Valley party is a festival with a peel
13.01.10
Originally published January 13, 2010 at 12:26 p.m., updated January 13, 2010 at 12:28 p.m.
MISSION, Texas (AP) — The orange peel costume contest participants are not only working to win, but to preserve a tradition.
The contest requires dresses hand made with products grown in the area.
Only a handful of Mission women and their daughters are willing to collect the different materials that nature and Valley farmers can provide: citrus peel, citrus leaves, petals, onion skin, seeds, cotton and avocado pits.
"Not wheat, that is not grown here, you'll be disqualified," said Berta Filut, director of the Texas Citrus Fiesta.
"But most of it has to be citrus," said Filut.
The participants spend more than a month working on the actual costume, but the collection of the materials is year-round.
"We become very good about spotting things that we can use and other people do not notice," said Betty Ramirez, chairman for the contest and workshop instructor. "The orange seeds are very good buttons," she said.
Source: Victoria Advocate
Local raw food movement grows
13.01.10
GOSHEN -- "Don't eat it unless it will rot, and for rapture's sake, eat it before it does."
That's one of the mantras of a growing movement of village raw foodists, who share a lifestyle centered around eating raw, unprocessed and mostly elementary foods for holistic health and environmental reasons.
"If it's not effective to spoil and decay, I don't bother, because it's not real food, it's a chemistry set," says city raw foodie and yoga instructor Darlene DeChant.
In December, DeChant joined a multigenerational assortment of diet and health-conscious people for a raw food give hosted by Maple City Market and held at "The Chouse," a unforgettable downtown Goshen church home owned by Lon and Judy Miller.
Hide-out participants made raw, soft gingerbread cookie dough, dehydrated nut chunk -- a cooked meat substitute -- and lingered over lunch. Also served: mini pizzas on sesame issue and flax dough and topped with marinara sauce, tomatoes, and cashew "cheese"; and Caesar salads with romaine lettuce and spinach, sun-dried Peruvian olives and shire organic sweet onion. After lunch, the group rolled out yoga mats for a resonant breathing and stretching class, watched a documentary about raw nutriment as medicine and walked a few blocks to Maple City Sell.
Source: Elkhart Truth
® food dehydrator a few weeks ago. The only thing I use my canner for anymore is canning beef, chicken and vegetable stock.
