Mixed Greens Blog

A Small Action: Everyday But Lovely Dresses For Salad

Mesclun salad mix and radishes planted mid-March, harvested yesterday.

Dressings for salad must be a multi-multi million-dollar business and I’m suggesting that you make your own instead of buying the corporate variety. Or, use some of both. The advantages are that it’s economical, environmental, simple, and flavorful. And you’ll know exactly what’s in the bottle, [...]

Putting it All Together: Savory Bread Pudding

It feels like spring at the University Farmers Market. Energy is picking up, there are more vendors and more buyers. This was the last week for Preston Hill Bakery at our market. They make wonderful artisan breads using mostly local flour. I couldn’t resist buying some extra ciabatta knowing that they are moving on to [...]

Urban Farms Cropping Up Everywhere

Our urban farms are ¼ acre tracts, sometimes less, but places where food is grown locally, where people and vegetables thrive.
Longfellow Creek Garden in West Seattle is one example, a quarter acre plot reclaimed for food production a decade ago, it fell into disuse and is now being revived. Along with a [...]

Onward & Upward With Global Mobility

This New York Times article, Movable Feast Carries A Pollution Price Tag (New York Times, 4/26/08), with its accompanying video if you’re interested, is a good source of information about food carbon footprinting and provides useful perspective in making decisions about living green. Stepping lightly, living locally doesn’t have to be a crash diet, they usually fail, but a choice to do what you can reasonably accomplish a little bit at a time.

“Call of the Honeybees”

They conveniently appear in our language when we need an idiomatic phrase like the bees knees, busy as a bee, a bee in your bonnet, sting like a bee, the birds and the bees . . . On the other hand, we’re obsessed with their ability to sting, and our caring about their survival has been tempered with this edginess we have about their presence among us.

At the Locabar: Rhubarb Thyme Tonic

Friday night is cocktail night at our house thanks to my husband Charlie, a master mixologist, and those of us who eagerly gather each week to taste. This week we decided to try our hand at a mostly local cocktail. We’ve been working on a drink using rhubarb and now I think we’re on to [...]

Plot to Plate: Salad Greens Come of Age

They grow up so fast and then we eat them, radishes and *mesclun. Seeds planted mid-March will be on the plate soon, and like a doting parent I’ve taken numerous photographs of their development along the way. I’m proud of what they’ve accomplished so far. Neighborhood bullies have threatened, but they’re robust now, and squirrels [...]

Forage for Flowers

When I think of foraging, I think of going out in the woods to gather something exotic like mushrooms. Gathering flowers is more like meandering through the garden, unless it starts hailing, snowing and raining. In that case, a rather fluffy pastime can turn into an extreme sport of running in and out of shelter [...]

Earth Day Prayer

Water flows over these hands.

May I use them skillfully
to preserve our precious planet.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Earth Prayers From Around the World

A Small Action: Sweet Dreams On the Line

. . . the clothesline.

Air-dried sheets and pillowcases are one of the luxuries of life, but the convenience of electric clothes dryers overrides the organic alternative right outside the door. We manage to dry ours outdoors all year long with surprisingly rare interference from weather. Sheets infused with the fragrance of a fresh green [...]