Inspired from the Eat To Live book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D., the original recipe is found on page 212 and is named Brainy Blueberry Dressing.

The original recipe calls for half a pack of frozen blueberries, and because my pack was bought from BJ’s warehouse, I am sure it was not intended to be half that pack. This is the only gripe I have about the ETL book recipe section is that some assumptions are made about package sizes.

Today it seems that what was known as the typical package size has changed, more so recently with the economic downturn. For example, how many recipes do you see that call for a pound of a certain ingredient, and only to find at the store that the new weights for the ingredient in question are something like 12 ounces (3/4 of a pound) or 14 ounces, just 2 ounces shy of a pound. The price stays the same and the producer keeps their cost in line by reducing the product size. Even though I don’t buy them any more, I am waiting for the day when a bag of chips in a vending machine has about 2 chips in the bag for $.50 cents.

So here is my recipe that I sort of just threw together based on the ingredients and assumed quantities, adjusted for flavor, I also added some honey to our version, the original has none. The original also used lemon juice and we had none, so we used 1/2 the amount of lime juice as a substitute.

This recipe was prepared on Eat To Live, Week 4, and linked from Eat To Live, Week 4 Recap of our ETL diet and lifestyle, you can follow our complete progress at Eat To Live.

A typical Eat To Live salad tossed with the blueberry dressing.

Wednesday afternoon we were thinking of what to have for dinner, and My Dear Wife called me, having just left work, and she wanted something warm since it had been cooler temperatures in the past few days, so she suggested making some couscous. I said what a great idea, so I threw together this recipe with some of the ingredients we had on hand. Moreover, forty-five minutes later when she arrived home, dinner was already prepared and waiting, this dish took all of about 25 minutes to prepare from prep to finish.

I found some really good and fresh shitake mushrooms at the farmers market on Saturday, and they added great flavor to this dish.

We added some roasted garbanzo beans to the top of this for some added beans and it also adds some crunchiness too.

This recipe was prepared on Eat To Live, Week 4, and linked from Eat To Live, Week 4 Recap of our ETL diet and lifestyle, you can follow our complete progress at Eat To Live. The link to Week 4 Recap will be active soon.

Today marks the 40th celebration of Earth Day, and it comes at a perfect time of the year, when all the plants have sprung back to life in the northern hemisphere. Earth Day has matured into more than just a single day excuse to justify tree hugger, hippie like folks who were associated with it’s cause back in the 1970’s and beyond. Earth Day has blossomed into a year-round lifestyle for many folks, including the main-stream media, such as The Weather Channel, or marketing for companies also, take a look at Target, Silk Soy milk, Pottery Barn Kids, Disney and “Go Green”, this is big business now.

There are plenty of things that folks are doing to make a statement and impact for treading lightly on the planet, and I am not going to list all the possible things one can do. There are plenty of web sites and blog’s for that information, however, what I will do is tell you what we are doing in our little piece of heaven on earth that we hope will help to make three significant contributions for us and Mother Earth:

• reduce our total carbon footprint
• save money
• live a healthier lifestyle

Ten specific things that we do

All of the simple and little things that we do today help to reduce our total carbon footprint, save money, help us to live a healthier lifestyle, and give us peace of mind that we are making a difference:

1. Recycle all plastic, aluminum, cardboard, paper, glass, metal, leaves, and plant material.
2. Keeping our air and heating thermostats higher in the summer (76°) and lower in the winter (66°), saves on the energy bill every month also.
3. Reuse brown water to hydrate non-edible plants and lawn.
4. Reuse plastic zip type bags and deli meat containers for storage, dozens of reuses from each.
5. Use “Green” reusable shopping bags for all grocery and market purchases. We also get back a five cent credit on each green bag we use at our local Lowe’s grocery, which goes toward our Green Points savings. Walgreen’s green bags are only .99 cents each.
6. Grow many of our own herbs and vegetables, fresher, healthier, organic, and costs much less.
7. Purchase locally grown produce at the farmers market.
8. Wear outer clothing that is not soiled or dirty several times before laundering.
9. Recycle organic kitchen waste for garden compost.
10. Use filtered water to replenish reusable water bottles instead of buying cases of disposable plastic water bottles.

Expanding the garden

As part of item number six above, we have grown our own tomatoes and fresh kitchen herbs for the past six years or so. Moreover, last year we tested a crop of container tomatoes on the ground set next to the paver path in the front yard, and they did fairly well. So this year I decided to expand the front patio with adding two 4 X 10 foot garden beds to put vegetable plants into the ground. This area is on the south side and gets between six and eight hours of direct sun a day, so it makes a great spot for our “Eat The View” kitchen garden.

Marking out the garden plots and paver paths

Pavers added to garden plots

Edging added to garden plots

Next step is to till in some compost and top soil into the garden plots, test and adjust the soil, then plant the following, the number of plants listed also:

• Sweet 100 Cherry Tomatoes – 4
• Roma Tomatoes- 2
• Tree Tomato – 2
• Anaheim Peppers – 2
• North Star Green Peppers – 2
• Sweet Basil – 4
• Purple Basil – 2
• Eggplant – 2
• Zucchini – 2
• Yellow Squash – 1
• Cucumber – 1
• Cantaloupe – 1
• Arugula – 2

Returning plants that survived the winter and seem to make a re-appearance every year:

• Oregano
• Rosemary
• Chives
• Garlic Chives
• Cilantro
• Thyme
• Creeping lemon thyme
• Italian parsley
• Curly parsley
• Peppermint
• Spearmint
• Marjoram

Guest Blog Post ~ David Bakke

Today I want to re-introduce you to David Bakke; he is the author of Your Finances 101 blog, where he writes about Saving More, Spending Less, and Generating Extra Cash in Your Life.  In David’s guest blog post today he guides us through the typical house dinner party, some of the trials and tribulations, and what it means to clean up, before, during and after. This is David’s second guest post on CCR, his first was a post on Frugal Shopping, on March 3, 2010.

Who Wants to NOT Help With the Dishes?

By David Bakke

So, the big family dinner has just finished, or the big meal at the dinner party you’re attending.  You’re amongst friends (or family) yet the nervous glances around the room begin.   Everyone has that horrible feeling in the pit of their stomach.  They know it’s all coming…and they cannot run, and they cannot hide.  It’s those words we all hate to hear out of the host/hostess’ mouth…

Who wants to help with the dishes?

Well, I bet you would all love to attend the dinner parties thrown at my house.  Because, after the eating is done, rather than throwing out this awful question, I usually break everyone up with the following…

Who wants to NOT help out with the dishes?

You see, buy utilizing some simple concepts and a little common sense; you can cut down your after-dinner dishwashing to virtually nothing.  You can reduce it to a little more than a quick rinse of a few plates and popping them into the dishwasher.

I’ve always thought that I had a Food Network show floating around with this concept, but for now, we’ll start off with an article here.

One of my real passions is food.  I love to cook, and I love to eat an incredibly well-prepared homemade meal.  Most of this passion came from my work in corporate restaurant management, where I spent the better part of twenty years.  Moreover, most of that time was spent running kitchens.

Three things I learned in that time.  In order to run a successful kitchen, you have to be organized, you have to be clean, and you have to know the fastest way possible to get everything done.

Well, these habits never left me when I left the restaurant business.  I still use this love of what I learned then in my own kitchen today.

One thing that always has surprised me about these parties/gatherings is the incredible pile of dirty dishes that are left in the sink after a meal’s preparation.  It is like a monkey hanging on your back.  Not only did somebody bust their behind preparing some great food, they have this mess to look forward to.  What drudgery! What a downer to the whole meal!  And, if there’s a party going on, who’s the one that gets punished?  Who gets sent to the kitchen to clean up the mess?

In my kitchen, it’s nobody. I didn’t have to entertain for too many groups of people (or even simply prepare a large family meal) before I realized that this system is for the birds.  I quickly asked myself the question:  “Why can’t this stuff be cleaned up as you are preparing the meal?” And it wasn’t too long before I came up with the answer.  And the answer is a resounding “It can”.

Let me make a few brief points about the whole thing.

• While you are preparing your meal, not everything is finished cooking at the same time.  Therefore, cleaning this stuff up as you go is much more doable than you might think.  Moreover, much more desirable than having pan after pan pile up in the sink.
• All pots, pans, and dishes clean up much more quickly and easily when  hot, rather than when whatever food is on it has had time to dry and affix itself like super glue to the surface.
• Water does wonders.  For anything that is empty and has come off the stove or out of the oven, if you cannot get to it at once, get some water in it.  This saves an incredible amount of time.

Having said that, this is how I do it.  As the dishes are prepared and finished, as I said, they don’t finish all at the same time.  Therefore, I either move the entire recipe into the dish it is being served in, or fill up my serving dish and get the rest into a leftover container.  Then, the pan goes right into the sink, where it is watered, scrubbed (very easily I might add), dried off and returned to its storage place.

Anyone who cooks at all knows that there is a certain amount of down time while you are preparing your food.  Utilize this down time to do this cleaning.  This process ensures you spend no “extra” time in the kitchen; it just eliminates all the post-meal clean up.

You will have to make good use of hot pads and towels and so forth because this stuff is hot when it comes out of the oven or off the stove.  Use your head so you don’t get burned.

Before you dismiss this idea as too much work or not being doable, simply imagine sitting down to an excellent meal that you just prepared.  Imagine right afterwards when you clear the table that you have nothing, and I mean nothing extra to clean besides the dishes that were eaten off of.

You can simply pop these into the dishwasher and be back at the party in minutes.  In addition, you won’t have to ask volunteers to help.  Trust me, your friends and family will love this.

Love my idea?  Hate it?  Let me know below.  In addition, thanks Ryan for the opportunity…