mint leather-don’t try this at home

An experiment to use up way too much mint.  Yuck!  it was gritty, never completely dried, and tasted yuck!  Any suggestions?

In blender puree:

• 2 cups canned pear
• 1 banana
• 1/2 cup mint leaves

Pour 1 1/2 cups mix onto prepared dehydrator tray. Dehydrate at 135 degrees for 4 hours.

mint jelly

Mint Jelly — a good use for all that runaway mint!

• 1 cup packed mint leaves
• 1 cup boiling water

Leave to steep for one hour.

Then combine, bring to boil, and boil until the mixture “sheets” off of a spoon.

• 1/2 cup of the mint tea
• 4 cups apple juice
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Pour into hot half-pint (or 4 oz jelly jars) and water bath can for 10 minutes.

strawberry leather

Strawberry leather — or what to do with 100 pounds of strawberries

In a blender combine:

• 6 cups strawberries
• 3/4 c sugar

Pour 1 1/2 cups of mix onto dehydrator tray covered with fruit leather insert or plastic wrap. Dehydrate at 135 degrees for 4 hours.  Cut into strips and roll up.

strawberry bites

Dehydrated Strawberry Yogurt Bites:

For each dehydrator tray combine 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt with 1/2 cup pureed strawberry.  Add sugar or honey to taste.

Place on fruit leather sheet and dehydrate for about 4 hours (at 125 degrees F, if you have a temperature controlled model).

When cool, peel off the sheets and cut into bite-sized pieces.  Dehydrate for 1 hour.

**These are really good.  I love to snack on one when I have the munchies.  They store well in a glass jar.

**I have also seen these made with pre-mixed commercial yogurt.   I believe you would need 2 6 oz containers to make the same amount.

Enjoy,

Kim

granola day

Today was a granola making day. No matter how old my children get, they still love the smell of fresh granola and they still eat it like it is a treat.

I don’t have a recipe. I just combine all sorts of stuff, mix in some honey, and just enough oil to give it a slight sheen. Then I bake the whole mess at 300 degrees for 20 minutes.

Today’s granola has: rolled oats, dried currants, dried cranberries, raisins, sunflower kernels, cashews, walnuts, peanuts, almonds, chocolate chips, honey and oil.

FEMA, you and a disaster

In the wake of a disaster (like our earthquake or yesterday’s severe weather) I tend to review the FEMA booklet “Are You Really Ready?” This 216 page booklet contains some very practical advise for weathering a variety of storms. Some of the recommendations are really easy to do.

• store enough familiar foods for 2 weeks
• store foods that don’t need to be cooked (for some of the meals)
• In a disaster eat at least one good meal a day, take a multivitamin, drink 1/2 gallon of water, eat enough calories.
• store 1 gallon of water/person/day. That gives you 1/2 gallon for drinking, 1/2 gallon for cooking and hygiene.

They also have guidelines for 72 hour kits. We don’t have these in place, but after completing our 2 weeks of food and water, that will be my goal. We have all the components, just not in one place, not handy, and not ready to walk out the door.

Again from FEMA — In the event you need to leave your home here is what they recommend.

• Three-day supply of nonperishable food and manual can opener.

• Three-day supply of water (one gallon of water per person, per day).

• Portable, battery-powered radio or television, and extra batteries.

• Flashlight and extra batteries.

• First aid kit and manual.

• Sanitation and hygiene items (hand sanitizer, moist towelettes, and toilet paper).

• Matches in waterproof container.

• Whistle.

• Extra clothing and blankets.

• Kitchen accessories and cooking utensils.

• Photocopies of identification and credit cards.

• Cash and coins.

• Special needs items such as prescription medications, eye glasses, contact lens solution, and hearing aid batteries.

• Items for infants, such as formula, diapers, bottles, and pacifiers.

• Tools, pet supplies, a map of the local area, and other items to meet your unique family needs.

Kim

food independence

They’re all saying it.  Now Sharon’s challenging us to do it.

You all know that I am a huge believer in personal responsibility in food production.  We do our best.   Each year we try to do better.  We learn new skills that allow us to remove ourselves just a little further from the industrial food supply.

I’ve been keeping up with Sharon’s food group.  Each week there is a check-in.  We do planted, harvested, preserved, stored, and prepped.  It is a great way to encourage one another to keep up the good work.  Now Sharon is inviting the world-at-large to participate.  So come on, join the fun, and free yourself from the tyranny of the supermarket shelves.

A few quotes from some of my favorite authors/thinkers.

Carla Emery:

All spring I try to plant something every day - from late February, when the early peas and spinach and garlic can go in, on up to midsummer, when the main potato crop and the late beans and lettuce go in.  Then I switch over and make it my rule to try and get something put away for the winter every single day.  That lasts until the pumpkins and sunflowers and late squash and green tomatoes are in.  Then comes the struggle to get the most out of the stored food - all winter long.  It has to be checked regularly, and you’ll need to add to that day’s menu anything that’s on the verge of spoiling, wilting or otherwise becoming useless.

People have to choose what they are going to struggle for.  Life is always a struggle, whether or not you’re struggling for anything worthwhile, so it might as well be for something worthwhile.  Independence days are worth struggling for.  they’re good for me, good for the country and good for growing children.

Sharon Astyk

Now there’s a Declaration of Independence for you.  Or perhaps the Constitution of the United Food Sovereign People of the World.  It is so desperately needed that we do declare our independence from the globalizing, totalitarian, destructive, toxic, dangerous agriculture that destroys our future and our power and pays to destroy democracy.  And so, when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to divorce themselves from a system that has become destructive, and thus:

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union of human and nature, establish justice and ensure food sovreignty, provide for the common nutrition, promote the general welfare and ensure the blessings of liberty, for ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this constitution for the United Food Sovereign People of the World.

Wendell Berry

Most urban shoppers would tell you that food is produced on farms.  But most of them do not know what farms, or what kind of farms, or where farms are, or what knowledge and skills are involved in farming. . . The industrial eater is, in fact, one who does not know that eating is an agricultural act, who no longer knows or imagines teh connections between eating and the land, and who is therefore necessarily passive and uncritical — in short, a victim. . . . There is, then, a politics of fod that, like any politics, involves our freedom.  We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else.  But we  have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else.  The condition of the passive consumer of food isnot a democratic condition.  One reason to eat responsibly is to live free.

What can we one do?

1. Participate in food production
2. Prepare your own food
3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home
4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist
5. Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production
6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening
7. Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.

Michael Pollan:

But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

Yet the sun still shines down on your yard, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch — CO2-free and dollar-free.

I did it

I did it. I finally used my new pressure canner. I didn’t blow up the house, set the kitchen on fire, or have a panic attack.

I almost did though. I was walking into the kitchen from the living room to check the pressure and heard a loud “pop.” I jumped, yelled, and squeaked. Then I noticed that it was the ginger beer popping its cork, not the pressure canner exploding.

So now I have 7 pints of canned beans.   The next time I forget to get the beans started early in the day, we’ll have a back-up plan.

Kim

living on current sunlight

In The 11th Hour, Thom Hartmann brought up the idea that until 150 years ago (steam engines, industrial revolution, agricultural revolution) man lived on current sunlight. Then we found “pockets of ancient sunlight stored in the earth.” These pockets are not renewable.

Since we watched the film I have found myself thinking about this comment. A lot. While I should be thinking about something else.

What would it be like to live on current sunlight?

I don’t think it means a return to the past. I’ve fought that impression even doing the Riot. Technology isn’t the enemy. For instance my pressure canner allows me to eat a much wider variety of foods year-round than Ma Ingalls could ever have imagined. My wood stove is a huge improvement (both in efficiency and total burning which releases much less particulates into the atmosphere than slow burning stoves) over fireplaces and the old single-walled stoves.

I do think it means a more deliberate approach to daily living. Today’s sunshine is captured in the leaves of the grape vine. I can harvest that sunshine in a few months and have grapes, raisins and wine. But I have to be thoughtful. Planting, pruning, weeding, waiting, and then action to preserve all take commitment. I’d have to manage the woodlot efficiently. No burning wood just because its chilly. While taking the chill off the air have some bread ready to bake in the embers, some soup cooking on top, and maybe some potatoes ready to roast. The animals care would only be slightly different. Today’s sunshine can be gathered as hay to see them through the “dark days.” The hay making is what would be different. Scything is more work than calling Hay Bob to bring his tractor, but it could be done.

More about this later because I’m still thinking. A lot.

Kim

Ginger Beer

Last week I made our first batch of ginger beer.  It really isn’t alcoholic, at least not as quickly as my family drank it.  This recipe makes 5 quarts and tastes really great.

Feed the Plant: Each day feed the starter 1 tsp grated (or ground) ginger and 1 tsp sugar. After seven feedings you are ready to make the ginger beer.

Making the Beer:

1. Combine the juice of four lemons and 3 cups sugar.
2. Add 5 cups boiling water and stir until sugar is dissolved.
3. Add 12 cups cold water and stir again.
4. Strain ginger beer plant through muslin and pour liquid into water/juice mix.
5. Take ginger beer plant, divide in half, add 1 cup cool water and feed the plant again.
6. Bottle, but don’t cap the bottles. Let sit 2 hours.
7. Cap the bottles with a cork. This makes 5 quarts.
8. Enjoy!

Some Considerations:

1. Don’t shake the bottles. They do get quite fizzy.
2. Place the bottles where a child can’t shake the bottles or be hit by a flying cork. I’ve had a few that popped the cork right off the bottle.
3. We put our bottles in a pan of water. Ants really like ginger beer!
4. I plan on experimenting with sugar levels. Right now I am following the recipe to a T.
5. You can only get a true ginger beer plant from someone who has one.

Sour Dough for PJ

 

Sour dough is a complex creature.  Talk nicely to it, feed it regularly, and treat it with kindness and it will reward you with great tasting bread, pancakes, muffins, waffles, and whatever else your heart desires to bake.

Making a Starter:  Mix 1 cup unbleached flour, 1 cup lukewarm water, and 1/2 cup crushed grapes (organic, with skins on, inside a muslin bag) together and let sit in a warm place for one week.   Each day stir the starter.  On day four give it a feeding of 1/2 c flour and 1/2 water.  At the end of that week remove the bag of grapes.

Strengthen the Starter:  Twice a day feed the starter (like in day 4 above).  Don’t forget.  This strengthens the starter and mellows the flavor.   With a new batch of starter I do this for a week before using the starter.

Bread Day One:

1. Morning:  Mix 1 quart of starter with 2 cups unbleached flour.  Let sit for an hour.  Feed the remaining starter and return to warm spot.
2. Morning:  Add 3 c whole wheat flour to the dough.  Stir well.  Add enough unbleached flour to make a workable, but soft dough.  (** Sometimes I add a little honey–especially if I will be serving children or making the dough into cinnamon rolls.)
3. Morning:  Knead 8 minutes, place in oiled bowl, cover and let rise 20 minutes.
4. Morning:  Turn dough out on floured surface and add 1 TBSN (or less) salt.  Knead again.
5. Evening:  Divide dough in half and shape each half.  (I shape mine in floured round baskets or an oiled bowl).  Place dough in cool spot or the refrigerator.

Bread Day Two:

1. Remove dough from refrigerator and let come to room temperature.
2. Preheat oven (with bread stone) to 500 degrees.
3. When hot, mist the oven with water, flip bread out of basket onto baker’s peel, cut a small slice in the top of the loaf, and then slide onto baking stone.
4. Bake 10 minutes at 500 degrees,  mist the oven and turn oven down to 400 and bake an additional 35 minutes.

Alan Alda Salad

  We saw Alan Alda on a PBS show many years ago talking about nutrition.  (I think it was Scientific America, but I really can’t remember.)  He visited a man and they compared the nutritional value of a Alan’s sandwich, chips, and fruit to this other man’s salad.  The meal looked so delicious that we copied down the list and have eaten variations of this for a long time (years and years).

We call it the Alan Alda Salad:

• lettuce, one head torn up
• radishes, one bunch sliced
• carrots, one pound sliced
• celery, one pound sliced
• tomato, diced
• broccoli, one head (cut up, including stalk)
• cauliflower, one head cut up
• bell peppers, two diced
• onion, one diced
• vegetable additions/alternatives (We add whatever is handy in addition to or sometimes in place of one of the vegetables listed above.)
• raisins, craisins, or dates
• chickpeas/garbanzo beans
• walnuts, cut up
• almonds, sliced
• sunflower seeds
• flax seeds
• sesame seeds
• basil, parsley and thyme, minced (cilantro is also good)

We mix up all the veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, and herbs and keep them separate from the lettuce.  When we’re ready to eat we put the lettuce down and just heap on the veggie mix.  It really doesn’t need a dressing.  All the lovely veggie juice combines and tastes delicious.

When you eat this salad you really don’t need much else.  Bread, maybe a little cheese, or some light soup.  It really is a meal all by itself.

Menu for Oct 28-Nov 3

Sunday:

• Breakfast; toast, vegan butter, jam, orange juice, tea or hot cocoa
• Lunch: (company) vegetable lasagna, French bread, salad, iced tea/water/juice
• Dinner: leftovers

Monday:

• Breakfast: toast, vegan butter, jam, orange juice, tea or hot cocoa
• Lunch: leftover chili (turkey, red beans, tomato, red pepper, green pepper, onion)
• Dinner: baked potato, vegan butter, broccoli, and cheese

Tuesday:

• Breakfast: toast, peanut butter, jam, juice, tea or hot cocoa
• Lunch: leftover vegetable lasagna
• Dinner: leftover chili

Wednesday

• Breakfast: apple oatmeal, toast, juice, tea or hot cocoa
• Lunch: peanut butter toast, carrot and celery sticks
• Dinner: white beans with carrot, celery, onion, pimiento, and green beans

Thursday

• Breakfast: egg, toast, juice, tea or hot cocoa
• Lunch: leftover lasgna
• Dinner: cottage fries with carrot and celery sticks

Friday:

• Breakfast: French toast, jam, juice, tea or hot cocoa
• Lunch: leftover lasagna or lentil soup
• Dinner: pizza cheat night

Saturday:

• Breakfast: apple oatmeal, toast, juice, tea or hot cocoa
• Lunch: carrot and celery sticks (early dinner with company)
• Dinner: Turkey enchiladas (turkey, tortillas, onion, green pepper, red pepper, sour cream, cheese)

Supermarket:

• vegan butter
• OJ (and cranberry)
• hot cocoa
• celery
• ground turkey
• cheese
• sour cream

Bulk/organic:

• wheat
• yeast
• tea
• peanut butter
• beans in chili
• tomato sauce in chili and lasagna
• semolina (for pasta)
• lentil soup mix
• oatmeal
• white beans

Local/Homegrown:

• blackberry jam
• strawberry jam
• honey
• zucchini
• carrot
• pimiento
• red pepper
• green pepper
• onion
• turkey
• potato
• broccoli
• apple
• green beans
• eggs

How I Pull it All Together

(continued from the last two days)

With my pantry stocked for a year and my favorite cookbooks I sat down and developed a meal plan. I want to be able to make each meal without needing to run after an ingredient. I also don’t want my grocery list to change, because then I am tempted to splurge on new things. I came up with 4 breakfasts, 5 lunches, and 10 dinners. We don’t get bored with the choices because the flavorings can dramatically change the flavor of each meal.

Our basic meal plan is below. In order to insure that our bodies are receiving optimal nutrition each meal is assigned certain food groups.

Breakfast: 2 grains and 2 fruits

• oatmeal with fruit or fruit juice, toast with jam, tea
• granola (oats with lots of dried fruit), rice milk, tea
• toast, 2 fresh fruits, tea
• pancakes, fruit toppings, tea

Lunch: 1.5 veggie, 1.5 protein, 1 grain (men have 2 grain)

• tortilla wrap with veggies, beans and cheese
• chaptis (flat bread) with roasted veggies and hummus
• peanut butter toast with veggie sticks
• potatoes with veggies and cheese
• leftovers from dinner

Dinner: 1.5 veggie, 1.5 protein, 1 grain (men have 2 grain)

• Sunday is Breakfast for Dinner (pancakes, quiche with muffins)
• Monday is Mexican (bean tacos, vegetables, spices vary greatly)
• Tuesday is Italian (spaghetti, veggies and cheese or ravioli with variety of fillings)
• Wednesday is Mediterranean (kebabs, humus, falafels)
• Thursday is Soup and Sandwich (endless possibilities with all our dehydrated veggies)
• Friday is Asian (spring rolls, stir fry)
• Saturday is Comfort Food (pizza or cheat night)

Snacks:

• trail mix
• smoothies
• popcorn

Good Eating!

Kim

What I Need to Do

(continued from yesterday)

I was a little disappointed in our reduction food numbers. When I counted individual food items we were much closer to the goal. I decided to start keeping track by servings, because that is easier for me. If I am going to make this a long term commitment the tracking had to become easier.

I count a serving as:

• 1 fruit = 1 medium fruit raw, 1/2 c canned or juiced, 1/4 c dehydrated, 2 T real jam
• 1 veggie = 3/4 c juice, 1 c raw, 1/2 c canned, 1/4 dehydrated
• 1 protein = 1/2 c cooked beans, 3-4 T nuts or 2-3 T nut butters, 1 egg, 1 oz cheese, 2 oz poultry (You also get protein from grains and veggies)
• 1 grain = 1/2 bagel, 1/2 c rice, 1/2 c oatmeal, 2-6 crackers, 1 muffin, 1 slice bread, 1 flat bread, 2 tortillas, 1 pancake or waffle

To review here is how our totals look right now: 12 food servings a day (+ flavorings). 5.5 servings are homegrown or local (46%), 5 servings are bulk foods (42%) , and 1.5 are non-local and non-bulk (12%).

*I realized this morning that I forgot to include nuts in my list yesterday. I’m not going to re-do the math now. They aren’t that large a part of our diet. Maybe a little peanut butter here, maybe a few walnuts in the granola–5 pounds will last us an entire year.

If I make some changes to my garden plan we might come closer to the reduction goal. I don’t want to change our meal plan too much so I really need to find homegrown/local answers for lowering our bulk purchases. So here is what I plan to do.

Fruit: I need to grow and preserve more fruit. I can’t imagine giving up the OJ. It provides us with vitamin C and calcium. I will begin buying raisins and lemon concentrate from the coop. That will make them bulk purchases. I had planned to add more strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, currants, elderberries and melons to the garden. Then I can quit buying bananas and raisins. That should take us to 1.33 local servings, .33 bulk servings, and .33 non-local and non-bulk servings per day.

Vegetables: No changes anticipated. I will start using a pressure canner next harvest. That should allow me to put back more than just dehydrated veggies and green beans. That will still leave us with 3 local servings per day and might bump us up to 5 local servings.

Herbs and Flavorings: If we learn to make our own mustard, ketchup and tahini that would be nice. However, I am not going to stress over this group. We don’t eat enough of any of them to make a full serving and radically alter my numbers anyway.

Protein: I plan on making more room in the garden for field beans. We have been slowly cutting back on the cheese intake. Normally I like to smother my tacos and pizza in cheese. Now I am adding just a hint. Hopefully I can reduce that even further. We’ll also continue to forage for walnuts in the Fall and hope to plant a nut tree or two on our homestead. (Note to Self: Peanuts? I wonder if we could grow them here? How much would it take for peanut butter?) If I can do that then my totals would be more like 2 local, 0.75 bulk, and 0.25 non-local and non-bulk.

Grains: A grain patch was already on our new garden plan. Now I just have to give it a try. If I could grow our wheat and oats I would be happy. I’m not sure how well our first grain patch will produce, but it might be able to supply all our wheat and oats. That leaves popcorn, cornmeal and rice in my bulk category. Our totals would become 2.5 local and 1.5 bulk.

That would make our new totals: 12 food servings a day (+ flavorings). 9 servings are homegrown or local (75%), 2.5 servings are bulk foods (20%) , and 0.5 are non-local and non-bulk (5%).

How I Pull it All Together: coming soon

One Rioter’s Pantry

I have been giving a lot of extra thought to the food portion of the Riot since Saturday. Why Saturday? HM and I made our once monthly trip to the supermarket. It is an overwhelming experience that I hope to repeat only 4 times a year beginning in 2008. There were so many people, so many noises, and so many choices. I was dismayed to see the price increases and wonder what increases there will be the next time I shop.

I have always kept a stocked pantry at this house. It is a form of financial and physical security. CK lost his job a few years ago and we were able to eat the staples for a year before needing to replace them. It also helps because we eat this year on last year’s prices. I have a master list that tells me what has been opened and how much we use of each product in a year.

A lot of my pantry is homegrown. The Garden tab at the top of the page will tell you what we grow. We preserve much of that dehydrated (makes great soups and herbal teas in the winter), canned (jelly, jam, pickles, whole fruit), frozen (only what fits above the refrigerator–mostly green beans).

Fruit: We eat as much fresh as possible while things are in season. We buy a year’s supply from vendors at the farmer’s market and preserve it by making jam, fruit juice , fruit in syrup, and dehydration. We typically have: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, apples, persimmons, and grapes. I keep 40 jars of canned fruit and 3-4 quarts of dehydrated fruit for each type. That gives us 1 serving of each fruit a week. That is supplemented by OJ and bananas in the Fall and Winter; lemons and raisins year round; melons in the late Spring and Summer. This year we experimented with melons and hope to have production at full next summer. Canned fruits are stored in a hall closet fitted with shelves just like my kitchen pantry. We average 2 fruit servings a day year round.

Vegetables: Our list of vegetables is quite extensive. It is also carefully planned so that seed saving is easier. I don’t have any two varieties from the same species unless they can be isolated to keep from having cross-pollination. We eat it only in season and only if it could be grown in our yard (Except for avocados, which I suppose are technically a fruit, but we use them as a vegetable. Each month I buy 4 avocados so they don’t comprise a large portion of our diet.) Our primary way of preserving vegetables is dehydration. A year’s worth of dehydrated vegetables only takes one shelf in my kitchen pantry. We eat a lot of soup! We average 3 servings of vegetables a day year round.

Herbs and Other Flavorings: HM is the “Queen of the Herb Garden.” I try to stay out of her way. I’ll help weed, but otherwise I’m hopeless. Herb gardens are beautiful. There are so many colors, textures, and smells. HM keeps us well stocked with dried herbs for teas (nothing better than peppermint tea when your stomach is upset) and flavorings. We dry 2 quarts of each herb and that easily lasts a year. We dry 10 bunches of garlic and 100 onions a year. It helps when your diet is basic to have a variety of flavors to add to the meal. We do buy olive oil, canola oil, mustard, ketchup, vinegar, tahini, rooibos tea (with flavors. Bought in bulk from Adagio), honey (from a local beekeeper, and hoping to add to our homestead in the Spring), salt and pepper.

Protein: Our protein comes from eggs (from our chickens), beans (learning to grow in yearly batches and purchased in 25 pound bags from the coop), an occasional chicken, and cheese (currently buying from the store because I don’t have a milking goat this year). We also get plenty of protein from the veggies and grains that we eat. We are down to 8 chickens laying 6 eggs a day and that seems to be plenty for our family. None of us eats eggs on a daily basis. The eggs and cheese are about the only thing in our refrigerator anymore. The dried beans are stored in food grade plastic buckets with airtight lids in the project room. I am thinking about building another pantry in there. That way guests don’t have to see a stack of white buckets covered by a quilt anymore. We average 3 protein servings a day year round.

Grains: Next year will be the first year we’ll try to grow grain. I am excited about the possibility. Right now I buy a year’s supply of rice, wheat and oats each Fall. Our family doesn’t eat much grain anymore. 5 pounds of popcorn, 10 pounds of cornmeal, 50 pounds of rice, 100 pounds of oats, and 100 pounds of wheat will last a year. The grains are stored in food grade plastic buckets in the project room and a small amount is stored in the kitchen pantry. We eat the oats as oatmeal and granola, the wheat as pancakes, flatbread, tortillas, and bread, rice is eaten as well . . . rice. Although Evan just sent a recipe for rice milk that I really want to try tomorrow. We average 4 (girls) to 6 (men) servings of grain a day year round.

How it Fits into the Riot goal: 12 food servings a day (+ flavorings). 5.5 servings are homegrown or local (46%), 5 servings are bulk foods (42%) , and 1.5 are non-local and non-bulk (12%).

What I need to do: coming soon

How I Pull it All Together: coming soon