FEED ME, SEYMOUR!!!!!

Oh man, the tomato plants are slave drivers! I have to pick tomatoes everyday just to keep up! On the other hand, I look through the fence at my neighbor's neat tidy rows of well-behaved peppers, tomatoes, and beans, and feel such excitement for next year's garden! Boy have I learned some important garden lessons this year! Numero uno: it is much easier to pick and prune tomato plants that aren't tangled together with 8 others in a massive jungle. Numero el dos: tomatoes growing too close together are subject to funguses and other problems. And 3: canning tomatoes is EASY!!!!! (I have learned other lessons as well, but these are the important ones for today lol...)

Can't really complain =)

Tomatoes

Fresh red beet eggs, note the fresh herbs in the background!

This is my dog wondering why we let the cat drink out of his bowl...

Well this summer has been a fantastic experiment! I am so excited about planning my garden for next year. I have learned so many useful things about gardening and preserving.
Let's see, what is new? Well we had a smidge of a hurricane here, which shredded some of the garden, not horrible though, just some lost tomatoes and bent over pepper plants. I had already torn out some of the little pear tomatoes, they were out of control and strangling everything else, making it hard to harvest them as well as the other tomatoes, and causing some fungal growth. I am still bringing in alot of tomatoes daily, but slightly less than before.
Still getting plenty of squash and banana and pablano peppers, and have enjoyed a couple new things from the farm. A couple weeks ago, Farmer Lady was in the field when I drove up, and she held up a handful of beets fresh from the soil. I wasn't very excited, but I took them anyway, and (drumroll please!) LOVED EM! Using her instructions I made several (my bf assures me that 3=several hehehe) quarts of red beet eggs with real actual beets! Delicious, easy, and kinda fun.... I have another batch of fresh beets in the fridge right now, I just need a day off to make them. And the bonus is: fresh beets come with their own 'beet greens' which you can use like any other green, salad, sauté, etc! It is like making your own butter, it comes with free buttermilk lol!

I have gallon baggies FULL of frozen diced peppers, spicy and not! Plus frozen sliced eggplant and zucchini and squash, shredded and sliced (all my techniques for freezing veggies came from the Pick Your Own website, link to the right!) frozen green beans and peas...Plus the canned salsas, tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato juice...I also dried a bunch of herbs last week (or was that the week before???). Again, easy, if slightly time-consuming and/or messy...

I would like to make an interesting observation, which is that although I haven't been keeping up with my blog as much as I would like, I have been able to keep up with my local/sustainable eating practices, even with a 20-30 hr a week job, 2 teenagers, a husband and a special needs dog, PLUS I've been gettting back  into my stand-up comedy hobby, as well as taking 3 college classes (made the Dean's list!) and started a jogging program ('Couch to 5K' OMG it is awesome!!! And this is coming from a morbidly obese sweet-aholic!). My point is...I am not finding it too difficult to do in addition to my life. I remember how easy it seemed before it started, how hard it seemed for a month or two, and now I am amazed at how easily we have all fallen into a routine of doing things this new way, and so far no food poisoning (which many nay-sayers were predicting!) and we are not starving!

Of course we have had to make many adjustments along the way, but I think that in order to achieve big goals, it is always necessary to make adjustments to the original plans.

Another interesting note is how many like-minded people I have had the pleasure of meeting along the way. Of course Farmer Lady has been an amazing resource, plus a never-ending source of entertainment! Recently I have been working with an 80-yr old lady who shares many of my concerns and feelings about our food sources, we compare notes alot about our food choices, and have each learned alot from the other. I met another awesome person, the owner of a house that acts as a csa drop off spot for Farmer's other csa. Have learned alot from him as well. I have also read many incredible blogs written by many incredible people who live the lifestyle I aspire to, and I have learned SO much from them!

My husband and I have learned alot about each other through all this, and we have both learned alot about our dream of owning a working, self-sufficient homestead one day. If nothing else, this whole thing has been a wonderful learning and growing experience for our entire family.
Well, I have to be at work in 20 mins, so I better wrap this up for today. I just wanted to post a quick catch-up, since it has been three weeks since my last! Hopefully I'll have some time next week to post again!

"The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

ANYTHING but Homework!

Gardening is my new favorite hobby!

I am SUPPOSED to be working on my final project for Spanish, but as the world's most prolific procrastinator, I feel obliged to bang out a blog post instead! Besides, my project isn't due til midnight...=D

I tried some canning (thanks Farmer Lady for loaning me the canner!) and I felt over-all successful. Which is funny because after a couple of hours of  'doing it' (;P) I had 3 jars of salsa, which i forgot to put the lemon juice in =/
LOLOLOL well I hurled myself upon the couch and covered my face with a pillow, but eventually was able to laugh about it. I coulda opened the jars, put the lemon juice in, and then re-processed them, but I figgered we could easily eat 3 pints of salsa in a few weeks time!

The reason I considered this first foray into home preserving 'successful' is that I definitely got the hang of it, and it is NOT hard. Yes it is a bit time consuming to peel all the tomatoes and heat the GIANT pot of water, and I am not the best at timing everything (my salsa was ready to process by the time I remembered to put the canner on to boil hehehehe!) But I learned that they aren't kidding about how many tomatoes it will take to fill up a quart jar (ALOT)! Oh and it seemed like every pot and pan in my entire kitchen (plus large bowls, cutting boards and strainers!) was dirty afterward (lol for 3 pints of salsa hahahha!) and I won't lie, there are still some tomato seeds dried onto my coffeemaker and the toaster oven....

BUT all in all, it was very satisfying! And then Dave and I made a 4 quart batch of spaghetti sauce yesterday! Again, every pot in the house dirty, tomato seeds hanging from the light fixture, a couple marital disputes...

I see now why it is better to make a huge batch all at once than to mess around with little batches. The mess is basically equal, and I think the amount of time used is also about equal, so may as well get as many jars out of the deal as possible!

Next I am going to make PICKLES! Lol if I ever get enough cucumbers ALL AT ONCE hahaha! I may go over to the farmer's market today and see what I can find there, since now I have all the supplies and the basic know-how, I am really excited and want to make MORE messes in my kitchen, er, I mean jars of goodies!!!!!

I ALMOST made a batch of pickled watermelon rind, since I have always though what a waste watermelon rind is... but on further review, I couldn't find a recipe that sounded very tasty, and my mom said she never liked pickled watermelon rind, and I wonder why you can't just make it like cukes??? All the recipes i found for it called for cinnamon and sweeteners, which wasn't what I had in mind. Hmmmmmm... I'm still stewing about it though, i may end up trying something before the summer is through, stay tuned.

I have been thinking that I should talk more about the actual meals I am making, and less about my garden and marital disputes lol!

So here goes:
Last night for supper we had meatball subs. I made the meatballs with grass fed ground beef from the farm, shredded zucchini from the garden, various seasonings and herbs, plus bread crumbs, a free-range egg, and some milk, then pan fried them in smart balance oil. We used our home-made spaghetti sauce (tomatoes from the garden, onions from the farm, peppers from the garden, seasonings, herbs) and my home made raw-milk mozzarella. MMMMMMMmmmmmmm.... boy were they good!

For lunch we had burgers on the grill, the burgers from the farm.

The day before I grilled up some London broil, also grass-fed from the farm. We had purple baked potatoes from the farm, with butter and sour cream, plus corn on the cob (from a roadside farm stand) on the side.

For breakfast we have eggs pretty much every day, plus my home-made bread, and this week BACON =)from the farm. We often have farm fresh sausage with our breakfast, I will cook up a whole pound at the beginning of the week, then re-heat whatever someone wants. There was no sausage this week, but bacon makes up for anything lol! Oh and I make (ok, I order my kid to make) pancakes every week also, usually a double or triple batch, which we then keep the leftovers of in the fridge or freezer for the kids to re-heat for breakfast. Another common breakfast item I make is french toast. If I get alot of raisin or cinnamon bread from the csa I cut it all up and make a big batch of french toast out of it, and again, fridge or freeze the leftovers for convenient breakfasts.

Panzenella salad

Two days ago for lunch I made a panzenella salad out of tomatoes, cukes, and red onions (garden, garden, farm) and a can of black olives, plus a loaf of Italian bread from the farm, cut into cubes, tossed with olive oil and garlic, and toasted in the oven until lightly browned, and then some home-made mozz cut into smaller cubes. Then I tossed it all with a dressing made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, basil and garlic, plus salt and pepper. Oh man, now my mouth is watering! It was soooooo gooooooddddddd!!!!!

Ummmm, really we grill alot of meat, because that is what growing boys and hard-working men like, and also because it is available! Chicken is in short supply, so mostly we grill pork chops and beef (our faves are flank, sirloin and london broil). I do alot of stuff in the crock-pot, pork roasts and beef roasts. My two favorites crock-pot dishes can be made with either beef or pork, otherwise are the same. One is '_____ & beans' (fill in either beef or pork lol) which is diced tomatoes, bell peppers, onion, garlic, cumin, chili powder, oregano and a beans, any kind, I use a mix of whatever is handy, black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, whatevs. We eat it in a bowl, or on tortillas, or on tortilla chips as nachos. Yum!

The other one is just the meat, onions, garlic and bbq sauce lol! Again, good in a bowl or on nachos, and makes great bbq sandwiches. I also do a crock-pot dish with a beef roast, garlic, onions, worchestershire sauce, potatoes and carrots if I have them ( I usually throw a little beef broth or stock in there if I have it).

I make every concievable thing with ground beef. We go through ALOT of ground beef here every week! Tacos are probably number one, because we can use the prepared meat on our home made tortillas, on nachos, on a salad or even by itself in a bowl! Plus it helps use up the masssive quantities of salsa I am constantly making! I use a bit of tomato paste, garlic, onions, bell peppers (or any peppers really, we have lots of jalapenos, banana and pablanos from the garden right now), cumin, salt and pepper to make the meat 'taco' style. It makes good leftovers that Dave or the kids can heat up and eat with anything, and is also a nice 'normal' food to have when the kids have friends over hehehe!
Also burgers are big, meatloaf, meatballs, stuffed peppers and stuffed cabbage, all made with ground beef.

2 a DAY!

We eat tons of bread obviously (like 2 loaves a day people!), which I make with the wheat flour from the farm. Mostly with grilled cheese or pb & j sandwiches, and as toast with our eggs, and hot out of the oven with butter! And we usually make tortillas once a week.

I make a raw broccoli salad, which is cheddar (or any sharp cheese, grated) raw onions, fresh broccoli, bacon (if I have it, usually I don't) bell peppers, carrots, and peanuts or sunflower seeds, then a dressing of mayo and sour cream (yogurt if i have it) apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper. It is DELICIOUS!
I also make alot of bruschetta, and tomato and cucumber salad (tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar),  and grilled marinated mushrooms and zucchini. We eat alot of potatoes, too, since that is what we have!

Ok, I know this has gone on and on (and on!) so I will stop. I will try to keep up on posting what meals we have, if we do anything exciting or new. We definitely eat alot! And well! Eating local/sustainable doesn't mean starving or denying yourself. It just means doing things and thinking about things a little differently. It is very fulfilling and gets easier every day.
Wish me luck in my canning endeavors, I hope to soon have rows and rows of sparkling jars.....

"There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Busy Busy Busy!

Potatoes, part deux

Well the job has been keeping me very busy, this is the first time all week I have managed to sit down at the computer! And only because my Spanish homework is due by midnight, and I have to go to work at 4!




I am not kidding, folks, this is EVERYDAY!

 SO! Yes, it has been a little hectic around here, but not impossible. SOOOOO many goodies from the garden, I feel guilty for even taking the time to write this when I know I have a ton of produce upstairs that needs cut, steamed and frozen, or sliced, sauteed and eaten, or chopped and hidden behind somethinbg else, to make room for more!


Dave has made a couple of batches of the MOST AMAZING spaghetti sauce and I am NOT exaggerating, no one was more surprised than ME! Well, maybe him... But it was sooooo goood! We froze it up for later, since I haven't had a chance to can anything yet. Although I have four days off in a row coming up, and I plan to make pickles and can tomatoes.


I have made several incredible batches of salsa, so good that I have literally been burping it up everyday for at least a week! ;p I am going to try to make some to can, but I have alot of plans and not alot of time lol!

my sweet pooch, on our way to the creek this morning

OOPS! That's my dog, aka the BEST dog in the world! Here's is what I meant to post:

A 6 & 1/2 incher!

I have been keeping up with bread making and cheese making, no surprise those are my favorite things eh?

Homemade bread and mozz with homegrown tomato

We brought in the rest of the potatoes the other day. We were hoping to start a second crop, but we couldn't find any second crop tubers. Turns out we shoulda bought extras in the spring, and stored them in the fridge til now. Next year we will know better!

Well truly this post has taken longer than I thought, I have to get going. Suffice it to say, July was a WONDERFUL month for local, sustainable eating! I believe August will be just as good, if not BETTER!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE post any questions, I'm sure you have some! I will soon have a few days off and will have time to answer and post more jealousy-inducing pix of my garden's bounty bwahahhahahaha!

'Everything has its own perfection, be it higher or lower in the scale of things; and the perfection of one is not the perfection of another.'
                        --John Henry Newman

A few steps forward, one step back...

A black krim, a roma and a buncha yellow pears!

Well if you live behind, beside or across from me, are related to me, have spoken to me in the last week, or even drove by my house at the right moment, you probably already know that we are in the middle of a full fledged TOMATO EMERGENCY here!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining, (I'm actually bragging) I'm just making note that I gotsta do SOMETHING SOON with all these tomatoes! I have those HUGE black krims, plus 4 INSANE roma plants, 4 of those yellow pear tomatoes, PLUS a brandywine or two, (it's hard to tell at this point how many individual plants there are! Heaven help me!). I have been handing off a bunch to my neighbors, and eating them with every possible meal, but I guess I could start trying my hand at canning by next week!

A TINY wrench in my plans, I went and got myself a lil ol' part-time job, which immediately scheduled me to work every day for 11 straight days, so I have my hands completely full right now! It will ease up soon, but for the next week or so, it might be a little touch and go. I bet a few of you have been wondering if all this "local sustainable" eatin' is possible with a JOB too, and so have I, so I am interested to see what effects this has...

So my bread making is sailing right along now that I let the machine mix and knead the dough, then I take it out and let it rise and bake it myself. It has really been fantastic, the bread is coming out great, the mess is nothing, and the effort is absolutely minimal. Of course I still have to make 2 loaves a day, because of the ravenous hoardes here at my house. Don't even ASK about the amounts of peanut butter and jelly we are mowing through....

Oh and my mozzarella making!!! (pause for a moment as I clasp my hands together, smile angelically, and look up at the sky, then slowly close my eyes as I imagine my creamy, melty, stretchy, luscious cheese....)
HUH? What just happened?? Where am I??? Oh yeah, the mozzzzzz................
Ok, I am better now... all I can say is mozzarella making has been the BEST BEST BEST discovery of this whole experiment!!! Yes I love, nay: ADORE my tomatoes! I LOVE the banana peppers and zucchini. I really REALLY enjoy fresh homemade bread made with local sustainable stone ground whole wheat flour. I love grass-fed beef and pastured pork. But oh, the mozzarella!!!!

It starts out as milk, plain boring old milk (which btw I do not really see as that boring anymore, you can do SO MUCH with it!) and then stir stir, mix mix, put the lid on, wait 10 minutes WHAMMO! Cheese! Creamy scrumptious AMAZING! SOOOOOO easy!! From cold milk to literally eating the cheese it takes half an hour!!!! LOL can you even believe it??? I would never have believed it, but there it is! If you love mozzarella, it is seriously worth it to give making it a try!

The main thing you need is milk that is not 'ultra-pasteurized'. Other than that, you can buy the items you need online, I bought a kit from New England Cheesemaking Supply Co. http://www.cheesemaking.com/ for beginners ( I have been making it twice a week for several weeks now, and if I can do it, YOU can do it!) that came with everything you need except milk, to make 30 batches. Yes THIRTY batches. The kit cost 25$ plus shipping, so about 30$ total, and I end up with about a pound each time. You can buy the things you need separately elsewhere, you just need rennet (I have NO CLUE what it is, look it up) and ummmm cheese salt (which I suspect is just coarse salt) a thermometer, oh and citric acid. Each of these items are a couple bucks or less; but the kit is nice because of the instructions, and everything including the thermometer is in there. You really cannot do it wrong! Actually, me and my kid messed up one batch, I'm still not exactly sure what we did, I think maybe my milk was too old (remember I am using raw milk, which doesn't keep beyond a few days), other than that ONE time, every batch has worked perfectly!

Ok, I will relax on the mozz tip... I will just mention that I make the MOST AMAZING grilled cheese sammitches out of it!!! Soooooo goooddddd..................
Ok, for real this time, I am done...
Here is some bruschetta I made with garden tomatoes and my fresh mozz yesterday:

Oh man, now I am drooolllliiingggggg.........

So I titled this post "A few steps forward, one step back", and i am now unfortunately going to relate our step backwards....
Sigh, this is hard to write, it really is. As you know, the lunch meat issue has been the most difficult part of this whole journey for my family. Yeah, snacks were/are tough, the creamer thing, I really miss avocados. But definitely lunch meat was the biggie for us.
Dave has to pack his lunches for work, and with nowhere to heat anything up, and not wanting to eat fast food, or even being near a place to get fast food, or any other food for that matter, when he needs to eat because of his job, sandwiches are a big deal to him. We tried several things, and he has been a real trooper. The last couple weeks we had been using leftovers from dinner to make his sandwiches, but there aren't always enough leftovers, or the type of leftovers that make a decent sandwich.
We discussed the options and issues AT LENGTH, I can assure you lol! But the bottom line is he made the decision to buy grocery store lunch meat for his sandwiches this week. He is a grown-ass man, and what he puts in his mouth/body is ultimately up to him. Honestly, the thought of lunch meat turkey pretty much turns my stomach at this point, but if it doesn't bother him, then he is free to do as he pleases. He did try other options, and is still on board with everything else we are doing. So there it is.

Do I think it could have been worked out some other way? Yes; but there definitely has to be a certain level of commitment to go exclusively local, and it is not something I can ask anyone else to do. And the truth is, I am NOT exclusively local either. I buy boxes of cheap cereal here and there for convenient snacking and breakfasting for the kids, and olive oil, and my cheesemaking kit, and salt and pepper, etc. So who am I to pick and choose which things HE should be ok or not ok with? And I am not upset with him about it; we each have our own journey. I am doing the best I can at what I think is best for me (and my poor defenseless children lol) and that is all I am responsible for.

So, many steps forward, and one backwards, and that is just like all the rest of life, and it is part of the pattern that is all of creation, and I am fine with that.

"Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end."
                                                            --Walter Pater

Who's the terkee NOW???

Oh man, I made the seitan turkey roast the other day! Wait, let me stick a pic in here:


Note the turkey-like shape!



Ok, now I will show you a pic of the bread i made the same night:

Lol see the similarity??? My husband called his terkee sandwich 'manage á bread' aka 'bread á trois' Hahahaha!! I had to admit, they looked an awful lot alike! He ate some though, what a trooper, but today said he doesn't want anymore sandwiches of it. Can't blame him, it does have a faint dog-foody smell (the brewer's yeast). Definitely a meaty texture, and he did at least try it. Plus it has been miserably hot the last few days, and who would want a dog-foody smelling 90 degree sammitch after working in the hot sun for hours?

But seriously folks, it wasn't AWFUL. It wasn't GREAT, but it wasn't awful. As usual, I would definitely tweak the recipe if I were to make it again. And I may try to make it again, as soon as this one is gone. Which may not be til Thanksgiving.... I used a recipe that made enough to feed an army of hungry vegans, I bet it weighed in at 10 lbs!
That was my first mistake. My second mistake was more or less following the recipe, even though my instincts were telling me it wouldn't be flavorful enough. Next time I will make a smaller batch, and WAY up the seasoning. Not terrible though for a first try, and if you know any hungry vegans....

That is todays haul of tomatoes, the big guys in the back are hierlooms called Black Krim and they are burgandy-ish green when ripe, and some of the ones still on the vine are HUGE! We are going to a family party tomorrow and I am taking a salad of my fresh home-made mozzarella and these garden fresh beauties (plus garlic, basil and olive oil, and maybe some bread)!

I need to take a pic of the garden right now, it is a tomato rainforest! I scoffed at planting them 3 feet apart and now they are a tangled, maniacally overgrown forest of deliciousness-to-be!
My neighbor's Roma tomatoes are ripening, I could see the orange-ish red from my side of the fence (visualize my pitiful face staring at his tomatoes through the chain link), but mine are just frankenstein-ian behomoths carelessly knocking aside their cages and running free! Actually, as predicted by- well, everyone who knew of my garden, the zucchinis and tomatoes are strangling out everything else. Well, there is a viney feisty cucumber determined to grow there as well, he is all tangled up with the zucchini next to him, and I can't tell sometimes who is who or what is what! Which reminds me, I did something delicious with cucumber the other day, but now I can't remember what it was? Oh yeah, I diced some really fine and added it to the salsa I was making, and it added a fresh crispiness I really liked! Plus used up some excessive cukes...

The strawberries are enjoying a second spring of production, boy are they alot of work! It is astounding how insanely fast and luxurious everything is growing!
Except everything in pots on the deck, they are all dead. It is my fault, I kept forgetting to water them, and it has just been so hot and dry the last month....excuses excuses! Forgetting to water things has definitely been a life-long problem for me; one of my kids, I forget which one, once asked me why the plants they gave me for Mother's Day always died. =/ Aw well, no one's perfect!

This is gonna have to be a 'quickie' I'm afraid, since me and my hubby are HOME ALONE tonight (wink wink) and he is in the bedroom and I am out here blogging LOL! I just wanted to get those pix up, oh and one other QUICK thing, farmer suggested I just use my bread machine for making the dough and the first rise, then taking it out and doing the second rise and baking myself, which will eliminate the kneading hook in the bread, the weird cube shaped loaf, and the sunken tops...DUH wish I had thought of that myself!
If you can't be smart yourself, it's good to know smart people!

Houston, we have tomatoes!

Yes they have finally started to ripen and they are delicious! Everyday there are more ready to be picked, my kid has eaten most of them right off the vine, but today there were so many, he couldn't finish them all lol!


The whole week has been a delightful produce extravaganza, I have spent most of my time in the kitchen!


Blueberry and blackberry buckles, tortillas, salsa, potatoes fried, baked, boiled, peppers stuffed with cheese, creamy mozzarella, bread, even a batch of cream cheese (don't ask how we did it, but somehow we did!) have all kept me busy this week!


I bought a bread machine at a yardsale on Saturday, and as expected, was slightly disappointing. The dough kneading blade gets baked into the bread, then when you cut it out, it leaves a big ol' hole in the bottom of the bread, making only the end few slices usable for sandwiches (ah sandwiches, the bane of my existence!), which seems like a bizarre engineering oversight!
Also of course all the recipes in the booklet call for bread flour, which I am not using, so I have been baking some experimental loaves trying to get the gluten/yeast/moisture combination right. I have made a couple decent loaves, but they are so small and cuboidal and then the big hole in the bottom, aye carumba!
After some online research of bread machine reviews, I think I am going to look around for a West Bend one, with the horizontal loaf shape and double kneading paddles. My mom offered to buy one for me, so I will make do with the $10 yard sale one til then. Overall I am glad I bought it, for experiemental reasons, and also because it doesn't use much flour (3 cups vs 10 cups for my handmade bread) and some of the bread is definitely usable, the best part is that I just have to put the ingredients in, and then 3 hrs later, it is ready with no foot-(hand)-work by me (or dirty floury bowls/countertops!)! So it will be fine until I find the one I want at a decent price.


It can also be used to just make dough, so I may give it a try with noodles and/or tortillas. Although today my kid made another scrumptious batch of those by hand, and they should last the week.


Oh man, I made a zucchini casserole yesterday that was like heaven! I made a crust for the bottom, sliced the zucchini horizontally, pretty thinly, then made an egg, homemade cream cheese, milk and swiss 'batter' to pour over the zucchini, then sprinkled the top with breadcrumbs (heaven knows I have plenty of those lol) and more cheese, and then baked it until the egg was set. mmmmmmmmmmmmm soooo good! Disclaimer: I LOVE zucchini, I can't think of any zucchini dish I have ever had that I didn't love. My husband wasn't wow-ed by it, although he ate it, but he is never really much of a zucchini fan (except for the primavera dish i make with the canned tomatoes, black olives and artichokes), but it was really good!

Today we had grilled mozzarella sandwiches with tomatoes, olive oil and basil (mine also had grilled zucchini!) for lunch- SCRUMPTCH!

Overall, easy week of local eating, lotsa good stuff from the farm and the garden, plus I am keeping up with breads and dairy products. I am finding it easier to just see what I have and then figure out what to make with it, rather than deciding what to make and then buying the ingredients for it. And I am getting much better at using things while they are fresh, instead of waiting for inspiration to strike. Some meals might seem a little disjointed, but that is just an error of perception. I am used to the 'grocery store way' of get whatever you want when you want it, but I am slowly adjusting to 'enjoy what you have while it is available'.

The only foods I bought from the grocery store this week are my beloved sugar-free french vanilla flavored non-dairy creamer, canned and dried beans, olives, vital wheat gluten, vinegar, mayo, bbq sauce, pnut butter, etc.
No produce (I even stopped buying avocados!), no dairy, definitely no meat, no baked goods. I have been buying a few 2 liters of diet soda for my husband's lunches, and a few bags of chips for the kids, oh and some popsicles, because they were on sale plus I had a coupon.

Definitely everyone is adjusting much better and overall the rebellion seems to have died down considerably.
Like everything in life, we are getting used to it, and the discomfort of change is going away.

But I assure you we are eating very well here! No one is going hungry, and we seem to be appreciating each bite a little more (well maybe just I am lol!) because food is more of a process now, does that make sense? Not just more work per se, but more planning maybe? Or more faith that the earth/universe will provide? I'm not sure, it is tough to explain. I just feel grateful for each bright yellow pear tomato I pull off the vine, and each pork chop and each loaf of bread. Every bite tastes like nourishment... I never noticed that before... I guess it has something to do with the mindfulness of eating this way, I imagine vegetarians must feel this too...

Ok I know I am rattling on!

Po-tay-toe Po-taw-toe, Toe-may-toe Toe-maw-toe

Ahhhhhhhhh another beautiful day!
Just came in from the garden. We dug up the first of the potatoes today; what a spectacular treat!!! We got soooo many! And we only dug around a few of the plants so more to come! It was seriously like digging for buried treasure: just digging around in the dirt with our fingers and suddenly GOLD!
It is 95 degrees at least out there, but I didn't even notice, and the gnats which usually drive me INSANE, didn't seem to exist. This whole garden thing has just been sublime, no exaggeration...
They are german fingerling potaotes, which i ordered as tubers from Burpee.com, so they are petite and elongated, with golden skin and flesh, BEAUTIFUL! We gave a bag to the generous neighbor who shared his bounty with us last summer (produce and advice) and have some drying out int he sun, and some on the counter for supper!


The peppers have continued to be plentiful as well, so I've been stuffing them and sauteing (sp?) them and such. But the TOMATOES! Oh the heartbreakingly SLOW ripening tomatoes!!!! The plants are COVERED, literally COVERED with tomatoes, gazillions of them! But none are ripe! They smell DIVINE! I go into the garden several times a day and check on them, feel them, smell them, just ADORE them! I tell them how lovely they are and how sweet, and beg them to ripen! I admit I think about them all day! (yes i may need counseling...)
And my obsession with the tomatoes hasn't been helped by the fact that I made the MOST INCREDIBLY CREAMY and DELICIOUS mozzarella on Sunday! Just like the fancy expensive kind from the store, the kind you make tomato and mozzarella salad out of, the kind that melts in your mouth WAAAAAA!!!!!


Used the same recipe and technique as before, but adjusted it for the fact that I am using raw milk, and wanted a super creamy texture, as opposed to the stringy dry kind that you buy already shredded in bags at the store. And don't get me wrong, I like that kind too, that is how our first batch turned out and it was good; it is just that I LOVE the creamy kind, LOVE IT, have a twisted romance with it, sometimes hide it from my kids kinda thing....sigh....


(For anyone interested in the adjustments i made: 1/4 tsp less citric acid, never heated above 88 degrees, and only stretched a couple of pulls, as soon as it was shiny I stopped stretching, and immediately cooled in ice water bath) (Oh and also I used the full fat milk, didn't skim it, and, gulp, doubled the salt to 2 tsp...)


I am praying nightly that by next weekend the tomatoes will begin ripening. If that is petty, my only defense is that I am surely not the only one to ever pray for something petty. =/


In the Packed Lunch Wars, we have reached an impasse. I verbalised my, "it's not all about what goes in your mouth, it is also about the process of getting it there" feelings, as well as my, "can't you just shut up and eat it?" feelings; but then I followed that up with my trump card, "Can't you just humor me???" and that seemed to help. So all last week he had left-over meats on his sandwiches. I found some great marinades for chuck roast, and made a couple different ones for meals last week, and that made good sandwich meat, and he seemed pretty happy with that. I think another important factor is the increase in produce. He feels better about the everything when he is getting amazing suppers every night! And he said, and I quote, "I am feeling alot healthier since we started doing this."


Let's keep this between ourselves here folks, but when he heads back to work this week, I am going to made a seitan 'turkey' roast and slice that sucker up, and pack it in his sandwiches, and see if he likes it! I am going to make the seitan myself, my mom made it last year for Thanksgiving for one of my sisters, who is vegan, and they both said it was really good, and so did my step-dad who is a notoriously picky eater. Apparently it is pretty easy to make, it is vital wheat gluten and nutritional yeast (not the same as bread yeast) and then spices and stuff, and it ends up having a meaty texture and whatever flavor you put in it. So wish me luck!


Oh man and I made the BEST batch of tortillas EVER yesterday! So soft and slightly puffy and delicious! It seems like I am getting better at making stuff, just a little trial and error, and it gets better each time.


As the season progresses, it is definitely getting easier to find local foods, roadside farmstands are popping up, the variety at the farmers markets is getting better, and of course that all helps. I am worrying a bit already about the winter months, I know i thought I would have canned and frozen stuff to get me through, but honestly, except for maybe tomatoes, I doubt I will have enough of anything else to can or freeze (well, maybe zucchini). BUT I am not going to let it get me down yet, I know August will be crazy with produce, and by then I will be even better (through my super fun trial and error method lol!) at local eating, so maybe the outlook will not be as difficult as I worry it will be.


And my mom loaned me an amazing book about food gardening and it gave me a ton of new ideas for next year, and I will be far more efficient. And seriously, the thrill we got from digging up those potatoes will carry me through a few dark days this winter, I am SURE!


Well it is 7pm, and I have yet to start making supper, so I better get to it! (In actuality, I started those potatoes back in April, soooo....)