A few good reasons to ditch your microwave

      

          I must start off my saying that i have yet to ditch my microwave. It is still sitting safe and sound on my kitchen counter completely oblivious of its ill fated future in the dumpster. All i have to do is convince my husband that he doesn't REALLY need to have his food re-heated in a micro second, and that maybe the cost of convenience REALLY is too much. 

         Me and the microwave go way back. I remember as a kid my sisters and i would stay up until wee hours of the night creating original "recipes." We even documented each ingredient and its proportion as we went, so that we would always have a way to recreate each "masterpiece," which usually ending up tasting too unbearable to eat. One night we put our slop in a muffin tin, and since we weren't allowed to use the oven, we decided to cook it in the microwave. Did you know that metal and microwaves don't mix? Well, we didn't. After a few minutes we had mini lighting bolts shooting out of the appliance accompanied by smoke, pops, and a screaming mom! Microwave broken. Recipe failure.
         So how the heck does a microwave work anyway? Bear with me for a sec because I'm about to get all Bill Nye on you, but first, a DISCLAIMER: I am in no way trying to breed anxiety or create an irrational fear of your kitchen appliances. I am simply saying it would be a good idea to choose your oven or stove top to heat your food.
         Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation. It heats your food by tearing water molecules apart and deforming them as they resonate at super high frequencies and eventually turn to steam which heats your food. Since not all areas contain the same amount of water, heating is uneven. Unfortunately that's not all that happens. The actual chemical structure of your food is changed in the process as well!   In the book Health Effects of Microwave Radiation, Dr. Lita Lee states that "every microwave oven leaks electro-magnetic radiation, harms food, and converts substances cooked in it to dangerous organ-toxic and carcinogenic products." Even standing a foot away from your microwave while it's in use can expose you to amounts of radiation that have been linked to Leukemia and cataracts. After researching the appliance and finding a long list of harmful consequences due to its use, Russia even BANNED the appliance for a time in 1976! 
               A study published in The Journal of  the Science of Food and Agriculture found that broccoli heated in the microwave lost up to 97%of it's beneficial antioxidants as opposed to 11% in steamed broccoli. Other studies have shown that the microwaving of grains and milk turned some amino acids into carcinogenic substances. Hundreds of studies have been done that prove without a doubt that produce heated in a microwave loses an enormous amount of its nutritional value that far exceeds any other heating method. I don't know about you, but I am SO not okay with letting my microwave turn my beautiful (and expensive) organic produce into "dead" food!
       Not only is our soil deficient which is giving out veggies a rough start, but we are nuking them in the microwave too, killing off whatever is left of their nutrients! We really need to give our greens a break. I hope this encourages you to ditch your microwave, or at least only use it for "emergencies." I'm imagining what I can do with that extra 30 inches of space on my kitchen counter....

Recipe: Enchanted Broccoli forest

    

        You should make this recipe, even for no reason other than it's called "Enchanted Broccoli forest." It was so much fun standing my little "oak trees" nice and tall in the mystical forest i created in my 9x13 inch pan. The recipe calls for lots of fresh herbs, including Dill (one of my favs), and coupled with fresh squeezed lemon juice, a distinct "Greek" flavor is created that gets my heart jumping! The hubs isn't a fan of broccoli but he loved the dish and even ate some left overs today! I got the recipe from a really fun vegetarian cookbook named after it's signature dish..."Enchanted Broccoli forest" by Mollie Katzen. The book is all handwritten and adorned with a ton of beautiful pictures that makes 

cooking with it all the more fun.

yields 4-6 servings

Ingredients: ( * = highly recomend using organic)

1-1pound bunch of broccoli

1 Tbs. butter*

1 cup chopped yellow onion

3/4 tsp. salt

1 large garlic glove, minced (I used 3, I'm a big garlic fan)

2 Tbs. fresh lemon juice* ( I went crazy with the lemon juice!)

about 6 cups cooked rice*, white or brown (brown is better)

black pepper to taste

2 Tbs. fresh dill* (2 tsp.dry)

3 Tbs. minced fresh mint* (3tsp.dry)

1/4 cup minced fresh parsley*

1 packed cup grated cheddar or swiss (this is optional, i just sprinkled a little bit in)

Equipment:

foil

9x13 inch baking pan

1.) cook your rice by either steaming or placing 2 cups rice in 3 cups boiling water until tender. Meanwhile....

2.) Chop the trunks off of the broccoli stalks, but not too short or you wont be able to stand them up. Cook them in a steamer over boiling water until bright green and just barely tender. Rinse over cold running water, drain well, and set aside.

3.) preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly grease you baking pan (preferably with coconut oil).

4.) Melt the butter in a large, deep skillet. Add the onion and salt and saute over medium heat for about 5 min. or until the onion begins to soften. Add the garlic and lemon juice, and saute for about 2 minutes longer. Stir in the cooked rice, pepper, herbs, and cheese if you choose. Spread onto prepared pan.

5.) Now for the fun part! Arrange the broccoli upright in the rice and drizzle with melted butter. Cover loosely with foil and bake just until heated through (15-20 min.). Serve and smile.

Even Sawyer likes broccoli!!!

The Garden

Montreal, Canada

        I have seen some beautiful gardens in my day. A few years ago I had the privilege of seeing The Montreal Botanical Garden in Canada. It's one of the largest of it's kind and is filled with plants from the four corners of the earth, all living in harmony in this one spot. In 2009 I got to experience the un-manicured gardens in the lush forests of Malaysia. These gardens were wild, governed only by nature and provided sustience for the villagers. Even my mother in laws humble garden in her backyard has such a sweetness about it that draws me to spend hours just sitting in its dirt. I love me some gardens, and i can only imagine what the first Garden looked like. Eden. Ohhh Eden!!! It must have been a party for the senses...surrounded by the most amazing smells, colors, and textures. Eden was Adams home, and Eve's birthplace. everything man needed to survive was right there in that one spot and God himself was there, walking and talking with man in the cool of the day! There has never been and will never be another place on earth like Eden. 

         Mans history with God began there and He gave us some very important directions about what our relationship with the earth was to be. In Genesis 1:29 God said 'Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food." God carefully and intentionally crafted each herb, fruit, and vegetable with the perfect nutrients and medicinal properties to nourish us, give us energy, and keep us strong. Living in the 21st century it is obvious that we have strayed so far from Gods original design for food. He didn't say "Hey! check this out! I've given you this corn that has been genetically modified in a lab, bleached flour, and processed microwavable dinners that have been saturated with pesticides and injected with hormones! This will be your food...eat up!" The repercussions of this are HUGE! Not only for your health but for the earth that God asked us to steward.
        Genesis 2:15 says "and the Lord God took man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it." The words "dress" and "keep" are translated in the original Hebrew as "to serve" and "protect" the land. This was the first job assigned to Adam, he was to be the master Gardner and a reciprocal relationship was established between man and earth...you serve me and I'll serve you. Our farming and agricultural practices are in direct opposition to what God had intended. There is no give and take in conventional farming, there is only take take take! Without crop rotation soil is striped naked and left with no minerals. Farmers then have to drench their crops with un-natural chemical fertilizers made up of 3 ingredients. That's 52 minerals short of what is needed for healthy soil. Soil is a lot like us, when it's deficient in something, it loses its defenses and becomes more prone to "bugs." So the bugs come and farmers are again forced to turn to toxic chemicals, this time in the form of herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides. You get the picture? Deficient soil = deficient food supply = deficient people. This method hasn't been working and it will never work. People are sick and our soil is eroding, Gods plan works!!  
       As consumers, we call the shots. Shop organic, and support sustainability!