Consumable Earth – Kamloops

The water from our washing machine is going to be drained into a garbage can that sits beside it. There is room there because we don’t have a dryer. When I was hooking up the washing machine I discovered that what came out the back of it was a hose that I was supposed to shove into a tube that led to the sewer. What a waste! Not to mention that soap has long been touted as a gentle insecticide so my soapy water also keeps the bugs out of my garden, bonus! Note that I exclusively use homemade soaps for everything in my house – no chemicals or freaky stuff allowed.

It is honestly dumbfounding to me that we do not collect the grey water in our homes. Perhaps when I was washing cloth diapers a couple times a week I might not have wanted that water on my herbs and vegetables but as far as regular everyday clothes washing absolutely! The average wash cycle uses 33 gallons of water. I did the conversion on that (cuz I have no idea what a gallon is) and that is 125L. I’ll say it again 125L. On laundry day in our house we do three or more loads of laundry. That is almost 400 liters of water which is more than enough water to keep our garden and the grass under the fruit trees happy.

The trick is that I need to get that heavy water filled garbage can outside because I don’t have any sort of plumbing on it the water just comes out the washer into the can. I need either a) a big strong man to carry it out so that I can dump it into the herb garden or b) to put the thing on wheels or something.

I also would like to capture the water from our baths and showers. We are just not that dirty and all that water that goes down the drain right back into the system to be cleaned and treated all over again, another 100 or so liters of it. Count up the number of households in the city, people having daily showers, washing clothes and watering lawns and gardens and it doesn’t take long to realize we have been doing things all wrong.

Solution 1: garbage can beside washing machine.

Solution 2: not sure yet… share your thoughts and ideas please!

Healthy Living Expo

Sunday, 2009 September 20
Tournament Capital Centre
Kamloops, BC

The City of Kamloops is preparing to host the second annual See It! Try It! Do It! – Healthy Living Expo. This free, fun and interactive event for family’s will be held at the Tournament Capital Centre Sunday, 2009 September 20 10:00 am – 3:00 pm. We will be inviting exhibitors to set up booths on site to share their information on how they help to support family health, sport and wellness our region.

Last year 110 exhibitors attended receiving over 1500 visitors!

We are looking for a great cross over of agencies, sport groups and businesses to help more of the community see what a wide range of healthy living choices we have in the Kamloops region. The entire facility including the Canada Games Aquatic Centre will be open to the public free during that time.

Here is just a sample of who you may see at our event to show how they can support your family’s health and wellness:

• City of Kamloops Recreation Programs
• Interior Health Authority Services
• Interior Community Services
• Sport groups
• First Nations and Other Multicultural Groups
• Addictions Counseling Services
• Healthy food choices promoters and businesses
• Health support agencies such as the Canadian Cancer Society
• Health Services such as Chiropractors and Massage Therapists
• Entertainment groups

The exhibitor booths will offer fun & interactive activities, games or health related screenings to engage you and your family in learning about how to lead a healthier lifestyle and better quality of life.

Come on out and See what the Kamloops region has to offer your healthy lifestyle. Try out some samples of healthy snacks, or try a new sport or fitness activity. Then Do incorporate more of these great activities and healthy habits into your life to improve your family’s health, wellness and quality of life.

See it! Try It! Do it!

Exhibitors
If you wish to be an exhibitor for the Healthy Living Expo please visit our Exhibitor Information section.

I am jealous. I will admit it. This fellow blogger grew her own popcorn. She has a small garden at home and grows as much of her own produce as she can. I have posted in the past about the Dervaes Family who have steadily worked at transforming this ordinary city lot into an organic and sustainable micro-farm. After reading about this inspirational family I dare you to not look at land use in cities differently.

Around here I noticed that corn was planted in a few of the city’s plots I assume for display purposes but imagine if it wasn’t. What if all of the grass we grew and cut down was actually food like wheat or barley? What if we had ‘lawns’ for a couple weeks after a harvest and we played on the lawn for those few weeks as a celebration of the harvest playing games of baseball and soccer. Our yards instead change with nature and it’s course of growth instead of being forced into conformity.

Just a thought… I’m planting popcorn in a block next year.

Until today I used to be able to say that I had never mowed a lawn in my life. And that would be a completely true statement. I grew up on a farm where mowing the ‘lawn’ consisted of getting a horse or pony and a book and laying out on the grass for a couple hours. As an adult either I lived somewhere that didn’t have a lawn to maintain or someone else took care of it and it just wasn’t my deal.

I now live in a house, with a yard, a sad dust bowl weed infested yard but there is some grass. Someday the grass will be replaced with something useful but for now it has to be cut occasionally or my landlord will complain. Not being a fan of noisy mowers or the whole ‘lawn care’ industry in general I have managed to pick up a second hand push reel mower! I was so excited I mowed the ‘lawn’. All 5 square feet of it and it was long.  It definitely took some force to push but the grass got cut. I have nothing to compare it to so I really couldn’t say what the difference is labour wise.

My yard is flat. No big hills or inclines. The person who sold it to me could not say the same for their yard which consisted of several steep grassy slopes. I’ve always thought that lawns were for playing lawn type activities on which sort of negates the grassy hill but I digress. Flat yard with grass + push mower = easy and awesome. Hilly yard with grass + any mower = difficult.

There was a time that you could get a rebate if you purchased a push mower new. I am generally not about the new things and if there is someone out there who can imagine how you might modify a gas mower into a push mower you need to start a business! Until that time go buy a push mower and cut down your grass!

I finally did it. I hung a clothesline. I now have a 40ft made mostly by nature clothes dryer and it cost me $40 whole dollars. It was surprisingly easy to hang also granted I had some help.

First we screwed in two hooks to studs coming off the house and the garage one of said studs was high up so there was some precarious ladder climbing involved. We thread the wire through each of the reels and into the winch tightener thingy. A couple muscular turns and viola! Clothesline.

Hardest part was finding somewhere sturdy clear and safe to string it. Oh and cutting the darn wire wasn’t easy either thank goodness for wire cutters. I’ve read on BC Hydro’s website that you can actually string a wire off a utility pole so long as it is just a hook and someone can unhook it easily if they need access. Best to give them a call first if you are considering this option.

We also have a mini retractable clothesline for in the house to hang the, um, more delicate items. That one was just as easy to install; two screws in the wall for the unit and screwing a hook into a stud for the other end. We don’t actually own a dryer which means hanging clothes is our only method and I am completely ok with that.

I have recently started to substitute honey for white and brown sugar in my recipes. Half of the required sugar is the measurement of honey that I have been using. 1 cup white sugar = 1/2 cup honey

Honey is amazing!! If you want soft chewy cookies that stay like they were just taken out of the oven use honey! Shh…. I bet the cookie companies don’t want you to know this!

I have a cellar! The house that I recently moved into is VERY old. How old I don’t know but pre second world war easily.  And of course as such it has a root cellar as all houses should. I am thrilled. I grew up with a cold room and for those of you who don’t know a cold room is a room that essentially sits ‘outside’ of a houses normal structure and foundation, much like a cellar of old but more integrated into the actual home. I digress we had a cold room and stored lots of good stuff in it.

It has been something that I have missed in all the houses I have been in since. If I wasn’t sold on the charm and character of this home before I went into the cellar the deal was sealed when I went down those stairs.

Now I am enjoying the fact that I have somewhere appropriate to store my preserves. So far in the cellar is a box of apples, a bag of rice and a flat of canned peaches. I will be sure to post a picture at the end of the harvest when it has been filled for winter!

Some future additions I am considering are salsa and dehydrated tomatoes, a huge sack of potatoes and some vegetables I haven’t really thought of what though. I did pickles years ago and failed miserably it seems that all the pickling cukes this year are quite large and just don’t appeal to me. I scored a pressure canner at a garage sale this year so I would like to try some vegetables now that I have the ability to properly preserve them and my soup can be canned now instead of frozen! Hooray!

I love food. It is such a wonderful thing. I love knowing the path of my food and being able to see it. My pantry is filled with glass jars. I hunt them down at garage sales and thrift stores. Apparently here in Kamloops those fabulous huge glass jars I keep finding with the white lids are what the cafeteria food for the hospital used to come in. They would sell them at the RIH Thrift Seller for a quarter. Of course the food no longer comes in these useful containers and instead comes in plastic packaging that is thrown directly into the garbage. I loathe plastic and how ‘useful’ it is but that is another story.

My pantry is actually a series of cupboards in my kitchen and is divided up into the different meals or uses for the things contained within the jars:

Breakfast

• Homemade Granola
• 7 grain Organic Oatmeal
• Honey
• Dried Cherries
• Dried Cranberries

Cooking

• Organic California Brown Rice
• Organic Rainbow Pasta
• Quinoa (I hear you can grow this here…)
• Couscous
• Misc dried beans (from a lovely lady at the market)
• Pearl Barley (from a local grainery)
• Buckwheat (from the same grainery)
• Wheat Germ
• Misc jars of sea weed (some day harvested by me in our ocean but for now from the health food store)
• Potatoes (from local growers)
• Onions (from local growers)

Flours (I dig grains and bread so I have an excess of these things)

• Millet
• Organic Spelt (from a Kootenay grainery)
• Organic Whole Wheat (from same Kootenay grainery)
• Corn (from a very nice Mexican lady in Kelowna who brings it from back home)
• Durum
• Chick Pea
• Flax seed (ground from whole into flour)

(I think that is all for flours but I could have more)

Baking

• Organic Fair Trade Chocolate and Carob chips
• Organic Coconut
• Organic 6 grain flakes (wheat, rye, soy, kamut, barley and…. darn I forget)
• White sugar (I haven’t managed this one just yet but I do try to sub for honey or stevia when ever I can)
• Typical baking staples like powder, soda, cornstarch etc
• Homemade vanilla extract – a bean in a jar of vodka
  (it is that simple and will last for years! Just keep topping it up)
• 100% Canadian Maple Syrup
• Sea Salt from the Antarctic

Specialty and Convienience Items (largely from Costco)
(Ok so I haven’t perfected the whole process and we don’t have 100% whole food on our grocery list, yet. )

• Corn Tortilla Chips
• Cliff Bars
• Sesame seed granola bars (these things are amazing they are seeds and honey. That’s it)
• Suzanne’s flat bread crackers (sometimes I make crackers it all depends on life at that point in time)
• Flat of organic tomato sauce
• Misc ‘Delectable Edibles’ (real, whole food, fast!)
• Sushi makings (a fabulous treat)

Of course that doesn’t cover spices and tea which are food items in and of themselves but that is the jist of our pantry.  We keep additional potatoes in the cellar over winter.  I am constantly rethinking food and our food choices. We struggle a lot with it because of my desire to eat whole food that comes from, if not my own home, close to home.

I love summer. Who doesn’t. But what I love about it is the growing season and how the produce changes as it ripens and becomes ready for harvesting.

The kitchen staples of apples, oranges and bananas are a perfect example of how out of touch we are with where the food we eat comes from. Bananas are terribly cheap, horribly cheap as a matter of fact and everytime I eat a fresh banana I think a little part of me dies inside knowing where it came from. Oranges don’t grow here either so the only thing that we can actually get from around here are apples. I am staring at an apple tree as I write this. For those who come from the Okanagan they know that before there were vineyards everywhere, and the coddling moth, the apple orchards were what sustained generations of farmers and orchardists. They are a fabulous fruit in that they keep so incredibly well. I can buy a 25 lb box of apples, put them in my cellar and be done with it. No additional labour required. Fantastic.

Not all fruits are so simple. Peaches are another thing that grow plentifully where I am from and man who doesn’t love a fresh peach? They are simply delicious but they don’t keep well at all. Which is why I spent 3 hours a few days ago slicing, boiling, peeling and packing peaches into jars for us to enjoy in the coming colder seasons.

Canning is one of those seemingly lost arts. There was a time when not a root cellar in the city would be found without dozens of jars filled with wonderful fruits and vegetables lining it’s shelves. These days cans of food line grocery store shelves and are packed in factories instead of kitchens. It is sad really but I hear that canning is coming back into fashion what with the recession and all.

When I was growing up we also had a food dehydrator. My mom mostly used it to make fruit leather and banana chips, it didn’t really work all that well and I never really thought much of dehydrating food. Until this spring I met a friend who was/is an avid backpacker and recently purchased a food dehydrator. We would talk about all the things he was going to dry and as the fruit started to come into season a big giant light bulb smashed above my head. Dehydrating food is such a perfect way to keep it intact. I dehydrated a flat of strawberries early this summer and they came out magnificently I wish I had done more. We now have the ability to make our own raisins, crasins and chaisns (dried cherries I just made that up think it’ll catch on?). Brilliant.

To sum it up my primary modes of preservation are drying, canning and freezing. Pretty standard stuff.

I actually have two freezers, the one above my fridge and a second upright. Whenever people come over one of the most common questions I get is, “How come you have two fridges?”

As I learn to do things differently I think I will eventually perhaps get rid of the second upright but for now I freeze a lot of things that I make and then store for later. I’m a busy single mom what can I say!

• Giant ziplock bag of blueberries
• Giant ziplock bag of cherries
• Huge bag of mixed vegetables for stirfries (beans, carrots, brocoli, peas)
• Various jars of nuts & seeds currently:
  pine nuts, hemp seeds, chopped almonds, chopped walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds

In the big freezer:

• Homemade vegetarian wontons
• Homemade vegetarian chili
• Bags of chopped spinach & kale
• Large bags of apricots I have to make into jam
• Flat bread
• Perogies from Salmon Arm (if anyone knows how to reliably make these PLEASE come to my house!)
• Various teas
• Another huge bag of mixed beans

Points of pain: Glass doesn’t freeze so well if the contents are liquid or anything but dry.

In the winter or rather end of autumn I made a lot of soup and will freeze it into yogurt containers. I also have been known to stock up on bread and store it in the freezer as well.