About Us

THE HOT POTATO
thehotpotato.org

help us plant peace in our hearts, our homes, and our world

TURNING POINT

THE GARDEN OF THE GODS. This trip to Southern Illinois in 2005 changed our lives and helped open for us doorways to many things, including creating one’s own garden.

WELCOME TO THE HOT POTATO!

Thanks for checking out Adam & Aireen’s Hot Potato blog. We are currently based in Glenview, Illinois, a north shore suburb of Chicago.

We write a column called:

The Hot Potato: Serving Up A Weekly Helping Of Sustainable and Organic Gardening, Food, Health & Community.

The Hot Potato - The Column is published in The FilAm Weekly MegaScene, a local Filipino American newspaper with a print circulation of 10,000. The Hot Potato - The Blog will be a place to post our (formerly weekly) column plus photos, stories, slide shows, and videos about gardening, peace, holistic health, sustainable living, natural parenting, connecting to Nature, music, art, and anything else. We have been writing The Hot Potato since January 2007, and we are 2007-2008 members of the National Press Club-Philippines, USA (NPC-Phil USA).

The two of us have been gardening since 2006, when we moved from Chicago to start a 32 week internship on an organic CSA farm in southeastern Wisconsin. Before living and working on an organic farm, Aireen’s gardening experience included working at flower shops, a garden center, and in her mother’s backyard. In 2001, Adam spent time living and working on a small organic farm and bed & breakfast in the South of France. After the farm, we completed Ecology Action’s 3 Day Grow Biointensive Workshop in November 2006. Now we’re back in Illinois creating our first ever garden. Our life and work experiences include the areas of non-toxic and organic living, food, homes, and childhood.

We believe health is wealth, and all of us need to choose life instead of destruction. Every choice is a chance for peace! Choosing life means choosing that which sustains life, rather than harms it. We hope to be one of your guides on your path to living healthy, free, and sustainable. We’re students too, not an expert in any field. We’re just people writing for people. We appreciate every comment. Thanks!

For those ready to take the “Red Pill” (like Neo does in the Matrix), please dive in to our archives. A couple stumbling blocks we come across is not understanding how unhealthy some things are for us, and after understanding, still not changing choices because we compromise rather than choose love and what we know is best for ourselves. You do deserve the best - to be healthy and happy! The other challenge, which takes courage and strength everyday, is to take responsibility for our actions, our lives, and ourselves. That means thinking ahead, being prepared, thinking for oneself! It also means creating ones own life, rather than letting someone else dictate it for you.

One of our most popular, and important, series of articles is the LABEL SAVVY! series. Here are quick links to this ongoing topic for you!

• LABEL SAVVY! Part 1 - The Sweet And Low-Down On Healthy And Unhealthy Sweeteners
  
• LABEL SAVVY!- Shelf Life…Or Death?: Hydrogenated Oils & Trans Fats
  
• LABEL SAVVY!- Bodycare…or Bodyscare? Identify Toxic Ingredients & Natural Alternatives

SOME GARDENING INFLUENCES:

• Anastasia and The Ringing Cedars book series by Vladimir Megre
Read these books! You can also read our book review here.

• How To Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons
In November 2006, we completed a highly recommended 3 Day Workshop on Grow Biointensive Gardening & Mini-Farming taught by John Jeavons and Carol Cox of Ecology Action in beautiful Willits, California.

• One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka

• The Giving Tree by Shell Silverstein

• We also have a list of our favorite books and films, which you can browse or purchase at Bookwings Bookstore.

• This music video:

Where Do The Children Play?
Cat Stevens/Dr. Seuss

NEW GARDEN STATS - 2008:

• UPDATE: Adam and Aireen have moved away from their original garden site. We are only about 7 miles from Lake Michigan now, a bit further away from the Des Plaines River, and much closer to a branch of the Chicago River.

We will miss our big biointensive plots that we lovingly dug out of the lawn at Aireen’s mom’s place (and we’ll miss the chlorine & fluoride-free well water too!), but we are looking forward to working with the small garden plot at our new home, as well as getting into the community garden experience hopefully come spring, where we will have a much bigger garden area to grow food, herbs, flowers, and medicine.

OLD GARDEN STATS - 2007:

• Our backyard garden is located in northeastern Illinois about 15 miles from Lake Michigan near the Des Plaines River.

• Zone 5, fairly clay soil, we’ll get back to you on the pH.

• The main growing area is four biointensive, double-dug beds, 3.5 feet x 16 feet each, which totals 224 square feet, plus 15 inch wide paths.

• There’s also a lot of other garden area already established on the sides and far back of the yard, and some garden space in the front. The whole area including the house is about 3/4 of an acre. Only about 424 square feet in growing space total. The wonderful tall trees bordering the area create a lot of shade not ideal for garden space.

• Besides being so fortunate to have the space to grow this garden, we are VERY fortunate to also have well water - not Chicago water piped in from miles away, which contains fluoride, chlorine, and arsenic! You can find out what’s in your municipal water too.

GARDEN GOALS

• Our goal is to grow as much of our food as possible as sustainable as possible - which includes growing topsoil.

• to connect and commune with Nature and the wisdom of the Garden.

• to learn from nature and learn from others…there’s a lot to learn! But anyone can plant a seed, love it, and watch it grow.

• to practice the methods of co-creating a healing, spiritual garden that are outlined in The Ringing Cedars books.

• to teach and share with others, and share the harvest.

A NOTE ABOUT THE TIMESTAMP DATES

This blog was begun in May 2007. Certain posts have been dated as early as January 2007 to match when the weekly columns were originally written and to correspond with events, photos, videos, etc. that took place during the gardening season. peace.