a peek inside the fishbowl

This is a totally new discovery, and I am thrilled.

I LOVE ROASTED BEETS. And I never even knew it.

Here is the before picture:

And here is the after:

YES. That’s how good it was. The prep was a little messy (check out the evidence) but was worth it.

I found the recipe here (thanks Grrl!) but upon rereading it just now I realized (oh no!) that I totally messed up the recipe. I made it without lemon OR dressing. What a dork. Oh well. It was still very good. Here’s the version I ate, as pictured above:

3 medium-sized beets (I used one in my salad at lunch, one for my dinner and I have one for tomorrow. What is all of this going to do to my system?)
50 g goat cheese (I just piled it on without measuring. I like lots)
2 tbsp pine nuts (I didn’t have quite enough so I mixed in some slivered almonds as well)
green leaf lettuce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Trim leaves from beets.  Wrap beets in tin foil. Roast for about 1 hour (it really depends on the size of the beets). You might have to check them a few times. 

While the beets are roasting, toast the nuts in a dry frying pan over a medium heat. This takes about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside. 

When the beets are tender when tested with a knife, remove from oven.

Pinch skin off the beets. (Don’t wear fancy whites. I realized I had a better grip on the beets if I was holding a paper towel.)

Cut the beets into pieces (like the grrl, I like the look of beet slices, but cubes are fine). Set aside.

Place warm beets on greens, top with crumbled goat cheese, and sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts.

Anyway, yes. Roasted beets. Who knew?

The September challenge of the BlogHersAct is about reducing packaging and the extra junk that ends up in the landfill. Yay! This is a topic that is close to my heart. 

The post has features a lot of great tips for reducing the amount of packaging in all of our lives.

We already do a lot of things to cut down on packaging materials, even the ones that can be recycled.

- we don’t plastic one-use water bottles. We use our Nalgenes, which are slowly being replaced by stainless steel containers.

- we almost always drink our coffee at home or bring it in a thermos.

- we almost always use cloth grocery bags or bins. I keep the bins in the trunk of the car, that way I’m less likely to forget them. (But it happens!)

- we pack litterless lunches. We use Tupperware-type containers for sandwiches (no zip locks) and small snacks.

- we reduce, reuse, and recycle what we can, and we compost compost compost

When we bought Sarah’s back-to-school backpack it was stuffed with a ton of balled up paper, you know, just to make it puffy for the display. I unstuffed it and left the paper there. Seriously, who needs it? I’ve done that with new shoes too. I just leave the box and stuffing behind.

There is more we could be doing. For example, I would love to increase the amount of recharagable batteries we own and use them more often.  But overall, I know we’re doing a lot of things to decrease our ecological footprint: we own one car (and it’s fuel-efficient), we like to eat organically (and locally when possible), Mark has been biking to work, we walk the kids to school, we live in a small house, we don’t use herbicides/pesticides on our property, we let the grass grow long to cut down on mowing frequency (a push mower is coming soon), we buy secondhand, we have a rainbarrel, we have cut down on the amount of cleaning chemicals we use in and around out home, and (perhaps most importantly) we have modest needs and don’t often cave in to the lure of Fancy New Product and Gadgetry.

I don’t feel hard done by. I don’t feel put out by these things. I don’t see it as a hardship or a sacrifice. I feel happy we do these things.

–

Sue accused us of littering, in the comments of my August  30th Message in a bottle post.

To be honest, this did occur to me as we stood there on the Island Park Bridge with our plastic bottles in our hands. And perhaps it’s the optimist in me, but as they floated away I realized I really believed someone will find them and fish them out of the water. I don’t ordinarily throw garbage into our rivers. In fact, someone once encouraged Emma and Sarah to throw two pennies into a river (a different river)… like sort of a wishing well. This didn’t sit right with me, that’s how strongly I feel about polluting our rivers.

I don’t think Sue knows us very well, otherwise she wouldn’t have made that comment.

But it got me thinking: When should childhood fun be put aside for the environment? When should it not?

When we go camping I always buy the children some glowsticks. These are one-time-use-only, and are thrown in the garbage as soon as we’re finished with them.

When we have birthday parties we blow up balloons. These are one-time-use-only, and are thrown in the garbage as soon as we’re finished with them.

When we walk home from school sometimes we take a shortcut along a path that goes downhill through some trees. This is causing erosion.

In the summertime I make (and sometimes buy) bubble juice for blowing bubbles. Is this pollution? Think of the tons of the stuff that is made and sold every year. It has to end up somewhere. Should we stop buying it, to help save the environment?

Sometimes, when we’re at a restaurant, the girls use a disposable drinking straw, yet I don’t buy cheap markers from the dollar store because I know they’re just a piece of crap that’s going to end up in the garbage.

We’re living in an interesting age. I was just talking to a neighbor, we were laughing about how silly it is, about how guilty we feel when we forget to bring our cloth grocery bags to the store and sneak home carry all those plastic bags.

Where our family has drawn the line might be different from where other people (like Sue) has drawn the line.

This particular kind of awareness is relatively new to me. I didn’t feel the same way five years ago. Environmentalism has become our new religion. Many people’s views are shifting, just like ours have, but at a different pace. I still can’t believe how many shopping carts I see, overflowing with plastic bags. “Wow, that’s bad,” I think. But then again, someone might look at my children throwing plastic bottles into the river and think that we’re bad too.

It all depends on where you are, doesn’t it?

Supplies needed: chalk or sidewalk paint, stones/bottlecaps or bean bags. Flat stones are best. They don’t roll! 

Playing hopscotch is easy. First, make the paint to create your hopscotch grid.

The one above was made with equal parts cornstarch and water and a few drops of electric blue food colouring. But chalk works just fine too.

If you’re the first player you throw your marker on the number one (the closest square), hop over it, moving up to ten, hopping on each square. All hops are done on one foot for each “single” square, unless there are two squares are side by side, in which case you hop down on both feet. Once you get to ten you must turn around and hop back again, carefully bending down to pick up the marker on the way back. You can’t lose your balance and you must always remain on that one foot.

For your next turn you need to throw your marker so it hits the #2 and so on.

You lose your turn if your marker doesn’t hit your intended square, if you lose your balance on the hopscotch grid, or if you forget to hop over your square.

p.s. just for fun, try searching Flickr for the term “hopscotch” and you’ll get a lot of sweet pics.