What is a GMO, anyway?

May 2, 2011 By thesurvivalmama 1 Comment

Genetically Modified Organisms and You

Spring is finally kicking Winter out of the beds around here…and Revellie is here to spread some of her wisdom just in time for the warmer weather. (it snowed on Saturday, BTW)

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This month we are going to move into the kitchen for the blog. The garden has to wait for the last frost to pass. Chickens and Turkeys aren’t born yet (still in the incubator) and I want Josh to help me write the blog on goats.

We have been trying to eliminate GMO food products (Genetically Modified Organism). Luckily this is most processed food so since we don’t buy too much of that to begin with we are pretty safe. However, when it comes to things like peanut butter, jam, bread, etc we have to be more careful. I make as much as I can at home and look for organic or non-GMO labeled foods. (on a side note, please be aware that companies that use GMO do not want companies that do not to have the right to label food as “non-GMO”).

What is a GMO?

GMO plants have been altered to take on a specific trait. For example corn has been genetically altered to produce its own pesticide. This is weird because I never thought of my food as needing a dual purpose…”hmmm you know what would make this corn on the cob even better? The ability to kill bugs.”

What foods to stay away from?

soy, corn, and sneaky products made from them (ascobic acid, lecithin, vegetable oils, Baking Powder
Cellulose, Ethyl acetate, Fructose, Fumaric Acid, Gluten, Invert Sugar, Saccharin, Sorbitol, Sucrose, Xanthan Gum, Xylitol)

Please know that we are not 100% non-GMO but we are trying. And its important to keep in mind that I like 2 words…”easy” and “inexpensive”. Making it myself saves money so then I can buy organic for the things that I don’t want to make. So how do I do this for my family? I have linked to some of the recipes I have used and liked.

Baking Powder:

Substitute 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar and 1/4 tsp. baking soda for each teaspoon of baking powder called for in the recipe.

Vegetable Oils:

We spend the extra money for non-GMO canola oil, organic olive oil, and coconut oil.

Cornstarch:

use arrow root

Soy:

We just say no.

Diet soda:

I love diet soda so this one is hard for me. Zevia is really expensive so we don’t buy it that often. Blue Sky makes one with stevia as well and is less expensive.

Peanut Butter:

The stuff in the jar is full of oils that are corn based. Find an organic, non-gmo jar of peanut butter (I found one at the chain grocery store down the street from our house) or use the peanut butter machine at the store.

Jam/Jelly/Preserves:

These are usually full of some sort of corn syrup or if they are organic they are outrageously priced. We make our own freezer jam without pectin. I look for fruit on sale and freeze it. Or I buy frozen organic fruit.

Bread: we make our own but there should be a local bread store in your town. I made my own french bread over the weekend. It was amazing.

Soup:

Make your own. Just throw things in a pot with some stock. For example: 3 cups stock, 2 cups tomato sauce, some milk, some arrowroot (to thicken), oregano, salt and pepper make a great tomato soup that was super fast and easy (dinner and dishes done by 7pm last night). The kids at it all up!

Enjoy!!

Between guest posts here, you can listen to The Goat Cast or come check out Healing Mom.

Revellie Pope

www.healingmom.org

http://thegoatcast.blogspot.com

Filed Under: Organic Tagged With: education, food, guest, jen greyson

When Good Things Sprout Indoors.

March 21, 2011 By thesurvivalmama 1 Comment

Guess who gets to post the first post on the new site??

Can I get a big round of applause for Revellie, back this month with goodness about gardening INDOORS!

(and I’ve totally broken comments on this post….crap)

Spring is here! And, for those of us who enjoy gardening, sprouting has begun indoors.

Image: nuchylee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The reward of watching something grow from seed in just a few days. Sometimes I feel like that is the only truly successful part of gardening I am good at.

But did you know that you can sprout every day of the year and reap the benefits of the freshest nutrition out there?

You have seen bean and alfalfa sprouts in the grocery store, on Mediterranean food, Subway… You can grow these at home very very very (did I say “very”?) easily.

You need 3 things:

Sprouting tray (or jar) (we use the SproutMaster – it cost us about $15)
seeds (you can get these at your local health food stores – range in price but usually around $3 for 4 oz. I likeMountainRoseHerbs prices)
water

There are only 3 steps:

soak the sprouts overnight
pour seeds onto tray
rinse with water every morning and every evening for 3-5 days (until you see sprouts)

There are 3 reasons to Sprout:

Nutrition

Sprouts provide the highest amount of vitamins, minerals, proteins and enzymes of any food per unit of calorie, sprouts deliver them in a form which is easily assimilated and digested. In fact, sprouts improve the efficiency of digestion.

Cost Effectiveness

A pound of alfalfa greens for example starts with only 5 tablespoons of seeds costing about 25 cents.

Ease

Green thumb not required!

The coolest thing about sprouts is that we have fresh greens all winter long. We don’t have to rely on old greens from the store shipped to us from a land far far away. We use sprouts in place of lettuce for sandwiches and salads, put them on eggs, in omelets, in burritos, wraps, and whatever else Josh creatively comes up with.

There are also a lot of different sprout varieties. I am in no way an expert and go off of taste more than anything. I like seed sprouts like mustard, radish, broccoli, and clover. Josh is more of a been sprout guy. He likes mung beans and lentils. I usually just throw seeds and beans in together (about 5 tablespoons a week for our family of 6). We started sprouting using a mix of seeds and beans that some companies package as a “Pro-Vita” mix. It is great tasting. I only started added more seeds that had more of spicy kick after sprouting for a few months.

There are also tons of health benefits but we just stick to the fresh tasting reasons.

If you sprout – use this forum to share stories and blends that you like and who you like to get your seeds or beans from.

Between guest posts here, you can listen to The Goat Cast or come check out Healing Mom.

Revellie Pope

www.healingmom.org

http://thegoatcast.blogspot.com

Filed Under: Gardening, Organic Tagged With: food, gardening, guest

In the beginning….there were chickens – Guest Post

January 24, 2011 By thesurvivalmama 7 Comments

Revellie is back!

Since I’m hanging out at the Energy Solutions arena this morning collecting canned food for the Utah Food Bank, Revellie was gracious enough to step in and entertain you.

(don’t forget, if you swing by the arena between 6 and 9 am, and bring 10 cans of food, you’ll get a FREE pass to the Disney on Ice show coming in March!)

For my second blog, I thought I would start where Josh and I started…Chickens. Backyard chickens have been a recent hot topic for us hip urban convenience environmentalists (don’t get upset…I am lumping myself in there too). This IS a good thing though on many levels (click on the links below for more information – that was the plan but then I found http://www.mypetchicken.com/backyard-chickens/chicken-care/chapter-1-why-chickens.aspx which pretty much summed it up for me).
    •    Chickens are pretty awesome and personable creatures.
    •    Happy eggs come from happy chickens.
    •    Stickin’ it to the Man.
    •    Grateful gardens.

We started off with 4 chickens and a converted rabbit hutch (basically a rabbit hutch with the front panel cut out and 2 laying boxes attached). We were worried about them flying away and neighborhood cats getting wind of them so we locked them in the hutch at night. We actually did lose a one of our Leghorns one evening. Josh and I wanted to look in the neighbors back yards but did not know how to start that conversation with them. Later we found the chicken in a tree (something we still laugh about today).

Then we found a very inexpensive dog run on our local community ad site (similar to CraigsList). That became our chicken run. We put a piece of variegated metal (purchased at discount from a scrap metal yard) on the top of it for a roof. Ahhh… shelter for our chickens.

But wait! We have done all this work and still no eggs. So, I called Christy at SunnyBrooke farms whom we had purchased the chicken from (we are good friends now but she did not know us from a hole in the wall when I called her that day). I wanted to know what we were doing wrong since our chickens weren’t laying eggs yet. I went through all of our careful preparation. The chicken run, the reading, the saving of the chicken from the tree, the careful measuring of food as specified on the bag… I can’t remember at what point she started laughing at me but I remember feeling not so smart even after all the chicken research I had done. Here are the two things she told me:
• Chickens need to eat every day. If they are hungry, feed them.
• Chickens need to be in a certain weight range before they start laying eggs.

Also, I learned that an egg is…well…an egg just like ours (females) but it gets released everyday not just once a month. So after laughing at ourselves for a few weeks for our naivety, our chickens started laying eggs. We were on cloud nine.

Here are a few other tidbits I have learned about chickens.
    •    When they get use to you, they really perk up when you come around. If you are not going to eat them, then they will make pretty cool pets. I have had one take something right out of my hand. We also had a bantam (tiny chicken breed) that sat on my shoes every time I came out to visit her.
    •    Chickens love dust baths and will dig a hole and just lie in it.
    •    Chickens love digging (they dug up all my strawberries!). We put them in our garden (after seeing what they did to my strawberries) and they prepped it for spring for me.
    •    Chickens love worms and snails. Throw them a snail and watch them chase each other around. We also watched one kill a mouse the other day.

I can see that this is getting quite long and I wanted to talk about ducks as well. I may have to do a part two so I can share with you about how we discovered ducks.

As I close, please know you do not have to get chickens. It’s not a lot of work but it is still a commitment and if you can’t make the commitment, please don’t. If you want to make a difference, consider buying local farm fresh eggs. Not the “organic” eggs from the grocery store. We all know that “organic” and “free-range” are loosely defined for massed produced products (it doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out). By buying farm fresh eggs you will also get awesome eggs, keep your dollars local, and your carbon footprint will be minimal (a semi-truck did not deliver your eggs).

If you can’t wait to hear what I have to say about ducks, you can listen to The Goat Cast (thegoatcast.blogspot.com) for a more in depth approach and hear Josh interview Christy Brown from SunnyBrooke Farms (she has become our in-house expert on all things avian).

Revellie Pope

www.healingmom.org

http://thegoatcast.blogspot.com