Health & Wellness Investigations

Where I live, you’re not really supposed to plant your garden until Memorial Day weekend. Buuuuttt….I had planting part one on Mother’s Day! The extent of my gardening experience is a couple of cacti indoors and a pot of jalapeno plants last summer, so I was super excited to start! My main focus is going to be herbs, since I love to cook...and spices are freaking expensive. I mean, seriously. Why are spices so expensive? In my region, I can grow thyme, oregano, chives, and sage as perennials, so those were a must-plant. I also use tons of fresh basil in the summer, so that was a must as well. I also had (well, still have) a list of about 25 different weird herbs that I want because herbs are cool. I may have googled “unusual herbs” and written down everything. Y’know, just maybe. Anyway, for Mother’s Day I took my mom out to a fancy nursery near where she lives, and ended up buying $90 worth of plants.  Don’t worry, those weren’t all culinary herbs. I spent ju...

In the spirit of the recent posts about eggs, I thought I’d share some things that you can do with the egg shells . My mom always kept a container in her kitchen for used eggshells, and now I do the same thing. Saving the shells takes about two seconds, and it doesn’t cost anything - win win. In my house, the shells have two main uses… Plant Food: This is my most common use for the shells. I crush them and put them in the soil of my houseplants and herbs - the shells contain a lot of calcium which is good for the soil. My mom always swore by them for tomatoes especially - a lot of the time blossom end rot is caused by a lack of calcium in the soil, and eggshells can help with that. I don’t have tomato plants (yet), but I figure the shells can’t hurt my soil! People Food: When I make stock, I’ll sometimes grind up a few shells in my coffee grinder until they make a fine powder and add them to the stock. This extra calcium is important in my diet because I don’t get a lot of d...