health Archives

Going Green.

December 31, 2014 by theblogbloom.com 1 Comment

As much as I love Christmas, I really love it when it is over.

I am not a Grinch, I swear. In fact, we had a great Christmas. It was fun to see our families, give great gifts, celebrate with friends and one of my favorite things this season was our tree.

We had a beautiful tree this year.

Adam and I had such a great time decorating it together earlier this month. It was fun digging through our boxes of ornaments, smiling as we placed different memories on the branches and admiring the beauty all the very different pieces make when put together.

I loved relaxing next to it every evening.

I loved it’s scent.

And, I absolutely loved taking it down yesterday.

That and all the other Christmas decor.

My sister-in-law and I were talking yesterday and we agreed: It’s fun and exciting to put everything up for Christmas, but it is great to put it all away.

Relegating everything and anything red, green and glittery to the basement makes my home much more bare and beige, but it’s welcome.

Looking at my living room, where the tree stood just yesterday, I feel clean and refreshed.

Which is exactly how I like every element in my life to feel this time of year.

I don’t think it’s ironic that the start of a new year comes just a week after Christmas. Christmastime is the height of over indulgence, opulence, excitement while New Years is a fresh “reboot” back to simplicity, calm, routine… and veggies.

Thanks to all the resolutionists, this time of year you tend to hear a lot about juicing and “green” drinks. I am by no means a green drink aficionado, but I do like them when I just feel like I need to bring my body a little balance or “reboot” after traveling or, say, sugar and cream filled holidays…?

Green Drinks get their name from their predominate dark, leafy green ingredients, like kale.

However, they also get their bad reputation from their predominate dark leafing green ingredients, like kale.

And, if you don’t know any better it is easy to understand why… Liquefied kale? Liquefied, uber healthy, RAW, kale?

Despite their reputation, these drinks can be delicious. I promise.

When flavors like pineapple, ginger, apples, and lemon are added they are actually pretty good. But, I also know another little trick to make liquefied kale more tolerable: Freeze it.

This whole summer and far into the fall our garden’s kale did so well. It was so easy to grow and produced tons of leaves. We were even enjoying the kale in the garden after the first few frosts and a small November snow squall. Weather like this would completely damage many other garden greens but it made the kale even better.

The natural sugars in kale’s cell structure acts like an anti-freeze preventing any damage and making the sweetness in it’s taste much more predominate.

The same thing can happen in your own freezer making green drinks more delicious and colder (a really good thing…). It also is a great way for storing kale from the farmer’s market or garden for use throughout the winter. Kale is good for about twelve months in a freezer.

Freezing kale is a cinch.

Wash the kale leaves thoroughly, being sure to remove any dirt or bugs.

Remove the very tough center stem of the kale. Easy ways to do this is to either fold the leaf down the center or lay it flat and run the blade of a knife along the stem.

Chop the leaves to smaller pieces and dry them completely. I use a salad spinner and paper towels.

Then, in a single layer, place kale pieces on a cookie sheet and freeze for twenty four hours. Once completely frozen I put the kale into dated freezer bags for easier storage.

Frozen kale is great to have to winter pastas, soups, and, of course, refreshing Green Drinks.

I like this Green Drink Recipe, but I like just about anything Giada… Except not her recent news about her divorce from Todd!

… Thank goodness we still have Ina and Jeffrey.

Happy New Year!

“How Did We Get Here?” by Claire

November 12, 2014 by theblogbloom.com 2 Comments

Wasn’t it super fun to hear from Adam?! I already am excited for his next post in this series. He is so sweet.

Anyways… My turn.

Unless you are really new to Bloom you know a bit about my background. I was born in downtown Chicago. I grew up in a upper middle class, suburban neighborhood on the North West side of Columbus, Ohio in a silly-large house on a golf course. I loved shopping, being with my friends, and if the thought of a farmer happened to cross my mind I was either reading a story book or a history book.

Shop ’til you drop! Me at 12-13ish?

The more I think about answering the question of “How did we get here?” that Adam and I posed to one another recently, the more I realize that it’s really not as crazy as I had originally thought.

There were two very different elements in both of our lives that made starting a garden, and growing beyond the garden, a perfect storm.

While Adam learned to enjoy planting seeds and making things grow with his mom’s help, my mom was helping shape an important piece of my life.

Growing up was a running joke that my mom was “green” before “green” was cool. And, it was often expressed to me by snack-hungry friends that my house had “weird” food.

My sister recently posted this Buzzfeed roundup and it was pretty much my life as a child.

Sugary cereal, Lunch-able’s, Gushers, and Wonder Bread did not exist in my house. Chips were rare. So were trips to fast food restaurants.

Instead, for snacks, we had blue corn chips and air popped popcorn. Our sandwich bread was dark brown, the crust was always on and sometimes it was even covered in unrecognizable seeds. And, nearly every meal we ate was made from scratch.

Out of curiosity, I recently asked my mom why she did this. Today, a mom can find so much (Maybe even too much…) about the benefits of real, whole foods thanks to the blogosphere. But, it was the nineties. Were there articles in the magazines my mom used to receive like “Family Fun” and “Better Home and Gardens” blasting processed foods?

Her answer kind of surprised me.

I thought it was because she wanted us to be healthy. And, yes, she did know the food she was serving us had to be more healthy than fast, processed food, but her main reason behind it was because it was cheaper.

I was confused. How did it get drilled into my head that scratch made, wholesome meals and real food snacks were better for me?

Then it clicked. I had learned this one on my own.

Like most kids who leave the nest, I immediately started trying new things.

I had Taco Bell for the first time at eighteen.

Cheetos became my study snack of choice nights before accounting exams.

The first time I had a Little Debbie Ho-Ho or Zebra Cake I was freshman and it was kind of a “Where have you been my whole life?” moment.

It was a known “thing” in college that I was the Diet Coke Queen. My day was not complete without a stop at the college town’s Discount Den where I could get a 32 ounce Styrofoam cup full of carbonated goodness for a whopping 55 cents.

I was even guilty of housing a jar of icing or a tube of cookie dough in my mini fridge just for snacking… raw. And/or scooped up with pretzels/potato chips/Oreos/my fingers… whatever.

Ohhhkay… you can stop judging me now.

(And, for the record, there were two considerable heartbreaks in my first two years of college… so I get a pass for the cookie dough thing.)

Shockingly, by the fall of junior year, I not only had gained twenty pounds but I just didn’t look good.

A little chub and a big soda.

It was never too bad, but I had breakouts.

I didn’t sleep well and just always looked tired. I felt it too.

I would get occasional headaches and I would pick up colds easily.

And after years and years of life guarding, I struggled through the 500 yard swim when it came time to renew my certification.

Over Thanksgiving Break my parents could tell something was up and suggested that I take vitamins.

I had never taken a vitamin. I barely took cold medicine or pain relief for cramps. I didn’t want to have to take a vitamin. I didn’t want to have to take something man made to make me feel better.

Then it was like I had a break through moment: I had been eating man made foods that made me feel absolutely awful with no problem.

Uh… Lightbulb…!

Getting back to a more natural diet started slowly. I replaced the Cheetos with nuts or veggies with hummus and made an effort not eat after nine… Which, by the way, is SUPER hard to do in college.

After my summer in California where I cooked from scratch often and worked alongside growers creating a small farmer’s market, I came back for senior year with new energy and just felt so much better in general… and about myself.

Right after CA and just before Senior year I took a cruise in Europe with my family and looked so much more healthy in between my two siblings.

People noticed, too.

Guy friends were actually more apt to comment on how much more fit I looked. I can remember one night, just as classes began, I was talking with a great guy, who had been a friend all through college, and he complimented me saying that I looked great, but pressed and asked what had I been doing.

I was kind of stumped for a minute. I wasn’t practicing some hip, uber-intense workout routine or following some trendy diet. So, I thought for a second and simply replied, “I just started taking better care of myself.”

That conscientious decision to just simply “take better care of myself” lead me to my first apartment where scratch made meals with Adam were the norm. To ditching the Diet Coke for good, even when working for the brand. To being excited about local growers and the idea of having my own garden.

That decision to make an effort to do the most and best I can for myself, combined with Adam’s love of growing food, has lead us to where we are today.

Hive and Honey Photography

So, where are we? Adam will tell you this Sunday!

Why Garden Weekend: Health

February 16, 2014 by theblogbloom.com 1 Comment

It’s no secret that vegetables are good for you. And when you have a well maintained garden, you’ll have a ton of vegetables.

Adam took this picture last August… So many veggies!

I found that with a bowl of fresh cherry tomatoes on the counter, I am far less likely to even think about wanting to eat chips or candy. I want to eat the food that I grew. And, since you can’t grow a cheeseburger or chocolate bar, I am eating far more vegetables than I ever had since we started gardening.

But, what might be even more of a secret is how good well maintained, backyard garden vegetables are for you.

Adam and I follow organic practices in our garden. Not because it’s “chic” and not because we are trying to avoid conventionally raised vegetables. We will likely never be certified organic, but that’s okay. We do it because we believe that food should be in its most authentic state, at least in the backyard. Tomatoes don’t need chemically infused fertilizers or pesticides. They need a little attention and some manual labor so that they can grow the way they were intended to. (Not to mention, in a backyard garden, organic practices are cheaper.)

Granted, when growers are producing far more tomatoes than I could even imagine in order to feed the planet, they need a little help in keeping diseases, weeds, and pests at bay. Enter the conventional vegetable.

And man, is there ever a debate about organic versus conventional food. Adam and I don’t even agree on everything.

One thing we do agree on is that if you are feeding your family vegetables, that is great. So few children, and adults, are eating nutrient rich vegetables that are grown with both conventional and organic practices.

Now, is one more nutritious than the other?

The jury is out on that one. There are tons of studies trying to prove organic is better than conventional or that there isn’t a difference, etc.

And, admittedly, I am not smart enough to even begin to try to prove one way or another. (I got my Bachelors in Hospitality for a reason… No science classes were involved.)

One thing I do know is that nutrient values are at their peak right when they are harvested. So, if you are in Indiana it may be better for you to get conventionally grown vegetables from the producer down the road versus organic vegetables from California that will have to travel for a few days.

Another thing Adam and I agree on: Buying local foods. It supports your community, and vitamins and antioxidants are more likely to get to your table.

So, in short, by gardening in my backyard, I know I am getting a vegetable full of the most nutrients possible.

But there are so many other reasons why gardening is good for your health outside of what you put into your mouth.

A big one is the physical activity involved with gardening. Gardening ranges from low intensity exercises, like weeding, to high intensity, like heavy lifting. Because there are so many different types of activity involved with gardening it is considered a full body workout.

Planting is considered a low impact gardening activity.

The app “My Fitness Pal,” first of all, considers gardening activity. (It is still yet to recognize Pure Barre…) And second, says that for sixty minutes of general gardening I would burn 268 calories.

But, the amount of nutrients the vegetables produce or the number of calories burned may not even be the biggest health benefit of gardening. There are countless mental health benefits. (For the record: I like these reasons even more than the arguments for good nutrition and physical activity.)

The moving is good for your brain and happiness, but so is being outside. Breathing fresh air and soaking up a little Vitamin D helps you sleep better and feel more positive.

It may sound a little crazy… or “crunchy” or “Zen” (…I guess I’ll take Zen), but I love how working in the garden makes me feel more connected to the earth. Having a garden lets me get my hands dirty. Use all my senses with nature. I get to smell the vibrant herbs, feel the soil, and see the changes in a plant as it grows.

My job has me connected to screens, phones, and the road all day long so not only is working in the garden a major stress reliever, it brings me back to the basic elements. Earth. Air. Water. Warmth from the sun.

It reminds me through it’s simplicity that the world is beautiful.