Good Day Google+ - The Art of Living Well

I think so, yeah. That'll be alright.

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and welcome to Good Day Google+. I had to stop and think for a minute. I've got so many shows going on that sometimes I'm afraid I'm going to say the wrong one. But it's here, it's Friday, it's my favorite day of the week. It's the day I get to spend some time with my friends, introduce them to new friends, and just have a nice relaxing afternoon.

Afternoon.

No stress, no pressure, and I would say bring a beverage and join us, whether— depending on where you are in the world, it could be a glass of wine, it could be a cup of coffee, or maybe a Dr Pepper, you never know. So bring something nice and we'll have a good time today. I've got some great guests for you today, and let me run down and say hi to everyone. So regretfully, Dan Aston couldn't make it, but we have his mom and dad instead, Sue Aston and Phil Aston. So that's not really a bad Hi everyone. Hello. So happy to have you here coming to us from Cornwall, and we hope Dan is feeling better. Not fun being sick.

No, that's true.

Especially for a singer when they get that upper respiratory, you know.

Yeah, definitely bad news, isn't it?

Yeah. So is it because of the damp weather over there, or is he just—

it could be as well. He's just doing a lot of work.

I think he's run down, to be honest, because he was going to do a show, I think last week, and we've rolled it back a couple of weeks because he wasn't quite ready to pull that together, was he? Because it takes, when we do these music shows, it takes quite a lot of work to pull them together.

Believe it or not.

Believe it or not, yeah. It might look as if we just turn up.

That's what everyone thinks, you do it so well that you just flip on a switch and there it is.

Oh, thank you.

It's like when I cook, people go, why don't you cook more, do more cooking shows. I said, are you serious? You know how long it takes me to get ready?

I know, I have no idea.

Yeah, exactly. The setup time is enormous.

Yeah, it is.

So, well, thank you so much for filling in today, and our best to Dan. Thank you. He's got an invitation anytime he wants to come back.

Thank you.

Any member of the Aston family does. We were talking, you know, we need to get you in your robe.

Yeah, that's true. I will make an appearance.

Do you have a little stardust outfit or something you can anywhere?

Bit spandex?

Uh, no, no, see, spandex— not that I've ever worn spandex other than wrestling, but really, really, see, see, we're already, we're already drifting in this show, aren't we?

Drifting.

All right, so let's move on. So we have a new member with us today, and we have Robin Draper, and she is a Florida resident and a friend that I met thanks to my very good friend, uh, Bess Auer, who just brings people together. It's what she does. And thank you so much for coming on today. You've got a blog, and we're gonna talk to you about that.

I'm delighted.

And things that you do and what's going on in Florida in your life. So how are things today where you are?

Man, they're beautiful. It's a little slightly overcast, but I'm on the Gulf Coast in Sarasota, and if I look to my right, I'm looking right at the Gulf of Mexico.

Gah, I love it.

It's beautiful.

I'll be down a little bit past you later today, so yeah, if we do have time tomorrow, maybe we can meet up for a while.

That would be great.

Yeah, bring your computer and we'll see if we can figure out your little bird.

Yeah, I'm going to try to get there tomorrow for your Is it the— your show?

Yeah, the show is the barbecue. It's the Barbecue and Bluegrass Bash, and I'll be doing that with Laura Raymond tomorrow because she's running an Iron Chef competition, and it's also a way to get on the food— the World Food Championships. It's a qualifier for the World Food Championships, which are being held in Celebration this year in Florida.

Wow.

Cool.

That's pretty cool. So yeah, she wanted me to compete, and I says, uh, I don't do that. I feel like there was a movie with Clint Eastwood. I'm trying to remember what it was called, but he kept— people were saying, as he put his gun back on, he kept saying, I don't do that anymore, until the end of the movie, after about 3 hours, when he put it back on, and oh my God, he did do it for about 10 minutes. Done with the cooking. If I can't do it just for joy and pleasure, then I don't want to do it no more. No way.

It's living the good life.

Yeah, that's it. I love cooking for people, but if it's being judged, unless it's for charity, thanks.

Exactly.

Well, great. So we'll talk to you later, and hopefully maybe we'll see you tomorrow too.

Thanks for having me.

Now we're going all the way up to the top of the world to Misty Lynn. One of the Dev Chicks, and I'll let her tell you about that later, but Misty is at the Arctic Ocean, which is just blowing my mind. And you were showing us a little picture of it earlier, so how are you up there and what is the temperature? How cold is it today?

What is the temperature? Let me try. I think if I converted it to Fahrenheit, because we use the Celsius system, I think it would be about 2 Fahrenheit. And then if you add the wind chill, it would be minus, I don't know, minus 8 or minus 10. So that's a pretty fair day in spring. It's about average. And I went for a walk at 5 this morning. Oh, go ahead.

No, I was going to say up in the Green Bay area, that's like short and t-shirt weather, you know.

If it was that cold here, it would just stop. The whole of the UK would just grind to a halt. We don't do anything that approaches zero.

Just make tea all day.

I think when I talked to you earlier though, when we first started talking, wasn't it like 40 below or something?

Yes, yeah, I think that was a few months back.

So we're getting closer.

You know, I think we've got a little bit of a delay.

I do see that, so we'll try and keep that in mind when we're talking. I won't overstep you. So we'll come back to you and maybe you can show us a picture from your outside again and we'll talk more about what you're doing with the Death Chicks. Okay, now last but not least, I have Anne from Flour Sack Mama with us and she is a blogger, a baker, a coupon clipper, and a beauty consultant if I remember right.

There we go.

Hi, it's so good to be here.

Oh, I'm so happy to have you here today. And how are things? Where are you at? I keep forgetting.

I'm in East Tennessee near the beautiful Smoky Mountains, the Knoxville area near the Smokies.

How nice is that? And I guess spring has hit you pretty good there, huh?

Spring is here. We've been damp. I need to go work in the garden, so the rain needs to let up. I need a little more sunshine, and I need to get some more lettuce in and spend some more time outdoors.

So do you do a lot of gardening on your own there?

I love to garden. I love the concept of organic gardening, which I think everybody can do. And so I'm trying to teach my girls and get them in the habit of understanding that that's where food comes from. If we grow it ourselves, we can make it healthy. We don't have to use a lot of chemical pesticides, and we can pick things like fresh lettuce and just bring it right indoors. I'll try to show you a little bit of what I've got going on. Simple, nothing too fancy, but these are my, some of my tomato plants that I started from seed, and some of these are from seeds that I saved from last year. So just really simple, grow some of your own food.

Now were they, are they any of the older varieties of tomato, the heirloom tomatoes, or are they just reds?

Yes, no, I love heirlooms. Heirlooms, non-GMO for sure, and I was going to show you just how easy, if I can do this, anybody can. This is completely effortless. I went out, I didn't even realize I already have leaf lettuce growing. This is just from some of last year's seed. Here's kale that's been doing really well on its own. And I've got some herbs here. I've got a little oregano that's very hardy and continues to grow. I love onions and garlic. There are so many simple things that everybody can try to grow, even if it's just a little bit in your own garden. So I'm passionate about that.

Yeah, gardening is really nice to do and nice to know that what you're using you have control over and you're not spraying Roundup on it. You're not killing it.

Exactly, right. I don't want to spray poison on my food and then give it to my kids. It makes no sense, especially the World Health Organization just classified Roundup as probably a carcinogen, and they also looked at a couple other things that people use in the yards. And, you know, we just—

we have—

we now know better, so we can make smarter choices and grow some of our own food the way we want.

Absolutely. And I met you thanks to ShiftCon, which I'm still very grateful for.

Yes, I'm excited.

Yeah, are you going back this year?

I am planning on going back. I'm going to be with the Green 101 Tribe for anybody who thinks they might be interested in things like organic gardening, or they might be starting to read food labels, and maybe they're not sure what this is all about. I want to make sure people feel that, you know, this is not an elitist thing to go organic or anything like that. This is just an everyday concerned mom, concerned dad way of life. And so I'm really excited about Green 101 and all the different tribes and activities we have, and I'm hoping to see you there too, Dennis Littley.

Oh, I'll be there. Yeah, I already booked my room and we're getting ready. Lisa's coming. We'll be flying in for that. It was a life changer for me. And there's another— there is another event going on that weekend, but I told— it's Bess's conference, and I I can't, but I'm going to try and do a YouTube video thing for her via Hangouts, which would be pretty cool since we're teaching it. I mean, it'd be great to do it that way. I still haven't heard back. Have you heard anything on our— what we had talked about doing?

I have not. I really want to see a workshop. I want to come to your workshop. I'd love to be a part of it. Even if I'm not a part of it, I want to come to your workshop because it was great. I loved the info on Google+ and how you're helping everybody connect. I thought that was really, really important.

Well, the one I want to do now is just how to be a YouTube show host because people haven't really embraced Google+ and especially with all the other reports of it dying, which were untrue. I thought it would be better just to shift momentum and focus on how to do these shows because there's so many great people I met at ShiftCon that should be doing their own shows and getting the word, spreading the gospel of healthy eating, clean eating, and just living better. And one of the best things I liked about ShiftCon was the fact that there was no pressure, there was no judgment, there was no body, you know, saying, oh, you're gonna die, or, you know, you're gonna burn. Nothing like that. It was like, oh, well, try to make better decisions, you know, finish what you have and then buy something better. And I was like, oh my God, that's the best way to do it.

Exactly. I totally agree with you. You know, we're all just doing the best we can, and it might be one choice that we make this week. It might be something else that we try next week. So yes, we absolutely need to embrace that and the encouragement for one another to live the best we can.

I just read something someone posted on that on Hot Dogs, and it was, you know, they thought they were doing themselves so much good by buying these no nitrate, non-cured hot dogs, and then when they read through it, you know, they were using celery, which naturally produces nitrate, and in fact there was usually more nitrate in the hot dogs because of that. I said, "Just take a deep breath. It's not like you're eating them every day. When you eat them, buy the best that you can, and don't worry about it. Just don't live on hot dogs, that's all." Exactly, exactly. That's all it is, is educating people to make better decisions. That was it, shifting your thinking. It may not work all the time, but for the most of the time, at least you'd be doing better.

Absolutely.

Very good.

So we will come back to you in a little bit too, but right now we're going to shift back to the Astons. And Sue, if you're ready, or you're getting close to ready.

Definitely.

Yeah, we're getting close to ready.

Doing some new techie things. Well, Phil is, he's experimenting. He's in an experimental mode, which is slightly worrying.

Well, we have to, when we, for those of you who are new to Hangouts On Air, which I know there are many people out there that are, When you just do voice Hangouts on Air, you just need a Blue Ice or a Yeti microphone and a good internet connection and a camera and a smile, and you're off and running. Usually. But even then, things can go awry, like your comic track or your lower third becomes a far away third. But— or can't even find it third. But when you introduce music, you have to use a totally different plumbing system. So we're just going to move now from our normal microphones to a different set of microphones and almost like a recording studio setup that you can't see, which takes no more than about 12 seconds to switch to. Let's hope. So that's the plan. And by saying this little preamble, it's given me excuse excuse in case it doesn't quite work as well. So, Sue, if you'd like to go and get your violin, and I will turn into a producer.

Let me know when you're ready.

I will do.

Well, we're excited to have you play, and while you're setting up, I'm just going to say hi to a few people. Jasmina's here and she can't wait to hear you play, Sue Aston. Kim Boltman is here and she's saying, yeah, make one decision today. Good advice. Michael Thomas is here, and thank you, Michael, I appreciate that vote of confidence there. Carmen Mandich is in the audience. Oh, and she wants to know what kind of biscuits, Dave. I think she heard someone was making cookies is what it was. Marcus is here. Hi, Marcus, good to have you in the house. Who else do we have in here? Jim Sharp is in the house. JD Quinchette's in the house. Elena Bellamente, and she's looking for those biscuits from Dave as well. So, who else we got here? Lori— oh, Lori Alper's here.

Hey, Lori!

She's saying hi to Ann.

Hey, Lori!

Good to have you here. Nazim Beltran's in the house from Milan. We have a lot of people in here, and there's more, but that's going down the list. That's going to do for now as we get ready to play. Looks like Sue is ready, so Everyone, if you have questions or comments for our guests, please leave them in the comment bar. And right now I'm going to turn you back over to the Askins with Sue Askin playing us something beautiful. Wow, that was beautiful.

That was really beautiful.

Amazing.

Thank you, Phil.

We did have a little bit of feedback or some kind of noise on it though. I don't know if you can hear me now.

Hello.

That was gorgeous, oh my God.

Thank you.

And that's a new song.

Yes, it is a new one. Did it sound okay with all the different switching over? I was a bit worried.

It sounded— there was a little bit of noise.

It sounded wonderful.

Yeah, it didn't have the same quality.

Interesting.

Yeah, I wonder if the studio setting had worked properly.

It had— it almost sounded like a little bit of noise when you were drawing the bow. I don't think it was that, but you heard— you could still hear it.

You could hear something.

Yeah, you could hear a little something. You could still hear the song, and the movement was beautiful. I mean, you really did a great job with it. And got a little quicker in there for us and everything with the fingering.

Oh, well, it's interesting trying out all these different, um, stuff.

Well, you don't know unless you try.

That's right.

Yeah, see how I recorded it too, because you know, when you hear things, sometimes things don't get recorded.

Yeah, that's right. Yes, you've got to have a listen.

Very true.

Okay.

But yeah, so that was— wait a minute, here goes. Marcus says he thinks it was Kevin Bacon passing by. Jamala's here. Oh, it says, "Somebody say bacon." So everybody now is getting distracted. Michael Thomas, "So excited to hear you play." So yeah, people were in here loving it. So it was really good. So what was that called, Sue?

Well, it was called "The Castle of the Black Prince," which is a new piece of music and has been inspired by my visit to Restormore Castle, which is down here in Cornwall. And I was reading all about the myths and legends legends of the castle and found out that Edward, who was called the Black Prince because he wore black armoury and fought in very bloody battles, so sort of Black Prince. And so I was reading all about this and found it quite exciting. So we went and filmed one of my new Diary of a Coastal Composer shows there, didn't we? And I played the music live in the place that inspired the music. So—

Do you have a video of that out now?

Yeah, I think— is it down as the pilot?

Yeah, it might be down as the pilot because we've been doing these live music shows now for a while, and we were very lucky that we've gained quite a good reputation for doing those. But Sue wanted to do an extension of that by doing— her main project is Diary of a Coastal Composer,. And we know that a lot of people love the part of the world that we're in, and so the idea was to film outside on location, you know, on the beach, on the coastal path, and to put a little bit of story and art and stuff around it. And so we've started doing these short— literally they're 5 to 10 minute long shows out on location, a bit like you were saying, Sheffy, about They're going to be YouTube-based, but they're outside. Now where we are, we might have a fantastic internet connection indoors, but outdoors our mobile connections in this part of the world are awful. So we don't have 4G or anything like that. But it's going well, isn't it?

Yeah.

We've got another one in production now.

Yes, very soon, with another new piece of music.

Yeah, she actually— the next show we're doing, she wrote the music in the car on the way to the location.

Yeah, exactly.

Good job I wasn't driving, we might have crashed.

Yeah, good job you weren't driving.

Well, she said if Taylor what's-her-name can do it in the car, she can ride it too, huh? The pop singer?

Yeah.

Oh my God, Taylor Swift. I'm losing my mind. With the diet, part of my brain went too, so. Unfortunately. But no, that was beautiful. Thank you so much for that.

Thank you.

For us. We're excited. And we had here some other nice comments for you. Jim Sharps said, "Beautiful music and great story." And Kim, applause and appreciation. "Your music transported me to the Moors." Lovely. "Carmen found it wonderful and soothing." Oh, lovely.

Thank you.

Fabulous, you're sweet, lovely as you're playing.

Thank you everyone.

Beautiful Sue Aston, my first time here and this is what I get greeted with.

Oh, thank you.

Jeremy Murphy, beautiful Sue Aston, thank you for playing for us. Why did I sell my violin? Probably because you couldn't play it like Sue, Jeremy.

Buy another one.

Great job, so very nice.

Thank you so much, everyone.

Yeah, so they loved it, very good. Thank you for playing, and we'll come back and talk to you. And now we're just gonna move across the board and we're gonna talk to Robin. And Robin, thanks so much for, you know, this is new for you. Yep. You're learning how to do this, so I'm trying to get you— I think I got you to sip the Kool-Aid. I don't think I got you to guzzle it yet.

I really appreciate it. I've been very needy in terms of getting ready for this, so thank you.

Well, you know, now I can say I'm married. And oh, here, let me show everybody.

Nice! Congratulations!

Yay!

Lisa is still a little bit on the commitment-phobic side, although she's come a long way. Now she's accepted it. You know, it's like she just wanted to have the party. And then she goes, oh my God, we're really married. So, but she's coming a long way. And I just always show her the ring now, because for years it was like, you can't tell me to do that, there's no ring on my finger. She said to me, she says, you're my bitch now. And I went, I got news for you, I've been your bitch for a long time. Gotta love it. Anyway, so let's talk about you, and Sarasota is gorgeous. It's a beautiful area of Florida. I love the Gulf Coast, and you're just living a good life. How long have you been there? What are you doing? What's your blog all about?

Well, I grew up in Sarasota, and for those of you who don't know Florida, it's south of Tampa. As Chef said, it's on the Gulf Coast, and I am on a barrier island off the coast of Sarasota, and I grew up here. I was born and raised on an island, and at that time didn't know how special it was, but I grew up, you know, dancing on the beach and watching sunsets after dinner with my family, and it was a very different place. Now it's a real tourist mecca. It's called Siesta Key. But I'm back after living in California for 20 years, and when I returned about 6 years ago, I decided to start a blog about recapturing the Florida that I remember as a child. So that's what I do.

And it's been very successful. And the name of the blog is Authentic Florida, correct?

Authentic Florida.

Yeah.

And I travel all over the state from the Dry Tortugas to St. Augustine, and I discover those hidden gems that are still around and things to do. But I also cover food and gardening and using fresh Florida products in my recipes, and just anything that I can absorb about living the good life of Florida. Florida is mainly known as a place with golf courses and amusement parks and beaches, but there's so much more.

Yeah, I'm glad you didn't say the elderly, because I would have—

Yeah, there's a few of them, including me.

I thought they were going to rename it the golf cart state. I don't know. We have yet to get one of those. When we first moved here, we were all excited to be able to have one, and then we started going, what do we need one for? You know, it's not like— some of these people just ride around the neighborhood all day long. And there's a guy who walks his dog with his golf cart.

You're kidding!

He drives the golf cart and the dog runs on it.

I love it!

The dog's gone, because I watched it, I finally saw the dog got back in the car and then he knew he was done. I'm like, oh my God. Got a lot.

Florida attracts so many different kinds of people and that's what also makes it authentic, is we have such incredible personalities from fishermen to movie stars, we got it all here and I love sort of highlighting the different characters, especially some of the old-time characters.

It is a fun, eclectic mix of people. I, I haven't had a bad time anywhere, really, you know. So far, the worst part of Florida has been waiting in the deli line at Publix, so— And I shouldn't be buying those evil deli meats anyway.

Well, this is a time we rejoice in South Florida because we are very affected by the winter tourism crowd. And so all of a sudden, starting in January, it doubles and triples in the population. So you can't get a place in a restaurant, the beaches are crowded.. And just this week, it's like there's nobody around, and so we kind of dance on the beach when that happens. Not that we don't love our northern tourists, it's just that it just makes it so much more livable. So it's a fun time to be in Florida right now, even with the heat coming on. It's a good life.

Yeah, it's nice to reclaim. I mean, I felt that way when I lived in Ocean City in the Jersey Shore. You know, we love the people that came in. They supported us, you know, with the restaurant by eating there. But you know, when they left, there was— at that point, it was good. It was a good thing. We sit on the bridge and wave to them as they went by. Say bye-bye.

Yeah, yeah.

But now I understand that. Yeah, and I am actually just loving life in Florida. I'm so happy we we moved here. And there's so much to see, and that's what— and we've barely scratched the surface. So I'm happy, and I've met so many wonderful people in, in this state so far. And it's strange, I've made more friends in the year and a half we've been here than I made in the 15 years we lived where we lived in New Jersey. So because I'm not working too, I have time.

Yeah, good for you.

Great, so thank you so much, and hopefully we can—

Thank you for having me.

So let's move over to Misty now. Misty, I know there's a little delay, so we're gonna let you talk. And why don't you tell us— well, first tell us where, you know, again, where you are, how did you end up there, and then tell us about what you're doing, the Death Chicks.

Sure, so I was born in the north My father worked for MOT, the Ministry of Transport. He was the airport manager. So there's a very small population in small towns, and they need to bring planes in for supplies and government workers. So until I was 6, I lived in the north, and then I grew up in a small town in southern BC. And I was probably 20-something, and I went back north. And I went to Dawson City, Yukon, and I was there for about 8 years. And then I always wanted to go further north, and this town I live in now, it used to be called Coppermine. It's called Povelloktoq now, which is, uh, when they changed the Northwest Territories, a territory in Canada, they split it in half to Nunavut. Nunavut is the Inuit-populated part of the Northwest Territories.

Territories.

So that's where I am now, and I was at this place when I was 2 years old. So it was a little bit on my bucket list, and I came here, and 10 years later I'm still here. And if you like, I can show you outside the window, or we can save that for later. But it's— well, I guess we'll show you now. Yeah, show us now. Just do a little move. It's going to be really bright. And this is—

oh, we've got a little bit of a fog going on.

Wow.

Beautiful. I don't know if you can see through the fog. I might have to just use my sweater sleeve here. So here we go. There we go. We'll do a little— might be able to see a bit better. So that's the Arctic Ocean. So if any of the viewers have never seen it or the Arctic ice, they can now say they've seen the Arctic Ocean. And yeah, I don't know if you can see the snow machine out there, but my snow machine, I kept looking out my window and I could see only about an inch of the windshield and I thought, geez, I think it's time to start digging. So it's in a big hole now and I'm very close to getting it going. And that's going to be fun because it's starting to warm up and all that snow and land is calling to me.

Do you have polar bears?

Turn me around. And what you see out there— do we have polar bears? So there's no polar bears near where I am, but if you do a day snow machine trip over to Victoria Island, there are polar bears on the island. So we do have a few Well, I know one polar bear hunter in town, and maybe I— I know there's a big taboo around the furs. There's an interesting project actually going on called Furs to the Arctic where people in Victoria, BC— I connected with a friend there, my friend Gail Pettinger— and they're sending their fur coats up to my town, and the ladies in my town are— and the students too at the high school are taking apart these old fur coats coats and making mitts and making hats, and it's quite a wonderful thing.

Good recycling.

Let's see, what else can I tell you? Oh, the death chip. Yeah, yeah, it's a repurposing, and it's quite neat because the furs, it's a little bit taboo, and it's a little bit warm in Victoria, So this way people can feel like their valued furs are being used. And it's, it's one of those things that it's in the closet, and when it comes time for spring cleaning, people can't give them away because there's the sentimental value. That's kind of a side fun project I'm involved with. And the other project that I started, started last year on International Women's Day, which is the day my my mother passed. And at that time, I hadn't had anyone close to me pass on before, and it became really evidently clear how afraid people were to talk about death and dying. And as an empowerment coach, I had been asking myself, how can I best serve? What do people need right now? So since then, I've I started to reach out and work with people to overcome their fears around death and dying as a coach. And then on Google+, Patty Verges and I have started the Death Chicks. And we're not making light of death, but we are making death lighter. And that's been a really, really fun thing. And we've had some great guests and great conversations.

That is an interesting topic, and you know, it's something we all need to face. We all need to feel a little bit, not good about, but better about. We need to be able to handle it better, and I think that's your approach to it.

Yeah, it's about having the conversations that for some reason as a culture we're afraid to have. When you bring up the topic, people kind of, you know, it's almost like this dark cloud that settles in and a fear comes up. And when there's fear, we're not relaxed and we can't have as good of a conversation as we can when we are relaxed and we don't have the fear. And one thing I say is that it's kind of like sex was in the '50s. Everyone's doing it, but no one's talking about it. So we all are going to die and we all know people, we're all going to be affected by it. And so let's— it's time we just put it on the table and start talking about it. In our experience from everyone we've talked to is that as soon as you really look at it in the eye, it's going on and I'm okay with it, it really frees you up to live so much better. It's like, yeah, I know that's coming.

Well, that's a healthy approach to it. And, you know, like anything else, we need to have healthy approaches to life and part of life. So thank you for helping us with that and sharing. And Patty's in the house too. I wanted to say hi. Patty's here to support you, and she's saying, "None of us is getting out of this gig alive. Don't know how or when, but let's embrace it." Well, hey, Thank you for those warm wishes, Patty. So yeah, that's good, and you know, I appreciate the work you're doing in that because it is important. And like you said, you know, we've brought sex to the table, or onto the table, I don't know how you want to put that.

Anyone joining the table at this point?

So some of us take that a little more literally than others, but we'll leave it at that for now. So moving right along, now you got that to follow. So let's go back to Ann and talk about your cookies. You with us, Ann?

Hi!

Did you bring some cookies for us?

I did. Can you see my cookies? I made these just for you.

Mm-hmm.

What kind are they?

This is a recipe. Well, they are called, they are called Flour Sack Mama's Soft Squash Cookies, and they actually have summer squash in them from last summer. Because I promised you, Dennis, that I would talk about ways to eat from the garden, and there are so many practical ways, and one really practical way, as you know, is you have things like squash that can be prolific in your garden, and you just blanch that, save it in the freezer, and you can cook with it all year long. And so, of course, you know, you can use squash in soups and throw it in a lasagna, add it in anywhere you can to sneak in those vegetables for the family, right? But this is a fun way to do it. My kids will love these cookies. As long as I don't mention there's squash inside, they will eat these cookies. So I made these just for you.

Oh, thank you. Do you ever tell them afterwards that there was squash in there?

Well, I do. Actually, I have told them. Well, the funny thing, and And these really are yummy. My oldest, she knew yesterday I was working on this and she's like, "Oh, squash, Mom, why would anybody eat that?" And she loved these the last time she ate them. She just— maybe she didn't realize the last time around. So, yeah, it's all good. But actually, you know, they eat a lot of things from the garden when they are aware of what's in it. One of the things they eat the best, just something simple like lettuce and tomatoes. And so that's why I encourage people to just start with something simple like lettuce or tomatoes or whatever else that you know that everybody in your family will eat. Get them involved. They love to go pick the lettuce, bring it straight in, and have that fresh on the table. So whether it's something fun like cookies or just something fresh like lettuce, there are a lot of ways that you can build that into your diet. Get those veggies in.

It's amazing how much use you can get out of squash. I mean, I have seen squash in in so many different things and a lot of desserts too. I just bought a spiral cutter, so I'm interested. I'm going to start doing some spiralizing squash noodles and things.

Ooh, I need to watch more of what you're doing and get more creative with it. I need to use some of your recipes and get some squash from the garden and we'll just, we'll just go gangbusters with it. Absolutely. Yeah, what I like about these cookies is they are sort of an homage to something like a banana bread or a squash bread, so they're more of a cake-like texture. So they're just really sort of old-fashioned and just really is a comfort food. But yeah, from the garden, you know, other things like your lettuces are so simple. I mean, look at this. People say they can't grow. I didn't even make any effort. This just grew on its own. It just decided it was warm enough and these greens wanted to grow in my garden. So I just want to encourage everybody Everybody to grow what you can. I know you grow so— you know all these fabulous ways to use things. I need to use more of the herbs from my garden more creatively and match those up with more of your recipes.

Fresh herbs are just wonderful. I just love them. They smell good, too. It's just nice. I had a farmer that used to bring me bushel baskets of basil. Ah, yeah. And I would just bury mine. I'm looking at it like I wish I could. I would just bury my face in this bushel of basil because it smells so good. Wonderful.

Rosemary.

Oh, yeah. Lettuce grows pretty fast, doesn't it?

It does. It does. One of the mistakes I used to make is I would get the whole packet of seeds. I'd plant all the lettuce at once, and then I'd have more than we could eat. Now, I mean, this would seem obvious, but I didn't do it the the first time around a few years ago, I'll take a packet and I'll spread that out and I'll just replant seeds about every couple of weeks, and then that way we just keep having fresh lettuce. It never goes away. And we can grow lettuce through really into October here. We've got a pretty long growing season now.

We have so many animals around here. Florida is like animal wild kingdom, you know, it is. Oh my God. That's not just alligators. We've got everything here, and they eat anything that's not raised up. And so I'd either have to— if I'm going to grow stuff— plus, once it does get hot here, it's like you're not growing anything.

You know what you inspired me, though? You Florida folks inspired me to grow my own lemon tree, because our growing seasons are getting warmer. And so, of course, I have to bring it inside in the winter. But I've got a couple of baby lemon trees that are— they're hanging on there. And who knows? We get warm enough, they may be out most of the year pretty soon. So I'm excited. I want to have citrus like you do. It's one of my hopes.

Fresh citrus.

That's wonderful.

We actually have a tree out, and we're not sure. It had two what I thought were limes on it, although they did say it was a lemon tree. So I think it might be either a lime tree or one of those 7-Up trees, the limon, one of those.

Okay.

All kinds of limes growing on it. I can't wait till they come out, and they really were really juicy and fresh. And the oranges, when we get them fresh, it's just so amazing how much better they are. It's just lovely.

You get spoiled, you really do. You get spoiled. We were at the store and I bought cilantro dill the other day and brought it home. We usually grow that in the summer in the garden, and one of my daughters made a big fuss about it. This is not like what we have in the garden. It doesn't taste the same. It's not the same texture. And all of a sudden she's become this foodie where she's getting picky about something. But it was because we were growing it ourselves. So, but the good thing is a lot of those herbs are really easy to grow. So, you know, just get you a raised bed or a container and just start growing it.

I save— I have number 10 cans that I use for tomatoes, and I save them, clean them out, put dirt in them, and use them to plant stuff into.

That's very clever, very clever.

Yes, my wife was, "What are you saving all those cans for?" I said, "You'll see." It works, it works.

That tomatoes, you know, they can actually get really long, deep-rooted too, if you— depending on how you're growing those. I like the I like to just do a big raised bed. So we have a kind of a terraced area, and actually lucky to have a pretty handy husband that built some nice— with untreated wood, of course, with a nice simple cedar wood, and made some raised beds. And so that makes it— especially if you can continue to feed that soil and add compost and add those rich nutrients to it, you can grow so much. And that's a foundation. A lot of people who think that organic gardening is hard are missing the main point. The foundation for organic gardening is healthy soil, and as long as you take care of healthy soil, you've got what you need to get going. And of course, you know, it's time— it can be time-consuming to deal with pest control because you have to be attentive. Sometimes you're going to handpick things or you're going to use some other gentle ways of dealing with pests because we don't want to spray poison on our food, of course. But really, those are the two keys: building healthy soil and then secondly being attentive to that organic pest control.

Oh yeah, for sure. I know I think last year, before I moved from Jersey, I actually bought some organic pest control and they were some kind of worms or something that you put on the—

Okay, maybe it was nematodes. It might have been tiny nematodes. I'm not sure. I haven't done that exact thing, but that balance is so important. That is so cool that you were looking at the balance. It's not that all insects are bad. You want insects in your garden. We just want the beneficials. We want that healthy balance. One of the other misconceptions people have, if anybody's watching, they think, oh, I can't grow organically, or I tried it one time and it didn't work. If you have been using conventional methods, if you've been doing things that have been killing your soil, you have an imbalance because you've been killing the pests, and of course you've probably been again, it's not good for humans either. What you've got to realize is you need a transition period. You're going to have a harder time the first year that you go organic in an area where you've been conventional. It's the same with farming. It's the second year, it's the third year where you start to see a better balance. So there's a little patience that we have to have there. Don't get discouraged. Start small, but start rethinking the way that we treat the whole ecosystem, the soil, the balance of the insects, what we want to have around our families, and what we don't want to have around our families in terms of those chemical pesticides. You just got to slowly make that transition. Stick with it.

I tell you, people are starting to listen. In fact, I planted some flowers here this year and remulched. I was surprised when I went to get some soil, they had organic garden soil. I was able to a little bit more, but it wasn't that much more. And then I also got some local red eucalyptus, so it was natural, it wasn't dyed, for the mulch around it, which was really pretty cool. And it was Florida— it said it was Florida red eucalyptus, which is why I bought it too. So again, think local when you can. When you buy stuff that is from your area, you're better off. And they said the eucalyptus would actually help with some of the insects too.—

stuff. Mm-hmm. That's great. Yeah, look at— of course, you're paying attention to your region, and that's so important. We tend to be fairly humid here where we are, so we have to think in terms of pest control and so on about ways to keep things dry, not too damp. Like with my strawberries, which are prolific this year, one of the keys to my strawberries is I need to get in there and do something like a nice little cedar mulch around them. I need to keep them dry. If I get them too damp, then I'm going to have more insect problems. Problems, but I have to keep it dry. If you are in a different area that is more arid, you are going to have a different challenge. I have such respect for organic gardeners and farmers because they respect the ecosystem and everyone's health. They have this really healthy respect for the system that they are working in. They are attentive and we can learn so much from them. That is one of my favorite— honestly, Dennis Littley, if I were to tell you about one of my favorite stories on the Flower Sack Mama blog, it would be from my visit to the Rodale Institute this last summer. That was a real honor. They are leaders in organic farming, and they show by example. They teach classes there, and you can use resources online from them. They, they're terrific experts at composting, and they studied the science of this, so they show that we can, we can actually feed the world with organic gardening, and possibly even reduce or reverse climate change as well. I know that sounds sort of outlandish, but that's how much great information is out there once you start digging and looking at that great organic gardening and farming information.

Phil and Sue, I think, wasn't the UK way ahead of us on organic? You guys seem a lot more with carbon footprint, and I know it was more or less you guys started with two giving up meat one day and how less carbons were put in the air.

Yeah, in our part of the UK, there are so many farm shops, restaurants, even supermarkets with vast arrays of organic food on offer. It's quite common now to— in fact, it's quite uncommon to see a restaurant menu that doesn't serve organic organic food. And we've got farm shops, you've got like along the roads, you've got lay-bys where the farmers are selling their produce directly to people who stop by. It's a huge movement over here, isn't it?

Yes, you can go everywhere really and pick up a cauliflower.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, the field next to our house is organic. Yeah.

Well, I know one thing that really— there were a couple of products in particular that made me sit up and take notice when I first started traveling. One was butter. I had not remembered butter tasting like butter before because it was just really so much better. The other were the eggs. It's been so long since I've seen an egg yolk that was really almost orange. In fact, I had friends say, "Oh, I wasn't going to eat them there. You should have seen the color of the eggs." I said, "That's what color they're supposed to be." Yeah, so you guys are ahead of us.

I just want to jump in because up here in the Arctic, so I'm also doing my little grow your own because our food is flown from so far away and we're, you know, an egg doesn't taste like an egg, a tomato doesn't taste like a tomato. So this is my, from one seed, my sweet little lettuce. And I have some dill, I have some dill that's growing. And I bought an AeroGarden, so I have an heirloom tomato plant that's just sprouted some flowers, and I'm gonna have the little babies, tomatoes. And I also have some basil planted to eat with those yummy tomatoes. So even way up here I have my own little Fresh food, and it's so delightful.

How far are the local shops from you, Misty? How far do you have to travel to get your weekly shop?

Well, our town is very small. We have a population of 1,400, so everything's very walkable. It's 1 kilometer wide by a mile long, so my stores, you know, it's 5-10 minutes down the road, and they fly in all the produce and all the dairy and all the frozen meat. But these things come from so far away, so when you're talking, Ann, about, you know, buy things that are grown close to you, well, good luck up here.

Well, good for you for gardening. I think that's fantastic.

I guess the only thing you have local are popsicles, huh?

And you know, I have to stop my daughter from eating the icicles off the local roofs because the town dump is just down the way, and if the wind's blowing the right way, you know, you get a little bit of ash. So if the ash settles on the roof and then the icicles Look, Mom!

Gotta love it. Well, it's good to know that even—

It's a different lifestyle, but you do learn.

I found that— Say that again?

Go ahead, Ann.

Oh, I just think it's great that you're doing container gardening, because what Misty is showing is it's not that that you don't have enough space. You've made a way for this to work. So whether you have a lot of space, whether you have a small yard or no yard at all, the fact that she's growing some of her own fresh produce is just tremendous. And wouldn't that be great if you have a lot of neighbors that grow some things too and you could swap? I wish I could get more of my neighbors to grow like a different variety of tomatoes and we could have more of a food swap.

I have a neighbor that grows something, but he doesn't swap it, he charges for it.

I have to agree with Ann that gardening is one of those things that you just got to keep, you can't let it defeat you, you just have to sort of experiment, and I found that composting got me closer to the whole experience by taking my old food and putting it in a barrel and then re-nourishing my garden with it. There was some connection that happened, and we're just getting out of strawberry season here, and we're going into blueberry season, and then we'll be going into mango season. So it's just so fun watching the seasons turn and new produce coming in.

Gotta love it.

That's so smart because Anybody can compost. I mean, that's such a simple thing. And one of the tips I give actually in an article that I just wrote for Retro Housewife Goes Green that's coming up later this month on her blog is with the beginner gardening approach, like, don't worry about it being perfect. Like, if you compost and you want to go organic, go ahead and compost. I mean, I have some banana peels, and the bananas weren't necessarily organic, but I'm going to compost anyway. Like, you know, It's still so much better that you're growing your own food, and we're getting closer to the way that we want ideally. I totally agree, like Robin said, don't be defeated. Don't even worry if something doesn't grow well this year. Try it again. Try something different.

Here's a comment Dave Pye put up. He says, "If you're looking at going organic, it's best to forget the first year. Grow something you can dig back into the ground to get the natural nitrogen levels back, then remember to rotate the crop." crops year by year. And if you don't have a big crop field and you're rotating, it might just be planting something different the following year in the little area that you have.

So, mm-hmm, yeah, you're trying to trick the pests. If you move the— move things around, then you're helping to outsmart the pests. But you can also do other things, like we've— somebody had mentioned that, like your basil with your tomatoes. I think Misty mentioned that, you know, we've got these great companion ideas. Basil with tomatoes, add garlic. I like a lot of I like a lot of rosemary because that also is doing some things to sort of trick the pests and outsmart them. Sure, all those things are good tricks.

Very cool. Guys, we're coming to an end here. We've got a little bit of time left, but it's been a really fun and informative show. We've touched a lot of bases. The theme of the show was the art of living well, and I think we all in our ways are learning to live well, whether it's through music, through food, through travel, or through learning how to cope with life itself and death. It's all about the balance that we create to make us better and make us happier in what we're doing. Right now, I'm going to say— go back to everyone and see if we have any last words you'd like to share. Sue and Phil, any words you'd like to leave? Is there anything coming up, any shows, any anything you'd like to tell us about?

Well, Dan, when he's better, will be doing another music show, and I think I'm on that one, aren't I, actually, backing him this time. And Sue's got another show coming up, and we're also relaunching our Hands Across the Ocean show, which is where we first met you, Dennis Littley. So that's coming up in a couple of weeks. So, and so we've got quite a lot. Oh, and of course, in your location-based shows are coming along.

Yes, he's been working on that, on my composer.

I didn't realize Cornwall was so big.

It's actually tiny, it's only 70 miles from one end to the other before you go into a different region of the UK. It's just that we're completely surrounded by water. We've got, you know, there's two coasts, and where we are, we're almost surrounded by three coasts, aren't we? But it's a very, very popular part of the UK. And I'm very lucky because I never run out of places to photograph.

Your pictures are phenomenal, ladies and gentlemen. They're always good, but I've been looking at those, they're really pretty. And I started to think more about Cornwall when I started— I got into Doc Martin.

Oh, Doc Martin, yeah.

I love Doc Martin. I'm so sorry, I hope they're bringing it back, but I love this show.

They are. They're filming at the moment. They're actually— filming this week, but the show that will hit the US, and I think will take it by storm, will be Poldark, which is a bit like Downton Abbey by the sea. And I think you'll just love that. And that's just aired over here at the moment, but it's going into the US, I think, in about a month's time, isn't it? You'll love that.

Very good. I'll watch for that too. But yeah, I started to learn more about the area because of that, and I just said, I know somebody that lives there! Cornwall was when I went to Masses. Damn, that's a lot bigger than I thought.

Well, it's a bit like I know a bit about Yellowknife because I watch Ice Pilots on the Discovery Channel.

Yes, yes, yes.

And we always want to ask if you know somebody there because we know somebody in the general vicinity, not thinking that the world is such a big place. But anyway, I had a friend just go to Milan on. I said, oh, I have a friend there, Nazim Beltran. I'm waiting for her to go, yeah, I know him. Well, thank you, and thanks again for filling in and tell Dan we hope he's feeling better.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Robin, thank you so much for joining us. And then what do you have coming up? Is there anything, uh, anything on the blog or any trips or anything?

I, uh, I do on Authentic Florida. I've I'm heading north to Central Florida and I'm going to kind of rediscover the Suwannee River area. This is kind of the northern Florida, so that's my summer trip. And I just shared 7 things that— authentic things that the spring breakers missed in Fort Lauderdale. That was kind of a fun story. I like to just cover those things that just are not known. I just thank you so much for including me and everyone being part of this show. It's been very inspiring.

I'm glad we got you on. We'll get you doing your own shows in no time.

Okay, I'll see you tomorrow.

All right, great. And Misty, thank you so much for being on. And when is the next Death Chicks, or is there anything else you have coming up?

Yeah, well, there's two things. So the Death Chicks is every Thursday. It's at 3 o'clock Eastern, and usually we do a run for 8 weeks and then we break for 2. So we're on our 11th show coming up, and we have a doctor who is speaking frankly about his experience. Um, it's a different perspective, so we're looking forward to having him. And then on my, on my coaching side of things, uh, I'm, I'm a new online coaching So I'm kind of getting my feet wet here and feeling things out. But I'm part of a gift-giving way with the Inspired Messengers Network, it's called. And I met up with a fellow who leads this network, and I felt really closely connected to him and his work. So that's pretty exciting for me. And then from that, the gift I'm giving 'Healing Away' is kind of a lead-in to an online course I have, and I'm thinking of actually following it up with a Google Hangout and inviting people interested in doing this creative work around healing and overcoming fears on Google. So yeah, that's what I have going on, and if you're interested, I'm sure you can find me out there. Thanks.

Thanks, Jeff.

Oh, you're welcome, and thank you for coming. All the way from the Arctic Circle to us. I love it. So, and Ann, all right, any calls to action, anything you're doing, anything fun coming up?

Well, sure. I want to continue to give you great resources via Clean Couponing in particular. Clean Couponing is about being frugal with more than money, following these values that we have for our families, these concerns about health, the concerns for our environment. So I just want to keep bringing you those resources. We also do a Twitter party once a month with Clean Couponing, bring different resources together there. And I want to start again in this growing season on Saturdays. We'll have Saturdays in the Garden on the Flower Stack Mama blog. So I'll just continue to share this concept that if my family can grow an organic garden, yours can too. And I want to encourage you to get that started. And I have to tell you, Chef, you are inspiring me to do more on Google. I would love to host a show as well, although I, I wouldn't be quite this cool. I've got to figure out how I can get the cool fun factor going, but I don't know if it would be— maybe a Hangout in the garden or something. I'll have to think about that.

That would be fun, and I'd be happy to help you with any of that and get started. And believe me, my first 6 months of shows were not that cool. It took a while to get the cool up to this level. Yeah, it was like talking to the screen for a long time. No, it's, it's, it's not difficult. It's just getting logistics and then feeling comfortable with what you do. But that would be a great topic, and there's a lot of things you can do with it. So thank you, and I'm looking forward to seeing you at ShiftCon. And as we talk, a few months away, but nothing else, then we'll be able to get together and hang out in person.

Yes, I'm really looking forward to that.

Absolutely. Well, folks, thank you so much for stopping by today. It's been a Good day on Google+ and I hope you enjoyed this show and everyone here and I hope to see you soon. So take care. Oh, and if you're around tomorrow at 5 o'clock, I will be at the Suncoast Barbecue and Bluegrass Bash in Venice, Florida, and tune in at 5 o'clock for a little bit of what's going on with me there. So see you soon.

Bye.

Bye all.

Thank you.

Bye.