becoming organic

More and more Chase and I are becoming organic/green people.  Its not because its the "cool thing" but because we have done some research and organic and green products are healthier for you and your environment.

As our diet has morphed into a more well balanced healthy intake of food we made the switch to buying some organic products and locally grown products.  Luckily, being in Dallas has made this much easier.  I have also slowly switched to green environmentally friendly cleaning products as I began to think more about taking care of our home and our surroundings.  We have also taken some strides with our veggie garden, being able to pluck fresh tomatoes and peppers right out of our backyard.  Nothing more "locally grown" than that.

And we LOVE Target's Archer Farms brand...great organic products at reasonable prices.

We still have a long way to go and it still hurts a little to pay the larger price tags but we are getting there.  This past grocery trip, after reading a very informative article, we made the jump to cage free organic brown eggs.  I had been avoiding this for a long time just because I had a weird mental block with brown colored eggs.  But, after finding out how much more nutritional value you get from a cage free brown egg it was easy to make the switch.

Personal growth people. Love it.

What's for Dinner?

I have not posted about what's for dinner in quite some time, mostly because we are dieting and our meals are pretty boring.  But a few days ago we cooked our first meal with veggies from our backyard garden!  It was very exciting to harvest peppers and tomatoes from our backyard and use them in our dinner.

So what was this meal?  Chicken and shrimp kabobs with cherry tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper and pineapple.  The cherry tomatoes, tomato slices and green bell peppers came from our garden.  It was a simple and delicious meal with lots of fun summer colors.



We put all of the meat and veggies on the skewers and then added salt, pepper and some dash seasoning. Cook on the grill at low heat for about 20 minutes. Perfection.



Looking forward to making some homemade salsa with our veggies next.

the growing continues

Another quick update on our first veggie garden.

After returning from our weekend in OKC we were fearful that some damage may have been done to the veggie garden due to lack of watering. Boy were we wrong. The veggie garden was doing better than ever with plants towering and tomatoes popping up everywhere. We even had to add in some support cages for the tomato plants because the weight of all the tomatoes was taking them down.

A quick look back at day 1:


And now at day 40 or so:


We are getting some absolutely beautiful veggies.

Peppers...we are growing peppers

Okay, so I must admit that when we planted all of our veggies sent from Burpee Home Gardens I had no idea what all we were planting. From what they had told me I thought we just had a variety of tomatoes and basil. Well, I was wrong.

As we were doing our daily survey of our veggie garden Chase spotted a beautiful green bell pepper, almost ready for harvesting! We are growing peppers! I was SO excited. How cool is that?



We have both already decided to drastically expand our garden in the near future. In the meantime take a look at our ever growing tomatoes and our new found peppers.

tomatoes!

We have some serious progress in the veggie garden...tomatoes! They are SO cute and I can't wait to eat them. Almost all of the plants have at least one tomato, most having two or three.



We are beyond excited that we are actually producing food in our own backyard.

veggie and yard update

A few days ago I posted about our first veggie garden.  Well its growing and growing!  Here are a couple shots of the progress.  We are starting to see a few buds on the tomato plants, hopefully those will continue to grow into something we can eat!  The only issue we are having is with some bugs...its been very humid here and not quite hot enough = breeding ground for plant eating bugs.  Going to hit the local nursery today to see if they have some knowledge to impart.



Our yard and plants are also looking great!  We went out of town the week after we put the grass down but our fantastic neighbor watered for us so its looking healthy and green.

our first veggie garden

A couple weeks ago, before our sodding project, Chase and I built and planted our first veggie garden.  Its just a small beginner garden that we plan to expand on but its a good start.



We decided to do our gardening in a raised box bed made with our own bare hands. A couple untreatd 2x6x8 and a piece of untreated plywood with holes drilled in for drainage. Simple and effective.



We used the plants provided by Burpee Home Gardens and Paisley even helped me plant them.

Right now the veggie garden is made up of 4 different varieties of tomatoes and some basil. We can't wait to use our own home grown tomatoes!