Eat Your Veggies

In an effort to combat the onslaught of calories that have already begun to creep into my diet and thereafter inevitably onto my waistline, I'm making a vow to take a long walk every single day and eat more veggies.

It's hard to go wrong with carrots like these at the ready.  These were sweet, tender, crisp and thin skinned.  I gave them a good scrub and down they went with lunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.  Bugs would have been jealous.  I could dig another 20 bunches like this before we eat all that are in the garden.  In addition, I added a few large handfuls of fresh spinach and some side shoots of broccoli  to leftover pasta at lunch time and felt like my halo was tight.

Tonight we'll be having roasted peppers and shrimp over pasta and a green salad with radishes.  It's amazing that we are still eating fresh peppers though we are getting down to the dregs.  The plants finally took it on the chin before Thanksgiving, when the temperature dropped into the 20's, that was the death knoll.  We picked all that were of size and put them in a paper bag closed at the top.  Over the past 2 weeks they've slowly been ripening up.  We've lost a few, and some have gotten a little dried out and shriveled,  but overall they turn red and are still sweet and good to eat.  When we finally run out of those we'll have lots in the freezer, both fresh chopped and roasted and peeled, to get us through the cold months.  Today I cut down the plants and put them in the compost pile, pulled out their cages and put those away, raked up all the dead leaves and piled those in the bin to rot down and become more food for the garden next summer.

As long as I've been gardening in this climate it still floors me that on December 11th we can still be harvesting lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, collards, beets, carrots, kale, chard, bok choy and cilantro.  Very little has needed protection.  There is one gorgeous head of cauliflower growing out there, always a challenge for me, only a few of the plants survived and only one has a decent sized head at this point.  We've covered those plants for the 20 degree nights of this week and hope they will put on a bit more growth.

I've joined the 10% Campaign sponsored by the NC Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS).  Each Sunday I try to remember/estimate, how much money we spent on local food in the past week and how much money I saved by eating homegrown.  This is a bit of a challenge but also rather eye opening as to how much we are actually saving, or what it might cost us to buy all the stuff we grow if we were purchasing organic from the store or market.  For the 2 of us, it's working out to between $30-$40 a week and I think I actually tend to low ball.  I don't count all the fresh herbs for example.  So the goal is to eat/buy at least 10% locally each week, I think we are at about 40-50% because of the garden.

I feel sure that if we didn't have the garden, we would not be eating nearly as well as we are.  And on that note- I'm off to prepare another in a long line of excellent meals featuring loads of local food, including the shrimp.

A Week of Delicious Food

Kneading the sour dough 

You may wonder how my efforts with the sourdough have been going since I procured some starter a couple of weeks ago.  The rye I remembered so fondly was a bit heavy, but the flavor was nice, caraway is so distinctive.  I tried pancakes and thought they were a little thin, we normally make a multi-grain buttermilk pancake and they are hard to top.  The sourdough pancakes did have a stretchy texture that was interesting and the flavor was nice, we were thinking they would be good as crepes, or probably similar to the injera bread that they serve with Ethiopian food.  Today I tried the french bread recipe in the Tassajara Bread Book and the loaves turned out enormous and lighter than I would expect french bread to be.  I think in future I will make the loaves smaller and not let them rise quite so long.   They did have a crisp crust and good sourdough flavor.

Seems we have been cooking and eating up a storm.  Last week we made butternut squash ravioli and served them with garlic-herb butter, topped with pecans and fresh Parmesan.  They were stupendous and not that hard to make.  And bonus- half the batch went into the freezer for a super easy dinner sometime soon.  We are still eating all kinds of fresh things from the garden, loads of salads, spinach, the last of the green beans, red peppers, sweet potatoes and herbs.  The shitake logs are sprouting again, the food just keeps coming.

This was also our week to receive our Community Supported Fishery share from Core Sound Seafood.  Here David is basting the scored flounder with hot oil.  Not a diet dish, but WOW! this fried flounder topped with a Thai garlic sauce was spectacular.  Beautiful and tasty too.  We served it with a side of shitake mushrooms sauteed with red peppers, purple onion scallions and green beans over udon noodles.

Tomorrow starts another week that promises more glorious weather and hopefully the first head of fall broccoli from our patch.  The woods have gone all golden brown and the leaves are coming down.  Soon it will be time to break out the rakes and tidy up.  I'm trying to get in as many bike rides as I can before the weather turns to winter.  I hope autumn can hang on for a little while longer.

Happy Birthday to me!

Birthday breakfast: cappucino and pear tart!

Yesterday was my birthday so I've been in celebration mode for the past few days, I believe you have to give yourself some extra good times around the birthdate.  Sunday David and I spent the day just playing together, something we rarely do.  We started with a stretch and restore yoga class, 45 minutes of gentle stretching followed by 45 minutes of very long, supported poses, something you could do at home but never give yourself time and space for, now why is that?  We can easily lay on the couch for 2 hours watching a movie, only to arise with a sore back, but won't consciously do resting yoga poses for even 15 minutes!  Go figure.

We then went to brunch at Crooks Corner- I hadn't been there in ages, the food was great but the atmosphere hectic and very loud.  From there it was off to the North Carolina Botanical Garden to tour the grounds and view the outdoor sculpture show they put on every fall. The theme was Elements; earth, fire, water, air and spirit.  Some of them I liked, some I thought a bit too cutesy.  We then took a walk on the trails through the woods there.  NCBG is a wonderful resource in the middle of town, before we lived in the country with trails outside our door we often frequented the NCBG trails.  I always feel akin to the place as our same Morgan Creek flows through the gardens, albeit wider, deeper and more free flowing coming out from below the lake.

Home again after that for a quiet evening, where David, in the true spirit of birthday celebration baked for me a pear and almond tart so I would have something delish to sink my teeth into into on the morning of my actual, factual birthday (see above).  We wound up the day with a lovely supper of crab raviolis we had made and frozen a while back, part of the bounty of our Community Supported Fishery-Core Sound Seafood. 

Yesterday I did some work, took a long walk in the woods and went to town for a wonderful massage from my longtime masseuse and friend Pat Kosdan.  Knowing it was my B'Day she spoiled me with a hot stone massage and gifts of bath salts and an exfoliating brush- can't wait to put those into action.

Tonight, in the final tryptic of my celebration, we have tickets to see Fences at the Playmakers/Paul Green Theater.  So I guess one could say that I'm a very lucky lady who knows how to spoil myself on and around my special day.  I can't close without a shout to all those who sent cards, e-mails, packages and made calls to also wish me a happy 52nd year on the planet.  Love to you all.