Solar Roadways: Driving Green

Testing the Solar Roadway Panels with a Tractor

Imagine driving down a road that is powering your car, your city, and itself all at the same time. No more paint lines, just use LEDs lights that can also tell you road speed or when someone is crossing the street. Snow? Ice? Not a problem, internal heaters keep snow and ice from forming on the road. What powers this amazing roadway? Light. Sun, headlamps, anything that produces light that the panels can transform into electricity.  Brilliant! (Pun intended)

Check them out! Solar Roadways

Guasacaca

Brought you from
My Own Kitchen

My husband's family is quite the mix. With Italian and German ancestry and born and raised in Venezuela, the meals that come out of our kitchen are both diverse and delicious. Today I have a recipe for Guasacaca - whose name is derived from the word Aguacate (Avocado).

Ingredients

1 medium onion
2 ripe avocados
1 large red pepper
2 cloves garlic
Fresh Parsley
Fresh Cilantro
3 tbsp Vinegar
1 Lime Juiced
Salt to taste
Black Pepper to taste
1 cup olive oil

Optional:
Hot sauce or jalapeño

Directions

1. Peel and Pitt the avocados, then chop roughly.

2. De-seed the pepper and chop roughly.

3. Peel garlic cloves and onion and chop roughly.

4. Remove stems from Parsley and Cilantro leaves.

5. Put everything except the olive oil into a food processor and blend until mostly smooth. Then slowly start adding the olive oil until completely smooth.

6. Make about an hour before you plan to serve it.

Optional:
7. If you want a chunkier style Guasacaca, then have an extra avocado set aside, peeled, pitted, and cubed. Gently mash in the extra avocado chunks about 5-10 minutes before serving.

This sauce is great for putting on any kind of cooked meat or starchy side dish. 

Happy Birthday Green Earth Organics!

As we approach our Sweet Sixteen this Sunday June 1st, I thought it would be fun to sit down and interrogate, I mean interview, my boss. Company founder, Dan Henry, contrived the idea of an organic grocery delivery service back in 1998 after hearing of similar companies in England. He had already been looking to incorporate his experience working with an environmental group into a viable business and providing people with fresh organic produce while reducing the planet's carbon footprint was the winning combination.

"I wanted to start a business that I could make a living from and feel that I'm contributing to a better planet."

We have changed a lot since those first door-to-door promotions and telephone hot-line bin changes. Technology has made lives easier by providing a website for ordering and email newsletters, reducing paper waste. 100% of our office paper is reused and recycled, but we still look to reduce the need for it at all.

Our biggest change has been our siblings slowly spreading across Canada. "When I started Green Earth I was quite content having a small local company helping our members make healthier food choices for themselves and their families.  In the last couple years I felt I needed a new challenge..." In 2012 we welcomed three British Columbia cities to our banner; Victoria, Sea to Sky, and Fraser Valley. They were followed in late 2013 by our newest and fastest growing sibling in Calgary, Alberta.

"My goal was, and is, to partner with like-minded individuals, show them what I have learned over the past 16 years and support them along the way. So far this has been a great experience and I have met some great people that I now work with."

What can we expect to see from Green Earth Organics in the future? "I plan on improving our website and making it even more user friendly. I also want to expand our product lines. Hopefully, we will also see more Green Earth Organics locations in other cities in Western Canada this year."

Stay tuned next week to meet the rest of your Green Earth Organics team!

Garden Space Saver

Lettuce and Cucumber

Create some extra space in your garden and provide shade at the same time. Make a trellis with a large empty wooden frame and some chicken wire or nylon garden mesh. Attach "legs" to one side so it will lean. Underneath the trellis plant anything that would benefit from partial shade. These include lettuce, spinach, chard, greens, and cooking herbs among others. On the other side of the trellis, grow vine plants like green beans, snow peas, or cucumbers. The leaves from the vine plant will provide the shade for the plants under the trellis.

Make Your Own Organic Pet Food?

Making organic pet food may sound a bit farfetched, but when you think about it, they eat pretty much the same food that we do! So why are we buying food in bags for our pets? Well, convenience for one, there’s the dry food versus wet food preference, and sometimes… our pets are just plain picky eaters and won’t touch anything but “their” special food! Putting all that aside, it sounds fun to try making your own pet food and see how they react. Maybe they hate it, but maybe they love it so much that it will become their new favourite treat!

What are the benefits of making our pet’s food ourselves? Giving your pet organic food has all the same benefits of feeding yourself organic food. There’s nothing artificial in it, which reduces the probability of skin ailments and allergies. There are fewer digestive disorders, since the food is prepared with fresh, easily digestible ingredients and hasn’t been sitting on a shelf for weeks before you even purchased it. Since the ingredients are more easily digested, your pets also absorb more nutrients from them, improving their immune system and giving them more energy overall. You also can control their diet more specifically. If your pet is overweight, you can easily skip adding fat to your ingredients by removing excess fat from meat or using less oil.

Before we get into making the food itself, let’s divert to something more serious note. All pets are different. You wouldn’t feed birdseed to your cat, for example, so make sure that what you are putting into your pets’ food is suitable for their species. Cats can’t digest some grains and veggies properly, so while they’re great for your dog, you do not want them in your cat food. On the flip side of that, dogs like to chew on bones, especially to get the marrow inside, but you wouldn’t grind up bone into their regular food like you would a cat that is built to eat mice whole – bones and all.

Maxi Luna in 1920's Regalia

Dogs are omnivores just like we are, so their food should be comprised of meats, carbohydrates, and veggies. All you need for some great dog food is ground meat, carbs (barley, wheat, or whole grain rice recommended), some veggies, liver, and gizzards (chicken or turkey). Beef is traditional, but if your dog is overweight or exercising less, you might want to try turkey or chicken as leaner options. The liver and gizzards are something canines eat naturally in the wild and provide them with iron, an immune system boost, and enhanced joint mobility. As an added treat, add extra meat to the mixture.

My sister’s dog Maxi, for example, goes crazy over anything with turkey in it. So much so, that we can’t even say the word “turkey” without her going nuts! We have to be sneaky and use other languages to say turkey instead. “Pavo!” “Dinde!”

Basic Dog Food Recipe

1. Cook 1 lb of ground meat in a skillet
2. Use light cooking oil (safflower is a great example, since it is almost flavourless) only if necessary for browning meat and in small amounts
3. Mix the cooked meat with your carb and water in a large pot and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about 15 minutes, or until your carb is soft and tender.
5. While it is cooking, dice your veggies.
6. Add the veggies to the pot once carb is finished cooking and cook veggies for about 5 to 10 minutes until tender.
7. Allow to cool before serving.
8. You can store extra food in glass jars or in repurposed containers for future meals.
9. Lasts up to 5 days in the fridge or can be frozen as necessary.

Check out more great homemade organic meals and treats:

Dogs: Treats & Meals
Cats: Cat Nutrition
Birds: Parrot Treats & Eats
Rabbits: Easy Homemade Treats & What can a Rabbit Eat? Breakdown
Hamsters: Basic Meal Mix

Infused Simple Syrup

We already add sugar to our lemonade and other drinks all summer, so why not just prepare some great flavours in advance too? I'll be using Mint for my example (great in lemonade and iced tea!) since we have Fresh Mint this week. You can use any herbs, spices or zests for infusing (orange zest & cinnamon). You can also switch it up with brown sugar instead! Have fun experimenting this summer! I found a list online to get you started. Infused Simple Syrup Recipes

Brought you from
My Own Kitchen

Ingredients

1 cup sugar or sweetener
1 cup water
1 cup fresh mint leaves

Funnel

Mesh-wire strainer

Airtight container for storing
-- one that pours easily


Directions

1. Add water to saucepan and put on medium high heat.

2. Stir in sugar/sweetener and mint leaves.

3. Bring to a boil and wait 1 minute or until all sugar is dissolved.

4. Remove from heat and let stand for 30 minutes.

5. Get container ready with your funnel. (I reuse olive oil bottles and label them with masking tape & sharpie)

6. Pour liquid through a wire-mesh strainer or cheese cloth into container to get rid of leaves.

7. Seal and Chill for 4 hours before adding to drinks.

Can be stored in refrigerator for up to one month.

Gardening with Cooking Waste!

Re-purpose used tea leaves

The next time you steam or boil some veggies, don't just dump the water down the drain! Let the water cool down and then use it to water your plants. The nutrients that have boiled off of your veggies provide great food for them and you'll be amazed at how much more lively they look without needing to buy nutrients or add fertilizers. As an added bonus, save the remains from coffee ground and tea bags to sprinkle across the top soil around azaleas, rhododendrons, camelias, gardenias, and blueberries. All these plants prefer slightly acidic soil, so by spreading the leaves and grounds (about 1/4 inch deep) you'll can adjust the pH of the soil to suit them. HGTV