more to the art work from the time period covered at the d’Orsay.
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