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Food

#EatYourYard – What’s In Your Walnut?

“Walnut is useful at all the transition points in life… it helps break links with the past so that we can move forward more easily.” 
– The Bach Centre, home of Dr. Edward Bach and the Bach Flower Remedy

I hoard lore of plants – their amazing mystical, healing properties (read: nurturing wellbeing). I thread this restorative intel into every design (and nearly all conversations, TBH). This season’s stand out: the Walnut tree. Some may say a messy tree; I say majestic (right plant, right place, people). On our farm, the 50+-year-old English Walnut is dropping gems (nuts) of transformation in abundance. I’m listening and moving forward. Factoid: Walnuts are the only nuts that contain high amounts of omega-3s that support heart health and lower blood pressure. What’s in walnut is pretty darn good!

On my walnut recipe hunt, I asked wellbeing compatriot Jenny Peterson of Austin, TX (fella garden designer, author, and wellness advocate) for a “walnut-forward” smoothie recipe. (You know I’m a smoothie sipper.) Jenny cracked that nut with a delish recipe as featured above. Download, blend and enjoy more from her Herb Lover’s Smoothie Book.

Carrot Cake Smoothie a la Jenny Nybro Peterson

  • 1 cup Plant-based Milk of your choice
  • 1 Banana
  • 1 1/2 Carrots, chopped
  • 1/2 cup Unsweetened Applesauce OR 1/2 Apple
  • 3 tablespoons Walnuts
  • 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
  • 1 scoop Plant-based Vanilla Protein Powder
  • Handful of Ice (I rely on a frozen banana)

Follow Jenny’s Wellness Tips of the Day on Facebook for more smoothie recipes and ideas for healthy living.

This is an excerpt from our Fall 2018 Red Bird  ri-ˈstȯr-ə-tiv Magazine. 
 Sign up for the Red Bird Newsletter to receive the next issue of our seasonal e-zine and you’ll also get my “3 CURES TO FIX WHAT’S AILING YOUR HEALING OUTDOOR HAVEN!”

 

Master Gardener Monday – week 5: Berry, berry good

How attached are you to food that grows well in your “native” landscape? (I use “native” as in your “native” land – where you say you are really from.) Here in the wondrous Willamette (rhymes with dammit) Valley, we are blessed with pretty much the “stick in the ground, keep it wet, it’ll sprout” soil (all relative to organic care, of course).  

I am deeply attached to local produce that my “native” land produces. In 1993, close friends threw me a “moving to west Texas (why?) party”.  Lisa, mixed berry pie master, made a pie I will never forget; so good (read: magical) that it was all too clear during a very short stint in a “foreign” land (with no berries), that I knew to return home asap… if only to have direct growing and picking access to Oregon berries.   

Of all the berries, which is your favorite?  Blue, Rasp, Straw, or Grape?  (Okay, I know that grape may not be considered a “berry”, but go with it.)  I love ’em all, and am, admittedly, a little over the top crazy about Oregon berries.  (The only food I cared about for my wedding reception. Thank you cousin Mary Ann Z.)

Oregon Berry Admiration - go on & have some!

Oregon Berry Admiration - go on & have some!

How lucky for me that Bernadine Strik, leading researcher who conducts extension educational programs for the Oregon commercial berry crop industries (training for small nursery growers), presented in MG incubator this week.  

The biggest-ever berry pie of information was served. Yum.  Ms. Bernadine is the author of a bounty of berry pubs for the home gardener. Yeah!  Thankfully a resource so that we might do better, live better, eat better via our home gardens — these pubs will help you know, select, prep, care and harvest. Berry, berry goodness for all to devour as we look forward to spring and summer and gardens that sustain us:

Blueberries – Growing Blueberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Raspberries – Growing Raspberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Strawberries – Growing Strawberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Grapes – Growing Grapes in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, June 2006]

Need help sorting through? Berry confused? Desire the ability to forage in your backyard? Contact me, tweet me on twitter and we’ll find the right plant / right place for your garden, ’cause ya know I want you to thrive (& have loads of berry pie).