Our Missouri Life

Jules Dervaes gives a lecture at UCLA earlier this year on Sustainable Food.

One quote of his that I find totally intriguing:

In our society, growing food yourself has become the most radical of acts. It is truly the only effective protest, one that can – and will – overturn the corporate powers that be. By the process of directly working in harmony with nature, we do the one thing most essential to change the world – we change ourselves. ~ Jules Dervaes ~

The rest of the lecture is in the extended entry.
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This website is worth the read! No eco-drivel, just honest information and discovery.

http://urbanhomestead.org/journal/

These strike a chord with me:

Found at Green Patriot Posters via TreeHugger

I plan to do plenty of fruit trees and etc. up by the garden but it never dawned on me to do edible landscaping until reading another blog this morning.

Having a central landscaping area near the house filled with edible plants and shrubs makes sense. Maybe a circular bed with blueberries, shrub cherries, a pear tree, black raspberries and various mints and around it somewhere would be an herb bed and another area with grapes, mulberry bushes and more raspberries.

I’ve been spreading blackberry seeds everywhere on the property so that idea was already planted but the rest, well just say I never thought about it.

A few links for further reading:

How to landscape with edible plants
Edible Landscaping & Gardening
Edible Landscaping — Plants That Are Edible

Jake Ludington (for the geeks – yes, that Jake Ludington) and his wife have a food blog called Daily Munch and I found a good post on planting heirlooms that’s worth a read.

Hell the whole blog is worth a read! Great recipes and ideas there.

Since I know a couple readers here are also interested in cheap eats…

Brie Cadman over at DivineCaroline has a great post on The 20 Healthiest Foods for Under $1.

Of course #12 gets a thumbs up from me -

12. Beets
Beets are my kind of vegetable—their natural sugars make them sweet to the palate while their rich flavor and color make them nutritious for the body. They’re powerhouses of folate, iron, and antioxidants.

Serving suggestions: Shred into salads, slice with goat cheese. If you buy your beets with the greens on, you can braise them in olive oil like you would other greens.

Sitting here thinking about BBQ tomorrow and drooling like some whacked out senior in an old folks home!

We’ll be doing a 7lb shoulder (butt), a few pounds of lamb for my kosher brother and who knows what else. Maybe some grilled corn slathered in mayo, pepper and Parmesan, coleslaw, a fresh salad out of the garden and some desert. Of course there will be sweet tea!!

I’ll throw in some garlic, maybe some peppers too just to get them smoked up (if we had ripe jalapeños from our garden I’d make ABT’s!). The list of goodies to be done is mind boggling at times. I love to jam my smoker full of stuff and just pig out.

This will actually be the first time I’ve had it (the smoker) out this year. Normally by now I’m on my 10th smoke of the year. Dunno why I haven’t this year.  That reminds me, I need to post the plans for the smoke house for the property. No self respecting rural family should be without a smoke house.

I’ll put up a pic of the results Sunday or Monday.

Though not really related to our property this was too good to pass up – Simply drop them where you want plants to show up (flowers and etc.).

How to make seedballs