Antique dealers may respond hopefully to dusty bits in attics, but true cooks palpitate over even more curious oddments: mushroom and tomato skins, fowl carcasses, tender celery leaves, fish heads, knucklebones, and chicken feet. These are just a few of the treasures for the stockpot–that magic source from which comes the telling character of the cuisine.

In my family, I’m in charge of stock-making, providing the raw material which is the secret reason why Joanna’s soups are so good (I’ll ask her to post our best soup recipes soon, but don’t tell her I’m claiming credit for their goodness). Whenever we’ve got a turkey or chicken carcass leftover from a big meal, or from grabbing one of those whole roast chickens from the deli at the grocery store, we don’t throw away the bones and skin–we make stock. Then we freeze it, or turn it directly into soup, or use it for making rice (it makes rice taste really good).

It feels kinda old-fashioned to get all the good out of what would otherwise be thrown away. Your great-grandparents would be proud.

Here’s my modification of the Joy of Cooking recipe for “Light Stock from Poultry”.

Break up your chicken bones, skins, and leftover pieces. Don’t leave anything out. Put them in a pot with about two  quarts of water, and bring them to a boil. Add:

• 6 peppercorns (screw open your pepper grinder to get some, or just put in plenty of pepper)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 4 whole cloves
• 4 sprigs fresh parsley or plenty of dried parsley
• 1 small diced onion (or half a big one–a great use of leftover onions you might have saved)
• 2 sticks of celery, diced up,  if you have them
• 1 medium-sized carrot, diced or sliced thinly

if you don’t have something, leave it out! It’ll be fine. Don’t add salt.

Reduce the heat, and continue to simmer uncovered or partially covered on a very low heat, for about two hours, or until the liquid is reduced by half. If some scum (frothy bubbles) float to the top, you can spoon them off. Then strain it into a storage container, and put it in the fridge overnight. (Throw the bones and solids away; you’ve got all the good out of them.) There may be some fat that solidifies at the top, and you can just lift it off and throw it away. Then put it back in the fridge until you want to use it (in a few days), or put it in a ziploc bag and freeze it for up to a couple of months.

If you have a chicken or turkey for dinner, this takes very little time, because you get it going while you do the dishes, and strain it and store it before you go to bed.

What to use it for? Recipes coming up soon!

You’ll be tempted to start buying those roast chickens at the grocery store just to get the bones for stock soon! Be sure, if you can, to get free range chickens. This is a way to get all the good out of the added expense.

When I was a kid, my mother—queen of catalog shopping—bought a hand-held, squeeze-trigger device with a dial on top. It being the early seventies and I being a TV-addicted adolescent boy, my recognition of the contraption was instant: Star Trek Phaser!

Instant, but wrong.

It was, alas, a label maker—one of those things with which you squeezed out letter by raised letter on thin plastic tape such useful identifiers as “wedding photos,” “washers,” and “underwear.” And though useless against such menaces as the dreaded Salt Vampire of planet M-113, it was for a while fun. Soon every box, drawer and cabinet in our house had a label stuck on it. Now, the theory went, everything had a place. Everything could be stowed properly, found easily and used efficiently. Life under control.

Or not.

It turned out that wedding photos also contained grandparents, aunts and uncles. Should they be filed under “relatives” instead? Washers come in several kinds: flat, lock, and rubber to name a few. Could one box hold them all? (At least we got the underwear right.) Labels, it turns out, are tricky business.

Especially when slapped on people. Take me, for example.

When I lived and worked in Washington, DC, I was often the “conservative” in the crowd. Why? Because I owned cowboy boots, read the Bible and voted Republican at times. Now back in small-town Texas, I’m regularly viewed as that “liberal” who wears Birkenstocks (for the arch support), works for “some kind of environmentalist group” and votes Democratic at times. (For the record, I still have the boots, read the Bible and vote Republican in some elections.)

In which drawer do I belong?

None, I hope. And that is the point. Labels are all too often an excuse to stick someone in a drawer. A means of dismissal. At A Rocha, a Christian conservation organization with community-based projects in 19 countries, we see it all the time. For many who care about the environment, “Christians” are the bad guys; for many who follow Jesus, “environmentalists” wear the black hats—if not little red horns.

But little by little, the glue on the back of those labels is failing. Christians—even so-called “conservative” ones—are starting to take seriously the biblical command to steward the Earth. For their part, environmentalists—seeing the need to have all hands on deck—are starting to welcome Christian involvement. (Witness E. O. Wilson’s appeal in his book Creation.) Consequently, and perhaps miraculously, the two camps are beginning to get along, at least well enough to cooperate occasionally.

We see this, too, all the time.

In Boise, Idaho, A Rocha is mobilizing churchgoers to help the local chapter of Trout Unlimited plant streamside trees to shade the water and improve fish habitat. In northwest Washington, we’re working with environmental groups and farmers alike on eco-friendly ways to protect the region’s blueberry crop from ravenous Starlings—an invasive exotic species that devours some 40 percent of the annual harvest. In Lebanon, we partner with the Society for the Protection of Nature to identify and protect endangered habitats critical to migrating birds. In Kenya, working with a range of interests, we crafted a program that both protects the last remaining stands of the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest and generates income with which families living in and around the forest can now send their children to school and help free the next generation from poverty’s grip.

Through these efforts and many others like them, common cause between Christians and environmentalists (and advocates for the poor, health care, farming and more) is forged, conversations begin, labels peel away and behind them persons—sometimes friends even—emerge. It’s a wonder what the sweat of shared work can do—not just for the goal, but also to the people pursuing it.

That doesn’t mean we will all agree on everything—whether the root cause of a problem or its ultimate solution. And certainly not on politics! But evidence is growing that we can, and do, agree on this: the Earth—however one thinks it came into being—is worth caring for. And that seems a pretty good place to start.

So, as Jesus himself might say, woe to the label makers that seek to dismiss, divide and put us all into drawers. Let’s turn them all into Phasers, go outside and together zap some Tribbles—those fuzzy pink but dastardly invasive exotics.

–

*Rowley is executive director of A Rocha USA, a nonprofit conservation organization mobilizing Christians to steward the Earth.
See previous commentaries by Tom Rowley at http://arocha-usablog.org

“You and I are trash machines.  We each generate nearly one ton of garbage each year.  The nearly 250 million tons of garbage we produce in the United States would fill Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey 737 times each year.  That’s twice a day, every day.  That’s a bunch of rubbish!

So, for the month of November, Vicki and I are trying a little experiment.  We are going to strive to produce no garbage for a month.  Our compost pile and recycling bins will be our friends.  Admittedly, we will have to make some serious choices about the purchases that face us the next month.  Instead of just shopping for price, quality and convenience, we are going to be thinking about packaging, utility and reusability.  We are going to refuse to make refuse.

So, for the next month, I will be talkin’ trash!  Daily, I will write about our successes and failures, the things we learn, and the things we regret.  The goal: keep the trash can empty!  Keep up with our progress here, and join us in this effort.  Let’s do what we can to keep from throwing things “away”.

After all, away is not just some imaginary neverland – it is an actual place on our planet. Garbage just gets moved from my house to another place in God’s creation that we collectively decided it would be OK to trash.  It can be nearby, or it can be thousands of miles away, messing creation by spoiling the land it is placed in, fouling the air through incineration, and by polluting by transporting it.  Can we make these places smaller, more local, less frequent and less degrading to Creation’s natural systems?

So, go ahead and jump into the waste stream with me.  If you want to read more about the impacts trash has on our planet, read Gardening Eden, pages 207-217.”

Michael writes about his family’s effort in terms of its effect on the creation. I’ll bet the bigger result will be the effect on him and his wife, ask they’ll be demonstrating with their actions what kind of people they want to be–responsible and careful rather then reckless and careless.

Gardening Eden is available at the Flourish online bookstore .

Gardening Eden: How Creation Care Will Change Your Faith, Your Life and Our World, by Michael Abbate, published by WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House, 2009.  ISBN  978-0-30744-499-8.   For more info: www.michaelabbate.com

Kids need knives.

I still get a laugh when my family goes to a sit-down restaurant, to see servers putting out silverware and carefully making sure that the table knives don’t go anywhere near my kids. This at ages up to nine…!

Those servers would have been shocked to see my six and nine year-old boys at home, sitting on the back deck, whittling away for hours, making their own bows, arrows, and spears, and eventually making even elaborate little boats and toys.

I’ve been on camping trips with other families whose own kids were kept far from knives. Their children were warned not to interact with nature.

“Don’t go off the path.”
“Don’t play with the fire.”
“Don’t pick up insects.”
“Stay away from snakes.”
“Watch out for poison ivy.”
“Don’t play with knives.”
“DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.”

My own kids were of course the ones catching snakes, licking slugs, picking up bugs, climbing trees, leaving the path, carving things, and getting the other kids into trouble. They (mostly) don’t get poison ivy, because they know what it looks like. They don’t pick up poisonous snakes because they know what they look like. They know that Florida green anoles (lizards) will bite your earlobes and hang on until you take them off, making great temporary clip-on earrings. They have a lot of fun. Unsupervised fun, for the most part, which is what kids lack these days, according to Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods and the person who coined the phrase “nature deficit disorder.”

Why the worried parents? Many are themselves uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the outdoors, find camping to be a genuine novelty, and spent more time in malls than outdoors as a child. But I think less is personality and more is culture.

It’s the culture of childproofing and child safety run amok. These parents seem to have the belief that their main responsibility is to deliver their children to college having never been injured in childhood in any way. Of course children seem to have the opposite goal, but without ever encountering danger, they never learn how to handle themselves in the face of it.

It’s also the “Take only pictures; leave only footprints” culture, carried almost to its logical conclusion. Nature is a museum (a dangerous museum), and combining people with nature is a recipe for someone to get hurt, either nature or the intruding human. What we really need is more people in creation, learning to love it and use it and protect it.

Kids need knives. They are one of the most supremely useful tools for interacting with creation. They’re an important part of moral and creative development. And they let kids harvest their own raw materials and modify them for creative play.

Richard Louv writes about the theory of “loose parts” that has begun to influence child-play experts and landscape architects. The originator of the theory is a well-known British artist named Ben Nicholson, who died in 1990. Nicholson contended that: “in any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.” Playing with “loose parts” is far different than the scripted play that goes along with so many modern toys with commercial movie and cartoon tie-ins. Up and down the toy aisles of Target and Wal-mart you don’t find much in the way of raw materials. You find products that require you to buy accessories designed to go with them, which are hard to incorporate with toys in other product lines.

Loose-parts play is open-ended; requiring far more creativity and imagination, and developing far more skill and competence, than most modern plastic toys allow (and certainly more than is found in computer games). As Louv writes: “a typical list of loose parts for a natural play area might include water, trees, bushes, flowers, and long grasses, a pond and the creatures in it, along with other living things, sand (best if it can be mixed with water), places to sit in, on, under; structures that offer privacy and views. Go beyond that play area, to woods, fields, and streams, and the parts become looser and even more potent to the imagination.”

Having and knowing how to use a knife gives kids power to transform materials in useful ways. We designate certain weedy shrubs and fast-growing trees in the wilder areas of our small urban yard as permitted source materials for the kids, and keep them around for just that purpose. They learn to use it responsibly. They know there are consequences to their actions with a knife, for nature as well as for their fingers! And they know that their tool needs care, sharpening, and protection from misuse. They also become firm believers in private property when their brother tries to poach their prized possession.

We started the boys off making soap carvings at ages three and four, on Ivory soap, with “knives and chisels” I whittled out of wooden popsicle sticks. They loved it. We started letting them whittle with a knife, under close supervision, seated with a parent and with no other kids around, when they were about four-and-a-half. The rule was that if anyone else approached, they put down the knife.

The best starting “real” knife is a fixed blade knife with a wooden handle and short sharp blade (like the Murphy knife; all the knives mentioned here are available from the Flourish store). At age six they got their own folding-blade pocketknife. Some people like lock-back blades (like the Victorinox Sentinel, a great knife), and we got one for our first son, but I seriously don’t think it’s necessary. The French-made Opinel is beautiful (and cheap), has a single folding blade that sharpens really well and has a lovely pearwood handle—my nine-year old loves this knife. My six year old has never folded the blade onto his fingers (yet).

To see the knives mentioned above, along with soap carving kits and woodcarving kits, go to the Flourish store and in the “Browse by Category” section on the right click on “Children and the Outdoors” and then on the subcategory “Knives and Whittling.” And you must learn to sharpen well! Whether you have kids or not, you should get a strop, a good knife, and the “Little Book of Whittling.”

Originally posted on Sustainlane.com.

Does caring for the environment
always come at the expense of jobs? Is creation care something that
must be traded off against people care? I'm reading a great book right
now that addresses just that issue. I'm reading it with my pastor,
Leroy Barber, because we care about the beautiful but broken South
Atlanta neighborhood our church calls home. Leroy is president of Mission Year and is a speaker at this year's Flourish Conference for church leaders on creation care.

The book is Van Jones' The Green Collar Economy. Van Jones is the founder and president of Green For All,
and his work is significant for Christians who want to do community
development in environmentally-friendly ways and for those who want to
find ways out of the "environment vs. jobs" debate. Jones points out
the many ways in which solving environmental problems can be done with
justice. His position is that as long as we're going to all the trouble
to create a clean energy economy, we might as well make a renewed
effort to tackle discrimination and inequality, too.

He addresses
the involvement of faith communities directly and challenges the
"so-called progressives [who] snarl the word 'Christian' as if it were
an insult or the name of a disease." He presses activists to become
problem-solvers, to become more about "proposition" than "opposition."
In a short list of principles for a new movement, Jones advocates fewer
"issues," more solutions; fewer "demands," more goals; fewer "targets,"
more partners; and less "accusation," more confession.

Leroy's recent post on Sojourners blog captures how he thinks about environmental issues:

Is
it possible to create a new economy in the hood that would create jobs,
lower energy costs, reduce the carbon footprint of an urban
neighborhood, and allow neighbors to get to know one another at the
same time? I think there just might be a way to make this a reality. I
would like to green my hood.

The problem in
urban neighborhoods is that they are some of the most dangerous places,
environmentally speaking. Trash dumps, tow lots, expressways, and
chemical plants create places that are quite unsafe. Our neighborhoods
can begin to help themselves and lower some of the risk by starting their own green projects.
We could hire and train people to do home audits for seniors and
families in homes that are full of lead paint, leaky windows, clogged
gutters, and uninsulated water heaters. This training would give jobs
to people and lower energy bills for residents, as well as reduce the
carbon footprint of the neighborhood.

We can grow neighborhood gardens and farmers’ markets, which would offer places for neighbors to have better access to nutritious food
and vegetables that are otherwise very costly. When we make
neighborhoods walkable and livable, neighbors can get around without
driving, and that means less asthma-causing air pollution, fewer
emergency room visits, and fewer sleepless nights for worried parents. Caring for the environment has hit the hood and is now a major urban issue,
and people of faith have opportunity to offer good news in a new way.
This is no longer just an issue of global warming and saving rain
forests — it is about protecting some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Clothing
the naked, visiting the prisoner, and feeding the hungry now needs to
include providing clean air, safe streets, and healthy neighborhoods
for our poor urban neighbors. I am committed to greening my hood for a
number of reasons. If you want to learn more about it, you should check
out The Green Collar Economy, by Van Jones. This is his idea, and I have become a fan.

Leroy and I are searching for other Christians who have read The Green Collar Economy—or the related work by Thomas Friedman, called Hot, Flat and Crowded
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008)—and who have ideas and stories to
tell about environmental actions that create rather than threaten jobs,
especially in this economy. Please write me if we can feature your work or the work of others you know.

To meet Leroy Barber and other Christian leaders who are looking at environmental issues in a new way, check out the Flourish Conference, May 13-15, 2009 in Atlanta.

“Let’s Tend the Garden 2007” will feature workshops, breakout sessions, environmental outreach ministry, and dynamic keynote speakers like Richard Cizik (of the NAE) and Scott Sabin (of the Christian relief and development organization Floresta). The conference is hosted by the Boise, Idaho, Vineyard Christian Fellowship, whose pastor, Tri Robinson, recently wrote the very useful book “Saving God’s Green Earth.” The website for the conference is http://www.letstendthegarden.org/conference/new_conference07.htm.

The EPA is a great source of information on how to make buildings and facilities more energy efficient. They have special sections on small business by industry (camps may be interested in the “lodging” section, and they have a section for congregations. They reckon most congregations could save 30% in energy costs with some strategic investments.

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=small_business.sb_congregations

The Evangelical Environmental Network publishes “Creation Care” magazine, a quarterly journal that contains articles, news, essays, and bible studies on the Christian mandate to steward creation well. Several camps purchase discounted copies to make available to every staffer and counselor.

http://www.creationcare.org/magazine

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has resources on residential and commercial building construction, including technical reports on greening various kinds of facilities, and a buyers’ guide to energy efficient commercial equipment.

http://www.aceee.org/buildings/commercial.htm

The National Wildlife Habitat has hints, tips, and how-to guides on creating wildlife habitat in backyards and schoolyards, which could be used for landscaping and teaching about creation care in camp settings.

http://www.nwf.org/schoolyard/

Much of America’s poor diet, poor land use, water pollution, industrialization and concentration of agriculture in the hands of fewer and fewer "agribusinesses" is a result of the distortions and wealth transfers effected by the Farm Bill. The damage is not limited to the U.S.–farmers around the world whose hopes for the future are pinned to producing crops for export are hurt when American agricultural goods are priced lower than their cost of production. Food aid to the developing world is partly first-world generosity and partly an elaborate dumping scheme to rid the global North of agricultural overproduction induced by market-distorting subsidies.

Yet the Bill does much good as well. Plummeting waterfowl populations were restored through the land set-aside provisions of the Farm Bill, with marginal croplands and previously farmed wetlands restored to health with conservation support in the Farm Bill. Many, many forest owners have received technical assistance to better manage their forest lands for wildlife, soil conservation, and water quality because of funding for such program through the Farm Bill. And millions of school children and poor families benefit from the National School Lunch Program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Food Stamp Program (all a part of the Farm Bill, believe it or not!).

Here’s the best starting point for a person of faith wanting to get a feel for agricultural issues and how they can be involved: check out the Spring 2007 issue of Catholic Rural Life, the magazine of the (U.S.) National Catholic Rural Life Conference. You can find backgrounders, principles from the Religious Working Group on the Farm Bill, links to other useful sources of information, and a checklist of point to emphasize when you write your Representative or Senator.

Other sources of valuable information on the Farm Bill (not all Christian, by any means, but all useful):

• National Wildlife Federation
• Farm and Food Policy Project
• National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture
• Bread for the World

It probably wouldn’t take much for you to become the Farm Bill expert in your church. Why not check out a few of these links and then ask a few friends to join you in writing your Senators and Representative (especially if they’re on the House or Senate Ag committees; you can send an automated message about wildlife conservation in the Farm Bill through the NWF portal, or you can see the list of committe members at NCRLC)?

Native plants are ideally suited for low-maintenance, low-cost, low-toxicity gardens. After all, God lets them flourish in their current habitats by endowing them with built-in insect and disease resistance, with an ability to grow on nothing but rainfall, and a with a natural proclivity to support native birds, butterflies, and other wildlife that depend on them for shelter and food. One way to tend God’s garden is to find good uses for the plants he designed for your particular region.

Some native plants are easier to find than others, and some look especially good in home gardens. We like the website American Beauties (http://www.abnativeplants.com/) which was put together by garden centers, plant nurseries, and the National Wildlife Federation. I love the landscape plans (very helpful for finding creative combinations), and the guides for attracting birds, butterflies, and frogs are very useful. You can even search by your zipcode to find local nurseries that carry American Beauty certified plant materials (although I didn’t find any in my area, you might have better luck).

A good article on backyard native gardening appeared July 14 in the Washington Post; it featured the work of David Mizejewski, naturalist with the National Wildlife Federation and host of Animal Planet’s series "Backyard Habitat."