Saturday Short Subjects: Introducing the Rain Garden App

This is a post about a really new and FREE Mobile App for designing, maintaining, and installing a Rain Garden. 

In the world of Master Gardeners, Rain Gardens are a hot topic, but I realize that lots of people have not yet heard of this trend. The concept is a pretty simple one, and a Rain Garden can be beautiful as well as functional.

What is a Rain Garden? 

A Rain Garden is a depression in the ground that collects stormwater runoff from a roof, driveway or yard and allows it to filter into the ground. A well-conceived rain garden can add color and interest to a property.

What Is Its Purpose?

When it rains, water runs off impervious (impenetrable) surfaces (like pavement and roofs), collecting pollutants on its way to the sewer system. This runoff eventually ends up in nearby waterways. By building a rain garden at your home, you can reduce the amount of pollutants that leave your property.

Usually rain gardens are planted with shrubs and perennials. To be successful they must be correctly sized and placed, dug to the proper depth in the proper soil, planted with the correct plants, and well maintained.

For some examples, check out the slideshow of projects in CT at the top of this page on the UConn NEMO website.

If a Rain Garden project sounds a bit daunting, have no fear! Help is now as close as your smartphone. The free Rain Garden App, developed by UConn’s CT NEMO, is now available for download at the  Apple AppStore and for Android at the Google Play Store.

If you don’t have a smartphone, don’t despair. Check out the NEMO Rain Garden site. You will find all the tools you need right there. 

Have fun. Have a good weekend, and come back again soon.

Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall  being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).

Meatless Monday: The Meatless St. Patrick’s Day Challenge

’Tis the day for wearing of the green and eating Irish food. That means Corned Beef and Cabbage for many who are Irish or Irish for the day.

What’s a vegetarian or a diehard Meatless Monday observer to do? There are options — some traditional, some not.

You could try Corned Beef and Cabbage using a meat alternative; here’s one using seitan. [I can see the eyes rolling.] Seitan is fake meat made of wheat. It’s not for everyone, especially those on a gluten-free diet, and is quite pricey. If you try it once and like everything about it except the price tag, you might want to check out this recipe for DIY seitan on Isa Chandra’s Post Punk Kitchen site. 

You could forgo “meat,” real or fake, and get your Irish fix by indulging in Colcannon, a dish of boiled potatoes and greens, as I did last year. The dish is traditionally made with cabbage, but I understand kale works, too.

For more green dish ideas, check out Martha Stewart’s 28 recipes for kale in slideshow format, many, but not all, of which are meatless. [Martha's gorgeous site is well worth a visit; she has slide shows for other winter produce as well.]

You could make some Irish soda bread.  [I have not had such good luck with this.]  Or you could buy a loaf. The ingredients in soda bread are pretty inexpensive, and it should be easy to find loaves for sale today, flecked with raisins and caraway seeds, and slightly sweet. Even the priciest loaf is not too big a splurge. I'm going to take this route.

My rather heavy loaf of Irish Soda Bread

However you decide to celebrate…

…Happy Monday! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Have a great week!

On Mondays I often blog on food, food issues, or gardening in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

On My Radar 3.16.14

Recent News. Happenings. Discoveries…Here are some of the items on my radar.

SEISMOLOGICAL NEWS:

Earthquakes in the Midwest, where they have been uncommon until recently, have fueled concerns that fracking is to blame. 

NEWS from NEW HAVEN:

Tree lovers spoke and Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) listened. Hundreds turned out at the Technical Meeting and Public Info Session hosted by PURA at the Hamden Middle School on March 6. PURA has asked UI and CL&P, the state’s two utility companies, to voluntarily “scale back” their aggressive tree trimming plans while PURA considers the case further. This is good news, but only a temporary halt. Those who would like to register their thoughts on the utilities’ new “Vegetation Management Plans” can still email  comments to: pura.executivesecretary@ct.gov. Don’t delay. PURA expects to make a preliminary ruling in early April.

The Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride, a fundraiser for environmental causes in New Haven, is less than two months away. The snow should be gone by then, and organizers are urging all past and future riders to commit — now! Join a team and start collecting pledges!

FOOD NEWS

We celebrated Pi Day on Friday with a homemade root vegetable pie. It may not look like much, but it was really good. We ate over half for dinner. Pi (and pie) lovers are super excited about next year’s Pi Day. Take one look at this graphic and you will see why.

The recently published book The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business, by Christopher Leonard received quite a bit of press coverage last week, including an op-ed piece by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. Here is an excerpt from the description of the book on the Amazon site: “The American supermarket seems to represent the best in America: abundance, freedom, choice. But that turns out to be an illusion. The rotisserie chicken, the pepperoni, the cordon bleu, the frozen pot pie, and the bacon virtually all come from four companies…In The Meat Racket, investigative reporter Christopher Leonard delivers the first-ever account of how a handful of companies have seized the nation’s meat supply. He shows how they built a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up… We know that it takes big companies to bring meat to the American table. What The Meat Racket shows is that this industrial system is rigged against all of us. In that sense, Leonard has exposed our heartland’s biggest scandal.”

St. Patrick’s Day is Tomorrow. Yearning to serve some green food to celebrate? Here is a link to Martha Stewart’s 28 Kale Healthy Recipes. 

Special thanks to Dan, Don, Kevin, and Pam for their contributions to this edition of On My Radar. I couldn't do it without you.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

March 19th

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Chipotle, 900 Chapel Street, New Haven

New Haven Green Drinks 

Chris Schweitzer (New Haven/León Sister City Project) and 

Joel Tolman (Common Ground High School) will speak on 

the Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride

Chipotle will donate half of all sales, including Margaritas and beer purchases, between 5 pm and 9 pm to support Rock to Rock.

Meatless Monday: Counting Down to Pi Day

Yes! Friday, March 14 (3.14) is Pi Day, the day on which we honor the irrational number pi (π), the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Pi rounds to 3.14 but goes on forever. It has been calculated to one trillion digits; you can view one million of them here. 

To celebrate mathematics and to honor π, Pi Day is celebrated on 3.14 all over the world, with pi songs, pi jokes, contests to see who can memorize the most digits of pi, and, best of all, by eating that universally popular circular food — PIE!

Who doesn’t love pie? Pie comes in so many varieties — sweet and savory, fruity and custardy, dense and light. Pie can be a dessert or the main event. And, of course, there is also pizza pie.

I plan to celebrate with a throwback to the past — Garden Vegetable Pie from one of the first cookbooks I ever acquired — Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé. One of the great things about this recipe is that you get to choose the vegetables you wish to use as the main component of your pie. Whatever you have on hand is fine as long as you have four cups of them.

Frances Moore Lappe’s Garden Vegetable Pie

Ingredients

• One whole wheat pie crust 
• Four cups of cooked vegetables of your choice (such as carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, peas). Don’t let them get mushy!
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1/4 lb mushrooms
• 3 tbsp whole wheat flour
• 1 cup milk
• Salt
• Pepper
• Parsley
• Your choice of herbs (rosemary, tarragon, thyme, etc.)
• 1/4 lb sliced cheese
• 2 tbsp toasted ground sesame seeds

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350°.
• Sauté the mushrooms in the butter and oil until tender.
• Add and brown the whole wheat flour.
• Gradually add the milk and stir until thickened.
• Add herbs and salt and pepper to taste.
• Put the cooked vegetables in the pie crust. 
• Pour the sauce over the vegetables. 
• Put the sliced cheese on top.
• Bake until the sauce bubbles.
• Sprinkle on the sesame seeds.

As Frances Moore Lappé says, “A beautiful dish that can be different each time.”

Happy Monday! Happy Pi Day!

Have a great week!

On Mondays I often blog on food, food issues, or gardening in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Saturday Short Subjects: Why We Spring Ahead

In the wee hours of tomorrow morning, most everyone in the U.S. will “Spring Ahead” — knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or not. When you wake up on March 9 (unless you are a VERY early riser) Daylight Savings Time (DST) will have begun. 

Have you ever wondered how this custom came to be? Read on if you have. “Daylight Saving Time: Its History and Why We Use It,” by Bob Aldrich, retired Webmaster of the California Energy Commission, is an excellent article and the source of most of the information that follows. 

Since 2007, DST has commenced at 2 a.m. on the Second Sunday in March and has ended at 2 a.m. on the First Sunday in November. DST is observed throughout most of the U.S. (with the exceptions of Hawaii and most of Arizona) and by about 70 countries (none of which fall on the Equator or in tropical regions) although the starting and ending dates vary.

The reasoning behind Daylight Savings Time (DST)…

is to save energy. Setting the clocks ahead is the equivalent of making the sun set one hour later, cutting the time between sunset and bedtime, theoretically reducing our electricity usage. Also, most Americans like DST because there is more light in the evenings and they can enjoy their time outside, and, when they are outside, fewer things are using energy inside their homes. 

Some recent studies have disputed this theory, however. One study undertaken in Indiana, a state that only recently began to observe DST, concludes that DST actually increases energy use. On the other hand, California has found that year-long DST would help solve their state’s energy crisis.

The long, convoluted history of DST

Daylight Savings Time was first mandated by law in the U.S. for seven months between 1918 and 1919 to conserve resources for the WWI effort. The law was not at all popular and was repealed. DST was reinstated in 1942, in the midst of WWII. Clocks remained advanced one hour until September 1945. After that, individual states and localities were free to decide whether or not to observe DST. 

You can imagine the confusion that caused. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 mandated that DST would begin on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday of October. Most places complied, but any state or territory wishing to be exempt from observance of DST could do so by passing an ordinance. [This is still the case today.]

There have been a number of tweaks to the stop and start time of DST over the years — most notably during the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, when DST was extended for most of the year. [The farming states did not like this plan.]

A series of compromises in 1986 and 2005 have brought us to where we are today, where it looks like we will stay, at least for a while.

If you think the current state of DST sounds complicated, check out this dissenting site calling for the end of any time change. The activists at End Daylight Saving Time call for division of the country into two parts, with Eastern and Central combining to form one zone on permanent Standard Time, and Mountain and Pacific combining to form another on permanent DST. This would make the difference between time on the East coast and time on the West coast two hours instead of three, but it would make life quite challenging for someone on a border state, or for any of us engaging in travel or commerce with the rest of the world. There is an easy link for contacting Congress directly from this site should you happen to agree with this point of view. [There is also a link to the StandardTime gift shop.]

Spring Ahead sounds pretty simple now that I think about it. 

Good luck with the change. Enjoy what is left of your shorter than usual weekend.

Why Saturday Short Subjects? Some readers may recall  being dropped at the movie theater for the Saturday matinee — two action-packed feature films with a series of short subjects (cartoons or short movies, sometimes a serial cliffhanger) sandwiched in between. Often the short subjects were the most memorable, and enjoyable, part of the morning. That explains the name. The reason behind these particular posts is that we are all short on time. My Short Subject posts should not take me as long to write or you as long to read (or try).

Meatless Monday: Alternative Sources of Dietary Calcium

Adequate supplies of calcium are essential to good bone health. The daily recommendation of calcium for an adult 19-50 is 1000 mg. For women over 50 and men over 70, the amount rises to 1200 mg/day. As Americans, we have been hot wired to think of dairy products when asked to name calcium-rich foods — for a very good reason. The recently reinvented Got Milk? campaign has been part of our lives for two decades.

If you don’t like milk, are lactose intolerant, or are a vegan, getting adequate supplies of this nutrient can be a challenge.

There are, however, a number of non-dairy options available. 

Fish eaters can get over 25% of their daily calcium requirement by eating 3 oz of canned sardines, with bones; the soft bones are the source of the calcium. [Trust me, you won’t even know you are eating them.] Canned shrimp and salmon have lower amounts of calcium, but are also good alternatives.

Green leafy vegetables are also rich in calcium, particularly kale, collard greens, and broccoli rabe. Nuts, especially almonds, are also good options, as are plant-based milks and tofu. [Note that some are better sources than others.]

The Harvard University Health Services has posted a helpful chart “Calcium Content of Common Foods in Common Portions.” You can read it here. 

For me, there were some surprises on the list — artichokes, figs, oranges, and blackstrap molasses, to name a few. 

This article from the Huffington Post has a slide show of 20 calcium-rich foods. The last slide is actually an entertaining video. 

For more on calcium and why it is so important to your health, read this fact sheet found on the National Institute of Health website. 

Have a great week. Stay warm. Eat well.

On Mondays I often blog on food, food issues, or gardening in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

On My Radar 3.1.14

Recent News. Happenings. Discoveries…Here are some of the items on my radar.

METEOROLOGICAL NEWS:

The West has finally gotten some rain, but too much, too fast, with some devastating results. All that rain did little to mitigate the multi-year drought. One official opined that it would have to rain every other day until May just to reach average precipitation levels.

Storm Titan is now making its way across the country.  The Northeast, once again in the grip of the Polar Vortex, is waiting to see how much snow Titan will deposit during its visit here. 

The smog that blanketed much of northern China, including the city of Beijing, last week has dissipated somewhat, but a report in Mashable predicts such problems will continue until dramatic steps are taken to reduce pollutants. In early December, Shanghai, on the coast of central China, was shrouded in smog. You can see the dramatic images here. Time claims that China’s smog is being called a “Nuclear Winter.”  

NEWS from NEW HAVEN:

In advance of Thursday’s public hearing on United Illuminating’s Vegetation Management Plan, Urban Resources Initiative (URI) has issued its position. You can read it in its entirety here. In summary, URI calls for:  

• A balanced approach to securing electrical power reliability by removing hazardous trees and branches while retaining healthy trees
• A comprehensive review of all trees
• Development of a detailed plan for removal or pruning
• Replacement planting
• Undergrounding of distribution wires as a long-term solution

The public is invited to sign up to make brief comments at this meeting. URI urges all lovers of trees to turn out; a large audience will send a strong message. Details on the time and place are below.

The Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride, a fundraiser for environmental causes in New Haven, is less than two months away. The snow should be gone by then, and organizers are urging all past and future riders to commit — now! Join a team and start collecting pledges!

Justin Elicker, former Ward 10 Alder and Mayoral Candidate, was recently named Executive Director of the New Haven Land Trust. The Land Trust cares for and manages 80 acres of property and oversees 50 community vegetable gardens across the City. “I am thrilled to take on this challenge as executive director,” Elicker said. “As the state’s first urban land trust and one of New Haven’s pioneers of urban agriculture, the Land Trust has a history of being visionary while delivering a direct and positive impact on the daily lives of our city’s residents. I look forward to building upon the Land Trust’s strong relationships with communities throughout the city to increase access to healthy food, foster environmental stewardship and facilitate strengthening connections within and across all of New Haven’s neighborhoods.”

Rachel Ziesk, Community Garden Manager at the Land Trust, is thinking ahead to Spring. In her blog Organic Gardening she has been posting tips for garden planning. Her latest post discusses what to consider as you flip through those beautiful seed catalogs.

FOOD NEWS:

The nutrition label on food packages may get its first makeover in 20 years. If the recommendations are approved, a consumer will no longer need to do mental math to calculate calories and nutrition information. The two most dramatic changes proposed are updates to serving sizes and a larger, bolder type face for the calories in the product.

Chipotle is rolling out Braised Tofu Sofritos, the first item to become a permanent addition to the menu since salads were added in 2005. The organic tofu experiment began in 2013 with seven locations in the Bay Area. This item is not available in Connecticut yet, but Chipotle advises “stay tuned.” According to Bloomberg Business Week, Tofu Sofritos should be an option in all 1,572 U.S. stores by the end of 2014.

RELATIVE NEWS:

My niece Sophie, college sophomore and blogger at Philo-Sophie is planning a summer service trip to Haiti. You can read more about it here. 

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Thursday, March 6th

6:30 pm

Hamden Middle School, 2623 Dixwell Avenue

Technical Meeting and Public Info Session

hosted by PURA with a presentation by United Illuminating (UI)

In response to public objections to the UI plan adopting Enhanced Tree Trimming or Tree Removal (ETT/ETR) 

March 19th

6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Chipotle, 910 Chapel Street, New Haven

New Haven Green Drinks 

Chris Schweitzer (New Haven/León Sister City Project) and 

Joel Tolman (Common Ground High School) will speak on 

the Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride

Chipotle will donate half of all sales, including Margaritas and beer purchases, between 5 pm and 9 pm to support Rock to Rock.