I made pizza with spinach from the garden.

It's true! I made whole wheat thin crust pizza with tomatoes, basil and spinach.
After i rolled out the dough, I spread a thin layer of basil. Last week when I made this sans spinach, I put the basil on top of the tomatoes and the basil got quite crunchy and wasn't terribly flavorful. So I put basil on bottom this time.
Next I layer washed trimmed spinach leaves, then a can of drained tomatoes. Fresh slices would be better, but this is good too.
Then shredded low fat mozzarella cheese and parmesan.

Then I baked it at 425 for around 10 minutes, untill the crust looked done and the cheese was melted and just golden brown.

Avery was so excited when I pulled it out of the oven, he waved to it, and brought Pop over to look at it.

Avery ate his pizza with great gusto.

Sun flowers

ones in pots.

skinny

yellow

eating local

Have you ever had veggies right out of the garden? No long trip in a truck, no refrigeration, no sitting in a grocery store, no languishing in the veggie crisper, no being overcooked. Just a quick rinse and then crunch.
Picking my veggies is so rewarding. It reminds me of my grandfather who had an amazing garden on his ranch in the Texas hill country. He had rows of pole beans that towered over my eight year old head. When it was time, we'd go down to the garden pick tomatoes, beans, okra, inspect the pecan trees, feed the cows. He had a ranch hand, but he still liked to do these chores himself. He was like that.
The smell of tomatoe vines, bean leaves makes me eight again, marveling at the plants Granddaddy had grown, taking three steps to match his long stride.

In season

Today for lunch I made butternut squash soup using half a squash left over from my Dinner for Henry Pizza. I modified this  healthy recipie, adding milk at the end to add some bulk and thicken it up a little bit- though if you wanted to stay vegan, you certainly could.
After finally figuring out what is what in the garden, I harvested a decent amount of collard greens. I wanted to keep this lunch as healthy as possible and also wanted Mom to eat it (she despises collards with bacon fat) and didn't want to go to the store. So, in big pot, I combined the greens, some prepared salsa, garlic, some onion, about 1 1/2 cups of water and 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar. Bring to a boil, then let simmer for a while. Next time, I'll add less vinegar. Once the green were limp and tender, I spread some soft herbed cheese on whole wheat toast points and topped with a spoonful of the greens. OMG! so good! The cheese was a good counterpoint to the greens. And the soup balanced the whole thing out.
Norm ate the whole meal! Mom liked the greens, and so did Dad, a born and bred Southerner.

Surprise!

One of the things I love the most about learning how to garden is all the surprises along the way. I've found that often it's the means as well as the end that is meant to be enjoyed. Sometimes these surprises are frustrating- Why did my peas that did so well last spring totally fail to thrive this fall? What the hell is going on with my sweet potatoes? Do I have some sort of potoato whale hybrid that needs two years to gestate? But often the surprises are plesant. Volunteer tomatoes! A canteloupe plant from the compost! Oh boy!
I'm finding that even (especially?) when I do my best to tame and culitvate her, Mother Earth always finds ways to keep me on my toes.
P.S. green beans for dinner on thursday!!! Can't wait!

baby melon.

heliotrope

When I was in high school, my email address contained the word heliotrope, along with an inordinate amount of x's. I thought it was clever; somehow brainy and mysterious but also religous at the same time. A conversation starter-- any plant who follows the sun (or Son). My friend Paul Higgins once riduciled me. He used words like assanine and ridiculous, and more that ten years later, I agree with him. Funny, Paul was an atheist at the time, and if I had to guess which one of my friends would later attend a relgious university and structure our life around the church calendar, Paul would have been last on list. I would have been wrong. Paul is now one of the most faithful people I know, where as I am currently....unaffilated. Ten years is a long time.
All that aside, plants really do follow the sun and my sun flowers have curved stems from trying to stay close to the light.

For your viewing pleasure, pictures of my sunflowers.

In Between

This morning while Avery was out on a walk with my parents and then later napping, I did some gardeny type chores--weeding, compost turning, trimming the greens for my lunch later in the day. I gave every body a late morning drink before the heat of the day sets in-- It may be fall elsewhere but down here in the Land of Eternal Summer the heat index still occasionally hits 100.
Everything is growing so well! The beans and peas have the very beginnings of blossoms; the cabbage typ plants-- collards, broccoli, actual cabbage-- have nice green leaves. The sunflowers have nice strong stems and track the sun through the sky. The ones in the ground are doing better than the ones in the pots, so now I know that. The sweet potatoes, though,  are still an enigma. They've been in the ground for months and keep putting out a vine with healthy leaves, but the actual potatoes aren't anywhere to be found. Next summer, it's a sweet potato tower for sure.
Everything seems to be in between times. Not seedlings, nor fruit producing. Soon, though.

baby

here are some really cute pictures of avery in the garden!

Healthy (ish) oatmeal cookies

in my never ending quest to make yummy food that's also good for me and my baby, i've modified the oatmeal cookie recepie on the back of the canister.

3 cups old fashioned oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 cup almonds (i threw mine in the food processor b/c avery's not so good with nuts, but you can leave them whole if you'd like them chunky)

2 pealed medium mashed peaches
some yogurt (fat free, french vanilla- you could use milk or water if you wanted this to be vegan)
1 egg
1 cup brown sugar.

mix dry ingredients together. then mix wet. mix both together.
i have a baby so I don't have time to do normal cookies, so i pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake on 350 for like 25 minutes until brown and seem done.

I have also put them in mini-muffin and normal sized muffin pans. Once, I greased the inside of a (clean!) turtle shaped sand toy and baked it on a cookie sheet.

Sometimes I leave them plain on top; sometimes I crumble brown sugar before baking, or spread with cream cheese, or glaze with a melted cream cheese/milk/brown sugar situation.

if you don't have fresh peaches, i'm sure canned would be fine- though i wouldn't use them. Pears would do well. Bananas, apple sauce (canned or just mashed cooked apples) would too. I'd probably also do sweet potatoes or canned pumpkins. You could reduce the sugar too, or try honey, agave, stevia etc. If you go the vegan route, and eliminate the egg, I'd use an egg substitute or increase the baking soda by like a half teaspoon.


these passed the baby test, the dad test, AND the boyfriend who hates veggies test.
happy baking!

recap

So I totally crapped out with the blogging this summer. Here's what happened: no squash, zucchini, or melons; LOTS of lovely peas!; good yummy tomatoes; a lot of okra spread out over a long period of time.
So for the fall: salad greens in pots; sunflowers in pots and in ground; onions, peas, bush beans, collards, cabbage, broccoli, spinach in the bed. I have also planted two black berry bushes. A volunteer tomato plant appeared out of nowhere (well, most likely from either a seed that was in the compost or from the spring plant). My sweet potatoes salvaged out of the compost is flourishing despite being munch on by a bunny and raked by norm. I'm still not sure how to know when they are ready for me to eat them. Next spring I think I might plant some sweet potato towers to make the process easier.

early summer update

No major updates here (all of our plants that have exciting news are the ones that were transplanted to the in-the-ground-garden at Amy's), however there are a few small and exciting things.

I got to eat homegrown salad a week or so ago. It was great, and really quick and easy. There are two more little pots of it for lunch sometime this week.

Also, my watermelon plants are loving life in their 5 gallon pot. Tendrils shooting out every which way and little yellow blossoms showing up... wheeee!!!

The cilantro has made a good start and the spearmint, I think, was switched at birth with a blade of common grass.

I have some strong papaya seedlings, but I don't know if my attention span will be long enough to see them through their adolescence.

Did you know?

That okra plants produce the loveliest, most delicate flowers?
Neither did I!
Part of this experiment is learning more about the earth, about the food we eat. Everything- even the hated squash vine borer worm- has it's place in the natural world. I'm trying to find mine.
Happy earth day!

the world's cutest tomato

flowers

sugar snap peas













cantaloupe


















watermelon

Look what I found!

While turning my compost after neglecting it for a tiny bit I found some lovely plants!
A garlic bulb that sprouted; two plants that I'm nearly certain are carrots; a mystery plant.


I love this-- plants sprouting out of my compost planted in soil from said compost in recycled containers. One change-- recycling-- led to another-- compost-- which ultimately will lead to an even bigger change-- expanding the types of food I'm able to produce myself.

Baby steps

I've been doing a lot of yearning for my own piece of land- to grow a substantial garden, to raise goats for milk and meat (and maybe wool?), to have chickens for eggs and Sunday dinner. To produce many if not most of the things I need. To have a homestead.

Right now, I am where I am and I have to do what I can with what I have. So I'm taking baby steps; soon I will be able to take a big leap- knock on wood.

One baby step is to make my own shampoo and conditioner. I use recycled bottles so I save packaging. The soap base is Dr. Bronner's so it's bio degradable. With the exception of the lavender and the nettle, the herbs came from my garden. (I tried various ways, but lavender just won't grow here for me from seeds. Too wet and warm I think.)

Amy's Homegrown Herbal Shampoo
4 oz. Dr. Bronner magic soap (I used lavender because I'm addicted and it's what I had on hand)
one cup herbs ( I used Rosemary, peppermint, lavender and nettle: If you have light hair nix the Rosemary and use chamomile- it brings out highlights.)
about a cup and half of water
glass jar with tight fitting lid ( I used a rinsed out pasta sauce jar)
plastic squeeze jar ( a recylced shampoo bottle would work; so would a plastic salad dressing bottle)

Boil water and pour it over herbs in glass jar. Screw on lid and let steep for about 10 minuets. Strain out herbs- I use a kitchen strainer though cheese cloth would work too. Really squeeze out the herbs to get every last bit of liquid. Add the herbal water to the soap. After it's cool I check to see if it foams up enough for me. If not I add more soap. This isn't an exact science.

Some other nice herb/soap combination:
Mint soap and Rosemary, nettle, peppermint
Lemon soap and basil, nettle, lemongrass
Tea tree oil soap and lavender, nettle

The nettle helps your hair soak up the herbs.

squah vine borer

I figured it out! I've got squash vine borers! Which basically means I'm screwed! No pesticides organic or otherwise works on it! I *might* be able to salvage what's left of my plants, but I'm not sure!
However, I did eat three very yummy pea pods. The okra also are growing as are the tomatoes and the canteloupe.

Help!

Something that isn't me (or a bunny for that matter!) is munching on my squash! like a worm or something! at this rate, there will be none for me to much on!
Anyone know something organic i can do to make it stop??

Mesclun greens

I planted two small pots of Mesclun salad greens today! I put the seeds in the little blue mushroom containers I use as seedling pots now. And in there with the seeds is compost from our wonderful heap.

I have several other packets of seeds to plant as well; spearmint, cilantro, and other types of salad greens.

This is something I should have started a month ago (then I could be eating them today!), but I hope this works... It's yet another first for me in the realm of growing my own food.

coming soon

Pictures of the well flourishing garden are coming soon-- tomorrow if it's not rainy like today! Everything is green and lush and beginning to produce! Squash are also coming soon as are snow peas!
Gladis's post on breast feeding and homegrown food prompted me to post this somewhat troubling editorial published in yesterday's St. Pete Times. How upsetting to me that this woman basically forced herself to nurse her babies based on the medical evidence. My mom-- who pointed the article out to me-- said she sounded like a spoiled brat, and I agree. I also think this article is dangerous and undermines the value of nursing.