Welcome to the wonderful world of composting, I told her. Where you don’t have to feel guilty when a vegetable rots in your fridge before you have a chance to use it because you know it will get a second life creating rich new soil in your compost bin.

According to Denver’s 5280 magazine: Fifty-seven percent of Denverites’ garbage is organic material, which breaks down anaerobically (without air) inside plastic garbage bags at the landfill, creating methane, a greenhouse gas that can remain in the atmosphere for decades and exacerbate climate change.

Rotating compost bin

Countertop compost crock

Composting is as easy as keeping a lidded bin next to your sink. Instead of scraping non-meat table scraps down the in-sink disposal (and adding to the layer of sludge in the public sewer systems), divert anything that is non-animal product into the bin. When the bin is full, dump it into your main compost bin.

Indoor composter

You can get anything from an indoor composter to a suspended spinning barrel to something more like a corral. My husband built our first compost bin out of two-by-fours and metal fastenings from the hardware store that allowed the cross-boards to be louvered for air flow.

Round composting bin

The one we have now in our tiny, postage-stamp sized back yard is round.

There is a formula for composting as you add dried leaves, etc. to complete the mix. Here’s more info on composting.

The best part comes when you mix your homemade compost with soil and watch your plants thrive, although the satisfaction of greeting trash day with a single bag of non-organic refuse for the week comes close.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

These days my husband supplies me with dust masks to wear when performing nasty airborne chores like cleaning the litter box or mixing rocks with soil, but I’ve often wondered if my early stupidity would lead to lung problems decades later, the way asbestos exposure leads to mesothelioma cancer down the road.

Laura Hasha of Mesothelioma Info sheds some light on this subject in today’s guest post on vermiculite and mesothelioma:

Vermiculite is a versatile mineral commonly used in agriculture and home gardening as a soil aeration product. It is popular among gardeners, especially those who grow their own fruit or vegetables because it has a very low density and is extremely lightweight. Those two properties make it an ideal additive for soils that are very dense or highly compacted.

The addition of vermiculite to aerate such soils increases moisture and nutrient retention. In fact the material is one of the main components of the popular square foot gardening technique.

Production

Vermiculite mines are typically large, open pit excavations from which rocks containing vermiculite are collected through the use of heavy machinery. These rocks are transported to a processing plant where they are then crushed and screened repeatedly until reaching a desired size. These flakes are then graded for size and type before being shipped to exfoliation plants where the material is heated in furnaces that reach temperatures of 1600-2,000 degrees F.

Similar materials

The most similar material to vermiculite is perlite which is produced by hydrating obsidian. When heated it expands and many companies that produce vermiculite produce perlite as well.

Vermiculite Controversy

In Libby, Montana a commercial vermiculite mine exposed people because the material was contaminated with a form of asbestos known as tremolite. The mine later sickened the town resulting in deaths from asbestos related diseases such as mesothelioma.

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency purchased 16 different vermiculite containing products from the Seattle area and found 5 of the products contained asbestos fibers.

Asbestos formations can occur within close proximity of vermiculite and four of the major formations in the United States have been confirmed to contain asbestos. But it is important to note that vermiculite is not a form of asbestos and exposure to vermiculite from a non-contaminated source poses no known health risks.

*** Thanks for the info, Laura! I wish it made me feel more confident that my previous vermiculite inhalation will not lead to cancer, but I guess it would depend on if that particular vermiculite product that I was using contained asbestos.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my journey into natural health and safe products it’s that there are so many things in our daily lives that can harm us that I should focus my attention on the things I can change in my life and not the things I can’t.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Spaghetti Squash

I love spaghetti squash. One summer I grew it in the garden and we ate spaghetti squash weekly until January. That might have been a little much spaghetti squash, even for me.

I took a class on squash once and learned that you can pretty much cook squash any way you want: boiling, baking, roasting, microwave, slow cooker, etc. My preferred way to cook spaghetti squash is to wash it off, set it on a baking sheet, stab it with a knife a few times on the top (so the steam can escape the cavity), and leave it in the oven until it’s soft and an inserted knife doesn’t encounter any resistance. I’ll often bake it at 400F, but it doesn’t matter what temp you use; the hotter the oven, the faster it will cook, of course.

Once it’s soft, remove it from the oven, let it cook for maybe 20 minutes, until you can handle it, and slice it lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon and discard. Then, take a fork and gently work it through the strands like a comb, until you have lots of “noodles.”

At this point, I usually put a pile of squash on a plate and top it with marinara sauce and veggies for a quick and easy meal.

If you’re trying to avoid simple carbs, like pasta, spaghetti squash is a great substitute. Filling, yet completely digestable as a whole food, we like to have it as a main course.

I had some left over last week, so I added it to homemade chicken soup and used it as soup noodles. This got a mixed review from the kids: my daughter loved it and my son refused to touch it.

Win some, lose some. As usual, I’ll keep presenting the new food until it becomes familiar and accepted. In the meantime, I’ve still got some extra squash left over. I’m thinking about adding it to a quiche of rainbow chard and mushrooms… I’ll keep you updated.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

Grilled corn with herbed butter

My neighbor gave me a sheaf of 3-foot-tall dill stems yesterday. The first thing I did was mince some and blend it into softened butter for a tangy twist on grilled corn cobs. I made some extra to freeze in half-stick quantities for later fish dinners or one-pot meals.

The rest I may mince and freeze in ice cube trays topped off with water. Once frozen, I’ll drop them into a zip-top freezer bag for easy access to fresh dill all winter long!

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

I do believe this is the dirty work of little caterpillars, but it could be something else. I know for sure that it is not the work of the baby cat face spider I saw roaming among the leaves of my lettuce garden this spring (we were thrilled to see the offspring of last summer’s special pet!), since spiders eat bugs, not leaves.

Something had to be done.

I picked up a fresh habanero pepper at the grocery store (these are also called Scotch Bonnet peppers) to mix up a batch of my homemade pest repellent. It’s so easy to make, and you don’t end up with all those chemicals of store-bought brands of pest control. Since we garden organically, chemicals are not even an option.

Once home, I donned latex gloves and sliced up the chile to expose the flesh. Then I poured boiling water over it and let it steep for a half hour or so. When it cooled, I strained it into a spray container and added some organic dishwashing liquid. The soap helps the chile spray stick to the leaves. Then I headed out to spray.

At this point, my lettuce garden is almost done until I restart it in the fall, but I want to savor every leaf remaining — washed well, of course!!

By the way, I learned to do this from my favorite gardening book: Dead Daisies Make Me Crazy: Garden Solutions Without Chemical Pollution

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

In this clip he discusses a topic from his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, where he explores who is really in charge: people or plants.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

They helped me select the seedlings, prepare the soil, and set the plants. They’ve helped me with the watering and have been excited to check the progress of growth. So far so good, even if my son called gardening a “chore” this weekend, when I asked who wanted to help me plant a few latecomers in my herb garden.

Not a chore, I corrected him, a privilege. We get to help start new life and watch it grow. We are so lucky! And then we get to eat it!

I noticed my plot of rainbow chard was shining brilliantly so I decided we must harvest our first chard leaves for dinner that night.

I stripped the leaves from the stems and minced the stems separately. I rough chopped the leaves and set them aside.

I heated up some olive oil mixed with some macadamia nut oil (why not? I have it and it adds a little bit of a nutty flavor) in a deep skillet and sauteed the stems with 3 cloves of minced garlic. After a few minutes, I added some thickly sliced baby portobello mushrooms. Then, toward the end, I tossed in the chopped chard leaves and grated some fresh nutmeg and then some Parmesan cheese into it all.

I served it topped with more Parmesan alongside an easy entree of Ian’s Fish Sticks, which I like because they don’t have any fillers or other artificial stuff. I cooked them on the back patio in my large toaster oven.

The whole meal was a delicious end to a hot summer day. And the kids ate the chard, which thrilled me!

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.

I don’t know what it is, but of all the produce available, it irks me to pay several dollars for the privilege of making a few salads out of leaves. And then it goes bad so quickly

So I grow it.

This year I planted a variety of lettuce leaves in two window boxes.

One of the benefits of container planting is that I can move the boxes from spot to spot. In the hot days of summer, when grounded lettuce usually wilts and suffers, I can move these boxes into the shade, and enjoy a longer summer of salads.

To harvest, I simply slice off the larger leaves and drop them into the mesh strainer of my salad spinner.

I planted these boxes a month ago, on Mother’s Day (May 12 this year), and they’re already flourishing. We’ve been harvesting leaves for a while already.

©2010 Effortless Eating. All Rights Reserved.