Green Ninja

Corporate Mining Giant to Mine Lands Occupied by Remote Tribe

From the UK Daily Telegraph

“One of the world's most remote hill tribes will learn next week whether it faces being evicted from its forest homeland to make way for an opencast bauxite mine run by one of Britain's biggest listed companies.”

* Bauxite is the chief source of aluminum.

CorpWatch reports

“According to activists, the projects threaten densely forested areas that are home to tiger, Indian bison, bear, and elephant. The affected human population includes impoverished tribal communities, some of whom charge that Vedanta’s projects are illegal, and that the state and central governments are colluding with the company to circumvent environmental protections.”

This sounds awful familiar, how many times in history has another group irrevocably changed native people’s lands and the environment. By now I would think that the price of stripping the land is not worth the environmental damage caused. But, if there is profit to be had someone will step up to take it. The natives of this community revere their land as a god. Their respect of the land has allowed their tribe to retain the land’s natural resources. Mining will surely alter the forest ecosystem, displace many people and animals and cause other environmental stress. It is no surprise that in a short period a huge corporation will strip their mountain of its valuable resources.

The mining corporation, Vedanta Resources, claims that it will contribute to the native tribe by building roads, schools, organizing health care and improved sanitation. The cost of those services is probably trivial when compared to the profit to be gained from the mining. Vedanta claims that the land will be restored to its natural condition after mining. Planting some grass or a few trees is no way near the natural state of land prior to mining. Those who support the mining projects speak highly of the good work of the foundations set up by the mining companies to help the poor people of the village. Helping the people is a good thing but why does it take a profit incentive to want to help them at all. No matter how much good they do, they are likely causing equal or greater detriment to the community and environment by mining.

When things like this are so easily justified, it makes me feel that the future is pretty bleak. Greed always seems to win over common sense. Eventually there will be no choices left and it may be too late for our future generations.

Blueberry Pie Recipe with Nutty Whole Grain Crust

Be sure to check out the photo gallery with more step by step photos here!

What you need for one double pie crust

Bob’s Red Mill makes the specialty flours listed below; you can buy them in the natural/organic sections of the grocery store, health food stores or online at the Bob’s Red Mill website
¼ cup hazelnut meal flour
¼ cup amaranth flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white unbleached, non-bromated flour, I used white spelt flour
¾ cup butter
4 tablespoons very cold water
1 tablespoon vinegar (I used Bragg’s natural apple cider vinegar)
(You could add 1 teaspoon salt but you don’t have to if you are using salted butter)
Honey – this is optional, my blueberries were a little tart so I drizzled them with honey before covering with the top crust

I will admit that butter is hard to work with but it is far better for you than hydrogenated vegetable oil shortening. Butter should be kept cold as possible; some people even freeze the butter after it is sliced into pats before mixing with the flour. Use a pastry knife to blend the butter and flour. After it is mixed into pea sized balls you can sprinkle the water and vinegar over it. Place the mixture into a plastic bag and incorporate into a ball (squeeze the bag to mix). You can stick the ball into the refrigerator to get the dough cold again. Divide into 2 balls. Place a dough ball in between two sheets of plastic wrap and flatten. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a circle for your crust. The plastic wrap really helps when you are making a crust with butter. Repeat the process with the other dough ball for the second crust. If you are not making the pie immediately, place the crusts in the refrigerator.

What you need for the blueberry filling

4 cups fresh blueberries
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon Allspice (could also use cinnamon)
¾ cup evaporated cane juice (or sugar)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix the fresh blueberries with the cornstarch, sugar and allspice. Place a crust in your pie pan, fill with the blueberries, drizzle with a little honey if you like, cover with the top crust and place a few slits in the top. Bake the pie for 50 minutes. Have a piece of foil handy to cover the pie halfway through baking to prevent the top and edges from burning. You may also want to place a piece of foil or a pan under the pie to catch any overflow of blueberry juice. My pie overflowed and made a bit of a mess in the oven.

Let the pie cool or chill it overnight for the best flavor and enjoy!

Time to Pick Fresh Blueberries!

Blueberry season starts in July! We went to a local blueberry patch this week and picked a few pounds of them! Sadly, the farm is not organic but it is still better to buy local and fresh than to buy from the store. I have posted a yummy blueberry pie recipe here with a recipe for a healthy pie crust too. If you are looking for fresh blueberries check out this site - Pick Your Own . They have a search tool to locate places where you can pick your own fruit plus they list farms that offer corn mazes, pumpkins and other activities. Pennsylvania has a great site called AgMap . You can locate farmers markets, seedlings, plants, organic produce and a lot more. There are several ways to search for what you are looking for. You can search by county, by mile radius and by specific items.

15 Bean Soup with Garden Herbs

Pictured above are some herbs from my garden

This is an extremely simple and tasty recipe if you like beans. Beans are a great dish because they fill you up and you really can make a meal out of them. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a pretty cheap meal too. Here is what you need.

A bag of mixed dry beans (approximately 1 pound) prepared by soaking overnight or the quick method of bringing to a boil and letting them sit for 1 hour
A mixture of garden herbs (Get creative, I used what I had available in my garden – basil, purple basil, sage, garlic chives, and parsley)
Chopped onion and garlic
Vegetable or chicken broth

Prepare the beans. After soaking, rinse them well and place in your pot. Add the broth, herbs and garlic/onion and cook for 1 ½ to 2 hours. You may need to add a little water or extra broth since some of the water will evaporate or get absorbed by the beans.

If you have spinach, you can add a few leaves right before serving, place in the bowls on top of the hot soup, you don’t have to cook them in with the soup.

A Simple Supper

My son Ty is enoying a healthy supper he helped me make!

Summer time suppers don’t have to be complicated. We had a wonderful supper last evening and it was only simple beans, bread and delicious blueberry pie! All made from scratch too! I would like to share my recipes with you. Check out the posts with recipes for the 15 bean soup and blueberry pie! My pie crust was a little rough looking but it tasted delicious (that’s all that matters right?) I haven’t made pies in a while so I was rusty! I would love to hear if you try the recipes!

How to Calculate Crop Heat Units and Growing Degree Days to Determine Vegetable Maturity

Until now, I was not really aware of crop heat units or growing degree days. I have noticed that the information on the seed packet regarding the days to maturity was not always accurate. It does seem that water, soil quality, sunlight and heat all play roles in the time it takes to produce a mature crop. If you do live in a climate that has four distinct seasons, such as Pennsylvania, knowing your average heat units can help you decide what varieties to plant and if they need started earlier indoors. So what are heat units anyway?

Heat units for the growing season are derived from a calculation using the mean of the average daily temperature using the daily maximum and minimum temperatures. A temperature of 50 degrees is used as a base temperature.

Author Chris Smith at SeattlePI.com explains it here in his article about heat units:

“Using a base of 50 degrees, let's say the high on July 30 is 82 and the low 58. Mean temperature for that day would be the average of those two temperatures, or 70. When you subtract the base temperature of 50, you have 20 heat units for the day. By making a similar calculation for all the days of the growing season, you can arrive at the seasonal heat units for your site.”

The article at Seattle PI is defiantly worth looking at. Another really interesting site with a lot of calculation tools is http://www.agclimate.org (would be very helpful if you live in Florida, Alabama or Georgia). For Pennsylvania you can access up to date climate data at the Pennsylvania State Climatologist Home Page. There is a data page with the current number of growing degree days for your region here. I was surprised that southeast PA has had 1,113 growing degree days for the year to date and northwest PA has had only 658 days! That is a bigger difference than I thought. Often a whole state is lumped into a growing season but it can vary regionally. The site also offers some agricultural maps showing the growing season for the state, first frosts and some individual county data.

SOme other good links

Here is a growing degree day online calculator
This website list growing degree day reccomendations for grapes - note that 1390 and above is most suitable
Wikipedia Article on growing degree days

Growing degree days can also indicate when garden pests will emerge! Many pest control measures are enacted for crops based on growing degree days.

My garden before and after – WOW

To see all of my garden pictures for this year, check out the photo album HERE

This was my very first year making a home vegetable garden. I went 100% organic and I even used organic seedlings that I purchased from a local grower. My inspiration came from the team at Neo-Terra. They have an amazing bio-intensive mini farm near State College, PA. I was lucky enough to meet Gene and Tania in May of this year and tour the mini farm. I can’t believe how much diversity is in one place. They are true masters of their craft. Their work encompasses far more than just gardening. Check out their website at http://neo-terra.org/default.aspx. If you explore the site you will find lots of helpful garden information and links to other informative sites.

In my garden, I am so amazed how well everything did. I must admit that I spent a lot of time preparing the garden bed. I had almost pure CLAY soil when I started. I purchased some garden mix and mushroom compost from my local landscape supply to add to the soil. I plan to keep the soil healthy with compost and by planting cover crops when I am not using the garden space. This is still pretty new to me and I am sure I still have a lot to learn. I did luck out this year because we have had a ton of rain! Some mistakes I know I made were proper seedling spacing (some stuff is way too close together) and not enough planning. I was so overwhelmed with the soil being so bad that I didn’t take much time to plan where or when I was going to plant different vegetables. But all in all I am not disappointed yet. Hopefully everything makes it to harvest successfully!

No Fail Bread Machine Recipe

To better understand the recipe, be sure to visit the photo gallery here, it has step by step photos that will help you see what the bread is supposed to look like at every checkpoint!

Bread machines provide an easy way to make bread at home but often produce bread that is not as good as what you could buy at the store. Some people, frustrated with their machines, place them in closets to never be seen again! I actually did that too. Recently I have been trying to eliminate as many chemical additives and preservatives from my diet as possible. Bread has a lot of extra ingredients that is not normally in bread you would make at home. Bread companies add dough conditioners, high fructose corn syrup, preservatives and even food color! So I figured I could make bread that was edible at least and be better than having the chemical laden bread from the store. Well, I even surprised myself! After numerous trials and errors, I finally got it to work and it looked like bakery bought bread too! Please understand that my recipe is different than normal bread machine recipes. I am not saying that the other ways will not work, but this is what I do and it works great for me. There are some crucial points where you have the possibility for error so read the checkpoints carefully!

Step 1
In a bowl or if you have a large measuring cup, measure out the dry ingredients, blend them together with a whisk.
3 CUPS FLOUR (you can use 100% whole wheat or a variation but be sure you have 3 cups total, I usually use 2 cups whole wheat and 1 cup unbleached non-bromated white flour, you may also want to try other combinations using rye, sprouted flour or spelt)
¾ TEASPOON SALT (Try to use natural sea salt, the red gourmet sea salt works great and it is very fine)
3 TBS VITAL WHEAT GLUTEN (This is very important when you are making whole grain breads, add 1 tablespoon per cup of whole wheat flour or add 3, it doesn’t seem to matter if you use 3 even if you use a cup of white flour, the bread will not rise as well if you do not use this and it may be heavy.)

Step 2
In another small bowl, measure out these liquid ingredients.
1 EGG
¼ CUP HONEY OR AGAVE SYRUP (you can use sugar if you do not have either of these, but even though sugar is a dry ingredient, add it here, you may have to add 1 TB extra of water if you bread turns out to dry but I would not add it until after you place everything in the bread machine and see if it mixes ok)
¼ CUP OIL (you can get creative and try different oils here)

Step 3
Add in 1 CUP HOT WATER to the egg, honey/agave mixture. You could microwave room temperature or tap water for one minute or get the hottest tap water you can. When you mix this with the other ingredients the temperature will go down.

Step 4
If you have a kitchen thermometer you can use it now, the water, egg, honey/agave mix should be at least 80 degrees and not more than 110, around 90-100 is good.

Step 5
Add in 3 TEASPOONS OF DRY YEAST (a packet of yeast is not quite 3 teaspoons but probably would work, so you could use 1 packet, because I make bread often now I bought a jar of yeast since it is more economical)

Step 6
Make sure the yeast is stirred and mixed in, let this bowl sit for 5-10 minutes until the top is frothy, you will see the yeast growing.

Step 7
Add the bowl of dry ingredients to the machine

Step 8
Pour the yeast/liquid mix on top of the flour

Step 9
Set your machine to the DOUGH setting, this will allow it to mix, knead and raise it but NOT bake it. On my machine this takes 1 hour and 30 minutes. Don’t panic if it takes a while to mix. When the machine is done mixing, the dough ball should be smooth, elastic and round.

Step 10
Even after the machine beeps and the dough is done, you could let it rise a little longer if you want to, but when it has doubled it is ready. If making 100% whole wheat bread, you may want to let it rise longer anyway. Take the dough out of the machine and punch it down onto a floured surface. I have had the best success making buns or small loaves with this recipe. You can divide the dough into 12 balls for buns or 6 mini loaves for hoagie rolls and it should turn out very well.

Step 11
Roll and shape your buns and place in a greased pan, such as a lasagna pan. You can cut little slashes into them for decoration if you like.

Step 12
Let the dough raise for an hour or so until doubled again, the time of year and the temperature of your home will affect this. I cover my pan with plastic wrap to help hold in some heat and improve the rising of the bread.

Step 13
Pre heat your oven when the bread has doubled again to 400 degrees; get a large piece of foil handy so you can cover it halfway through baking to prevent the tops from burning.

Step 14
Bake the buns around 12-15 minutes, if you made larger buns or hoagie rolls then it can take 20 minutes. Everyone’s oven is different and it can really vary with baking times. Watch your buns and cover them with foil after the tops start to brown. When you can tap the bun and it sounds hollow inside it should be done. Baking time has been one of the hardest things for me to perfect. I think professional bakers really have the advantage because of their ovens. Home ovens just are not the same.

Step 15
Take you bread out of the oven and cool it on a rack, place in plastic bags after it has cooled so it does not dry out. This bread will only last a few days but that should not be a problem since it tastes so good!

Mandatory Fluoridation of Drinking Water – Health Benefit or Health Risk

According to this article from Reuters news

“Most Americans get their water from municipal or regional community water systems. A new CDC report showed that as of 2006, 69 percent of people in the United States who get water from these systems received fluoridated water, up from 65 percent in 2000 and 62 percent in 1992.”

I often have wondered about the health benefits of fluoridation especially since I have heard of numerous concerns regarding health risks and harmful additives associated with manufactured fluoride. Fluoride does occur naturally in groundwater. Fluoride that is added to tap water is mostly manufactured from Fluorosilicic acid. FSA is a waste product from the manufacture of phosphate fertilizer. There are other sources for fluoride manufacture too but not as widely used.

If Americans are truly benefiting from fluoridation as the governments claims, I would think that the rise in consumption of bottled water and other bottled beverages would reduce the amount of tap water consumed. How would anyone know for sure that you are benefiting from fluoridation just because you live where it is available? Research that is supposed to support drinking water fluoridation refers to lowered dental bills in fluoridated areas. Couldn't you be paying less dental bills because of better access to dental care, good oral hygiene or a healthier diet? I think it is possible for fluoride claims to easily be misrepresented if these factors are not considered.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a fact sheet is available on their website.
A web link is provided so you can check if your city’s water is fluoridated.

On the CDC site, there is a specific FAQ about the cost of fluoridating a water system. It states “The per person cost of fluoridation varies by the size of the community population. The average cost of providing fluoridated water to communities with more than 20,000 residents is about 50 cents per year” It doesn't’t really give you the whole picture of what it would cost your community. Portland Oregon is a city where fluoridation is still not in effect and the topic is hotly debated. According to KATU.com, David Shaff, the administrator of the Portland Water Bureau, said mandated fluoridation would cost the city up to $4 million upfront, and then $600,000 in annual operating costs. To me, numbers like 4 million put it in better perspective for me.

Fluoride is the only active ingredient in toothpaste. On toothpaste tubes there is a warning that if swallowed you should call a poison control center immediately. So what does drinking fluoride do? The CDC site talks of the benefits of fluoride but does not state any hard data. How do we really know if it works or not and has anyone specifically studied the concerns? The FDA or EPA do not control the fluoridation of drinking water. Those who condemn fluoridation claim that fluoride can have ill effects on the environment and people’s long term health. Flouridealert.org refers to a study in which the dental costs for HMO’s participants were tracked in Portland Metro area of Oregon. In this case, the dental care costs in the largest region surveyed were lower in the areas without water fluoridation. That data doesn't’ seem to support the claims of CDC. If fluoride has even a tiny risk, I can’t see the value in adding it to the water. Someone is profiting from selling the “valuable” waste products that become the fluoride additive. I am sure that helps to perpetuate the need for fluoridation. I was not surprised to also find that most other countries do not fluoridate. Alot of countries who did flouridate their drinking water have eliminated it or have reduced the fluoride due to health concerns. Here are some links below about fluoride in case you would like to read more for yourself.

CDC Fact Sheet http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/faqs.htm
www.fluoridedebate.com
www.fluoridealert.org
http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/Fluoride.htm
http://www.orgsites.com/ny/nyscof/

Coffee Grounds For Your Garden

Coffee Grounds Perk Up Compost Pile With Nitrogen
ScienceDaily (2008-07-10) -- Coffee grounds can be an excellent addition to a compost pile. The grounds are relatively rich in nitrogen, providing bacteria the energy they need to turn organic matter into compost. About 2 percent nitrogen by volume, used coffee grounds can be a safe substitute for nitrogen-rich manure in the compost pile. ... > read full article

Basic compost recipes are mixes of "greens" and "browns" or carbon and nitrogen. Greens would be things like grass, weeds, kitchen waste, manure or coffee grounds. Greens are sources of nitrogen and not always green colored. Browns would be things like leaves, wood chips, straw or sawdust. Browns are sources of carbon and generally dry. Having a good mix is crucial to keeping odors at bay and getting the compost to break down quickly. If you are not composting, you could also add coffee grounds directly to your garden soil in the same manner as you would add manure.

Starbucks has a program called "Grounds for Your Garden". You can usually find bags of coffee ground in a basket near the counter or you can ask for them. Starbucks employees are more than happy to bag you up some if there are none already out. Your local coffee shop or convenience store may also be willing to supply you with the used grounds.

For some compost recipes, this site has a bunch and also a crash course in composting. Douglas County Composting

Here are my top 5 Compost Tips

1. If you are going to save kitchen scraps, a recycled ice cream tub with a tight fitting lid works great!

2. Take advantage of local composting programs. There are efforts in many states to boost home composting. You may find local programs that are very educational and economical. In Pennsylvania, classes are offered through the local Penn State Extension offices for $5 and you will receive a free compost bin!

3. Keeping your compost moist is important but often it is not easy to water your bin if you placed it in a remote corner of your yard. If you know it is going to rain, take the lid off and let nature do the watering. You can also collect rainwater and use that.

4. Take advantage of free compost sources such as neighbors who have unwanted grass clippings (be sure that the yard was not chemically sprayed though!) or leaves in the fall.

5. I think soil quality is the most important factor for garden success. If you cannot make your own compost still take advantage of this natural fertilizer. Most states or municipalities have compost facilities where you can purchase reasonably priced compost. These sites should also accept yard waste and possibly other compostable materials.