We usually add one to a green smoothie each day, and we’ve been adding them to salads and stir fries and soups.  Zucchini can be used for all sorts of dishes, and it adds a great moist texture.  It can even be made into “noodles” and used like pasta with whatever sauce you like.  There are fancy gadgets designed just for the purpose of making noodles from zucchini.  They’re called spiralizers, and they do make a neat looking plate of zucchini pasta.  But they are pretty much uni-purpose implements, and I try to avoid products like that in my kitchen.  I only have so much space, and I want it to be taken up with appliances and tools that I use everyday, for multiple things.

I had been using a knife to cut thin strips of zucchini, but last week I thought about using my food processor.  I use my food processor several times a week, for lots of different tasks.  It definitely deserves its spot in the kitchen.  And it has a shredder blade that works amazingly well at making short noodles out of a zucchini.

So for the last few days, our lunch has been a huge salad made on a base of shredded zucchini.  Looks a little odd if you haven’t tried it, but it makes an awesome salad.  Just shred a zucchini or two, and then top with whatever you like on salads.  We’ve been harvesting cherry tomatoes every day, so those get added, plus some olives, hemp-esan, fresh green beans and sugar snap peas (both from our garden).  Add some seeds and whatever homemade dressing you like, and you end up with a great lunch that only takes a few minutes to put together.

Zucchini has a reputation for being quite prolific, and for ending up on neighbors’ doorsteps because gardeners just can’t use as much of it as they grow.  So if you’ve got zucchini coming out your ears, hopefully my shredded zucchini salad idea will help you use up today’s harvest.

Eating from our garden has made a huge dent in our grocery bill.  Last week I bought only fruit at the grocery store, and not a single veggie (we have fruit trees, but it will be next year at the earliest before they produce anything).  My shopping cart used to be half filled with fruit and half with veggies, but these days I go out in the backyard a couple times a day with a huge bowl and fill it with greens, beets, carrots, peas, beans, onions, basil, tomatoes… definitely worth all the hours we spent digging garden beds in the spring!

We’ve moved beyond the days when frugality was absolutely necessary because of our low income.  But we continue to keep our expenses at pretty much the same level they were at when we were poor, because that allows us to move as quickly as possible towards our goals.  We want to add a window in our dining room, and even though I suppose we could technically afford to just have a window company put in a new one for us, we’re going to head over to the Habitat for Humanity thrift store and poke around in their enormous used window stash and see what we can find.  Frugality is so ingrained in us that we just prefer it that way.

But I wonder if it’s a luxury to be able to make decision like that?  Well, I know it’s a luxury to be able to ponder how to go about adding a window to a room… what I mean is whether it’s a luxury to be able to think in terms of buying things used, minimizing our ecological footprint, growing our own food, etc.?  The things we do are things that people a few generations ago did without even thinking about it.  But these days, it seems that people who are talking about things like environmental preservation, reusable shopping bags, thrift stores, and organic gardens are all relatively well educated and well off.

50 years ago, having a backyard garden was commonplace.  Now, it’s not as common, and I notice when I walk through town that the poorer neighborhoods don’t seem to have gardens at all.  A garden is a very frugal way to provide food for a family, but it does require a time investment, and people who are working two and three jobs probably don’t have the time.

It seems completely counter-intuitive, but I feel like frugality is more popular among people who don’t have to be frugal, but rather choose to be frugal.

Why is this?  Is it because middle class people have more time to ponder their choices?  Is it because we’re exposed to more choices in the first place?  I know that not having a TV is a very good influence on my family in terms of avoiding commercialism and advertising.  And I know other families have made the same choice.  But I wonder what the average income and education level is for TV-free households?

There are definitely people who are living below the poverty line and absolutely thinking outside the box in order to make ends meet without going into debt.  But I feel like many of us (at least those of us who are blogging about it) are living frugal lives in order to be able to save money for retirement, our children’s education, and various other goals, rather than to stretch a small paycheck to cover the bare necessities.

This has been bouncing around in my head for a few days now, and I’m still not sure if I’m doing a good job of explaining my thoughts.  Basically, I feel like more needs to be done to help people who could truly benefit the most from frugality gain a good understanding of the options that are available.  What do you think?  How can we make high quality organic food available to people who aren’t making a ton of money?  How can we encourage the dual benefits of avoiding consumerism and protecting the planet, when people are struggling just to make ends meet?

Recently there has been quite a bit of chatter in the blog world about the fact that BlogHer 10 is being sponsored in part by a couple of Nestle subsidiaries.  Several bloggers have decided to opt out of the conference, and others have been quite torn by the decision.  Attending conferences isn’t very high on my list of things I like to do, so this isn’t an issue for me.  But I know that it’s been painful for several bloggers who are actively involved in promoting breastfeeding.  (I’ve had BlogHer ads running on my site for a few years now, although I’ve manually opted out of having any ads for baby formula/bottles/nipples, etc.)

Boycotting Nestle takes more than just avoiding candybars and cocoa with their logo on it.  They own a tremendous number of other companies, and produce everything from bottled water and pet food to Lean Cuisine and Hot Pockets.  Actively boycotting them might require taking a list of the brands with you to the grocery store.

Unless you’re into frugal homemade food, and simple, whole, organic foods.

I will admit that even though I never knowingly purchase Nestle products, I hadn’t seen an updated list of their companies in years.  When I sat down to write this post, I checked out the list that I linked to above, and was happy to see that I’ve been avoiding Nestle without even trying.

I do my grocery shopping at the local co-op and at a small, regional chain health food store.  95% of what I buy is organic.  I do not buy prepared meals or processed food, which eliminates most of the companies owned by Nestle (and helps to keep my grocery bill down).  I make our own desserts, often inspired by something from Kristen’s Raw (I tend to make things that aren’t particularly fancy and take very little time to prepare).  We drink mostly water, but we don’t buy bottled water.  I don’t wear make-up, and we don’t buy candy or ice cream.  When I grocery shop, the cart is filled mostly with produce (not as much anymore since our garden is producing more – yay!) and stuff from the bulk bins like nuts, seeds, flour, coconut, etc.

Shopping at farmer’s markets, co-ops, and small health food stores has a lot of hidden benefits.  If I have to spend money on food, I like knowing that I’m supporting small local businesses as well as farms and companies that have similar values to my own.  Nestle is pretty bad, but let’s face it, so are a lot of other big corporations.  Buying food from small local companies makes it easier to have at least a bit of an idea where your money is going.

Going to thrift stores for non-food items is another great way to direct our dollars somewhere besides the pockets of big companies.  The thrift stores where I shop are non-profits devoted to helping the needy, the homeless, people with epilepsy, and people with developmental disabilities.  I know that there are some for-profit thrift stores out there, but most of the others are set up to raise money for various charitable causes, which is one more reason to shop there.

Shopping the way we do, for both food and everything else, makes our money go further and keeps us healthy and happy.  It works for us, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  And it has the added benefit of not contributing profits to companies that I find reprehensible.

Rather than being anti-travel, that post was meant to instill a desire to make every day awesome, rather than living for the weekend or for vacation.  If traveling is what makes you happy, then it should definitely be a part of your awesome life plan.  But if it adds stress to your life (as it would for us if we tried it with a two-year-old), there may be better ways to spend time closer to home.

Today I want to share a couple of great recipes I’ve been loving lately.  A few weeks ago, I came across this awesome recipe for three minute cookies.  I used agave nectar instead of maple syrup, stevia instead of the sucanat, and chopped almonds instead of rice cereal (just because that’s what I had on hand).  My guys loved them, and they’re so easy to make.  It takes me about five minutes instead of three, but I’m not complaining!

My favorite part about the cookie recipe was the flax/chia/water substitute for an egg.  I stopped buying eggs a year or so ago, and I’m thrilled to have found something that works just as well to hold things together (and flax and chia are always in my freezer. I buy them in bulk and we eat them everyday already).  Over the weekend, I also decided to make spicy black bean burgers.  We love them, but buying the frozen variety gets pretty expensive.  I made a huge batch of black beans in the crock pot, and used this recipe to make burgers.  Instead of the egg, I used a little water, a spoonful of ground flax seed, and a spoonful of chia seeds.  The burgers turned out great, and cost very little to make (cooking your own dried beans is a great way to go, especially if you make a bunch of them in the crock pot and then store them in the fridge for the week, or the freezer if you’ll take a while to use them up).  Both of my guys give two thumbs up to the cookies and the burgers, so give them a try!

Have a great Monday, and welcome Get Rich Slowly readers!

Yesterday when my husband went to get another load of compost, he picked up a quarter of a yard of sand ($6).  He shoveled out a lot of the dirt from one of our smaller raised beds, and mixed in the quarter yard of sand, plus a quarter of a yard of compost.  That’s where our carrots are going to be, and hopefully the nice mixture of sand and compost will help them grow nice big roots.  I’m hoping to plant the seeds this weekend, if the weather cooperates.

We have 25 garden beds completed now.  They are all between three and four feet wide, and they vary from eight to twenty feet long.  It’s been quite a process to dig them all, but this is a one-time investment… in future years, all we’ll have to do is add in some compost, maybe plant a green manure crop in the fall, and we’ll be ready to go each spring.  I’m planning to dig three more beds over the next week or so, and then we’ll be finished with the digging. We’ve also decided to have the place where we get our compost bring us a delivery.  For the last several weeks, my husband has been making weekly trips to town with our little trailer, hauling home a yard at a time of compost.  But the soil here is awful (mostly hard packed clay) and we estimate that we still need at least three more yards of compost.  In addition, we started to think that maybe we should get a yard or so of sand and mix a little into each bed to help with drainage.  The place where we’ve been buying our compost will deliver up to 9 yards for a $55 fee.  Our trailer will only haul a yard at a time, so if we were going to need four more yards, that would mean four trips to town.  Each time he goes, it takes nearly two hours for the whole process, and the gas mileage isn’t great when you’re hauling a trailer full of compost.  So we decided that paying $55 was a good trade.  Now my husband won’t have to take time out of his work day to haul compost anymore, and we’ll get everything we need (sand plus compost) dumped in our yard in one shot.  We’re going to have them add in some shredded cedar too, which helps to break up clay soil.  We’ll have them come out in the next day or so, and then the shoveling will begin!

One year ago, we were just about to put our old house on the market, and had spent our whole spring getting it ready.  It’s amazing for us to look back over the last year, and see how far we’ve come.  Our goal was to get a house with a huge yard, and turn it into a mini-farm.  At this time last year, we had seen this property online, but hadn’t yet visited it in person.  Now the back yard is nearly finished in terms of prep work – all that’s left is to put the plants and seeds in the ground, and dig those last few beds.  Our orchard is starting to bloom, and we’re seeing tiny leaves on most of the berry bushes.  It’s nice to look back over the last year and think about everything we’ve done to make this a reality.  So glad we took this plunge!

There are so many seedlings that they don’t even come close to fitting into the actual hydroponic trays.  A lot of them are just sitting around the edges, getting the benefit of the grow light (plus the window that is right behind them), but being watered manually.  In addition to this, we have four more trays of seedlings that are hanging out on top of the washing machine, getting light from a window in the laundry room.  We literally have hundreds of seedlings, and the ones in the hydroponic tray are getting dramatically bigger ever since we added ladybugs to the mix.  We have to wait until the second week in May before we can plant most of this stuff outside.  Hopefully there won’t be any plagues of locusts or huge hailstorms after that!

It is so rewarding to see our little seedlings growing.  We have quite a few things planted outside too, and are starting to see spinach and onion sprouts out there.  Nothing showing yet in the pea, potato, and asparagus beds, but I’m patiently waiting.  We have rhubarb that we transplanted from my parents’ house, and it’s adapting nicely to our yard.  We also have buds and/or tiny leaves on a lot of our fruit trees and berry bushes.  After so many months of seeing nothing but brown, grey, and white when we looked out at our backyard, it’s awesome to look out and see green – and it’s getting greener by the day.

Hope you’re all having a wonderful Monday!

The angle of the picture makes it look like the planter on the left is resting on the ground, but it isn’t.  They’re both about eight inches off the ground.  We were using a tree stake as the main support (it was about 5 or 6 feet long) and we wanted to pound it into the ground as far as possible.  We decided that a short but very sturdy hanger was better than one that was taller but not as stable.  This one is in the ground about three feet, so it’s not going anywhere.

Here’s a close up of the end, so you can see how he just welded a hook to the end of the rebar, which I thought was pretty clever:

We have some spray paint left over from another project, and we’ll paint this little structure soon.  It was all made from scraps that we got for free, and took my husband about 20 minutes to put together.  I saw a metal stand for holding upside-down tomato planters the other day, and it was $100.  It looked a bit fancier than ours, but ours was free and is getting the job done.  We have it in a sunny spot next to our house that is protected from the wind, and we’re hoping to get a nice crop of strawberries this summer.  Fingers crossed!

Last night it got down into the 20s overnight, and I was concerned about the zucchini plants in one of our cold frames.  I wasn’t sure how well the cold frame would protect them, so I boiled a big pot of water and set it inside the cold frame (with a lid) just before we went to bed.  When we got up this morning, there was frost on the glass of the other cold frames (they have frost-hardy plants in them, so that’s ok) but the glass over the zucchini was nice and clear.  And the plants look great.  Hopefully I can continue to baby them for the next few weeks until we can take the glass off, and we’ll have a nice early zucchini crop this year.

We bought a couple of those upside-down hanging strawberry planters, and we have 40 strawberry roots planted in them… now we just have to wait and see how they do.  My husband made a stand for them in about 20 minutes with his welder.  He pounded an old metal tree stake into the ground, and then welded an old piece of rebar to the top so it looks like a T.  Then he welded a hook to each end of the rebar.  It’s a perfect support for the strawberry planters, and we’re hopeful that we’ll have a great berry crop. 

We have about 50 tomato plants in our hydroponic garden right now, along with watermelons, basil, lots of peppers, cilantro, parsley, and more baby greens.  We had been battling a mite/aphid problem in the hydroponic garden, so we just unleashed 1000 ladybugs last night – about half of them are in the basement garden and the other half are outside in the cold frames.  They are chomping away, and I think the mites and aphids are toast.  We bought the ladybugs at a garden supply store for $8.  That’s half the cost of a bottle of organic mite/aphid spray, and the ladybugs do the work themselves without us having to go around spraying anything.  Seems like a good investment.  Hopefully the outdoor ladybugs will stick around through the summer – they are definitely my favorite form of pest control. 

I’ve been double digging garden beds every chance I get lately.  Initially (last summer) my goal was to have eight beds done by planting season this spring, and then we were going to rent a tiller and do some more beds that way.  But I’m on bed number 15 now, and I’m nowhere near stopping yet.  I’m hoping to get another ten beds done by the end of the month, and hopefully we won’t need the tiller at all – I think I’ll be able to hand dig the entire garden section of the yard.  It’s currently my favorite form of exercise, and our son can run around in the yard while I dig.  For those who are interested, this is the gardening book we’ve been reading, and it’s where we got the idea to hand dig our garden and make it as a cluster of small raised beds, rather than one large tilled plot.  It makes sense, and like I said, I’m thoroughly enjoying the digging process.

Here are some pictures of our little anti-aphid warriors.  Aren’t they pretty?

Then I discovered Kristen’s vegan nacho cheese sauce, and no longer had a need for dairy based cheese in any Mexican-style meal.  That stuff is amazing (my husband seconds that vote).

Last week, I discovered Gena’s Hemp-esan, and I think I’m now set for life without dairy cheese.  I bought two big buckets of hemp seeds last month, and I also bought a six pound bucket of nutritional yeast at the co-op (for a sweet discount, since I bought it in bulk) last month, so I should be able to make hemp-esan and nacho cheese sauce for a good long while without running out of ingredients.  (To be fair, hemp seeds are not cheap.  But neither is parmesan cheese.)  The first time I tried it, I used 1/4 cup of hemp seeds and 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast.  We used that up at one meal, so I’m now making two cups at a time and storing it in a glass jar in the fridge.  My husband gave it a thumbs up, and as far as I’m concerned, it makes a great topping for just about anything.  We’d had it on spaghetti, pizza, and several types of salad, and it’s definitely a winner.

I’ve always liked nutritional yeast.  Maybe that goes back to the days when my mother would mix it into our orange juice in the mornings… I don’t know.  But it adds a great cheesy flavor to foods, and is an excellent alternative if you’re looking for a way to avoid eating cheese.

Enjoy!

We don’t know how successful we’ll be with all of our plants.  We have a huge variety of things going now, all sorts of vegetable seedlings, tons of berry bushes, 14 regular fruit trees, and now several dwarf fruit trees that will go in pots and spend the summers outdoors and the winters in the house.  I’m sure there will be plenty of failures, but we’re hoping that there will be more check marks in our success column!

If you’re interested in ordering something from Spring Hill Nursery and didn’t get a catalog with a coupon on it, try calling them.  I called them yesterday to see if I could get a coupon for my mother, and they were great.  The lady created an account for my parents and gave me an account number that my mother can use when she orders, which will give her the $25 discount too.

To clarify, as usual, this is not a sponsored post.  I just felt like we got a really good deal, and I’m excited about the new “exotic” trees we’re getting, so I wanted to share in case any of you are interested in something similar.  Have a wonderful Sunday!