Off To Market

I love going to the farmer's market. It always makes me feel like I'm discovering treasure as I go from stall to stall looking at all the good food, fresh flowers, cheeses, meats, honey and even some goat's milk soap.

Some of the vendors even serve breakfast and other homemade baked goods. The smells of biscuits and gravy, omelets and frittatas are enough to make your mouth water. An added bonus is there is always someone there playing music.

Some of my treasures.......

(Now, I'm going to stop here for a minute and let you know this is how far I got Sunday night in my post and then for some reason I couldn't upload the pictures I wanted to use. I tried for almost an hour and it just wasn't happening. I'm sure it was a computer issue and not my computer incompetence, haha.

Plus the fact that it felt like it was a million degrees in the house because my air conditioning is not working right. Even though I like heat, when you live in the South and it's close to 90 degrees and the humidity is over 50%, you need some A/C to get through the night. But I've had 5 fans going throughout the house and it was still 84 degrees in the house at 4am. I was fairly comfortable but poor Lola looks on the verge of a heat stroke and my son was complaining. The repairman is coming Wednesday and hopefully it won't be too expensive to fix, again, hahaha.)

This was this afternoon and Lola is trying to catch a cool breeze. I didn't take her out walking today because there would be no way to cool her off when we got home. She likes the cold.

Now, back to my treasures from the market........

Assorted, raised on pasture, humanely treated, meats. There's chicken, a couple of small pork loins, hamburger and hamburger patties. I fixed the chicken yesterday and made chicken and rice soup. Although it was kind of HOT to be eating soup. Obviously I wasn't thinking, but it was good and there's plenty for lunches this week.

Some swiss chard, grape tomatoes and my favorite, asparagus, yummy.

Some incredible baked goods, 7 grain bread and vanilla iced cinnamon rolls.

I love this "basket". I always use it when going to the farmers' market. It's wide enough so that nothing gets squashed and I can fit a lot of things in there

I saw this cardinal in the yard Sunday morning and just when I was getting ready to snap the picture he flew up to the fence. It's not as good a picture as I was trying to get and he turned his back on me, but there he is.

Please send thoughts and prayers for all the people and animals in Oklahoma who have been hurt, displaced and killed in the tornado today. God bless you all.


Kathy

Mish Mash....

I haven't posted anything in a little over a week because my brain has turned to mush. I think of things to blog about, I start drafting a post and then *poof* it's gone or after a few paragraphs I don't like it and delete it or I just have nothin'. I think my brain has shut down.

I thought I would have time last weekend to sit down and really work on something but it turned into quite a busy weekend, being on the run. And then Sunday was Mother's Day so that day was pretty filled up. It seems the more I think about it, the worse it becomes. It's not like I don't have things to talk about, I just can't seem to articulate them right now. I'm sure it will pass so in the meantime here are some odds and ends from the past few days of playing with my camera.

These are a couple of pork tenderloins I bought at the farmer's market. They are sooooo good. Both of these were under a pound so I cooked both of them. My teenage son can eat one all by himself, then some for me and some leftover for a couple of lunches.

I marinated them in some fresh lemon juice, olive oil, sliced onions and garlic powder and cooked them on the grill.

Here I am trying not to set the deck on fire, the wind picked up as soon as I lit the grill.

This is some asparagus that I also bought at the farmer's market. Remember when I bought the cotton produce bags a while back. Supposedly you could get the bag damp and keep your produce in them and they would stay fresh longer? I bought these veggies on Saturday and when I cooked them on Tuesday they were still crisp. So far, so good on the bags!

After I broke the ends off I decided to put them in a freezer bag and eventually use them along with some other vegetables to make vegetable broth.

Tenderloins on the grill with a little Cajun seasoning. Yummy.

On another note, my lettuce mix is coming up pretty good. This makes me so excited!

And my baby bok choy.....YAY!!

Of all the toys Lola has had in the past two years, this one is the only one she hasn't been able to destroy or eat. It has a lovely squeaker in the middle and all I have to say is "get your ball" and she runs and get's this.

Here's to better brain function.....


Kathy

 

 

 

 

 

RAIN..RAIn..RAin..Rain...rain

I know rain is good, it's nourishment for the earth, it cools us and makes our garden grow. But it seems like we've had more than our usual amount of rain this spring. I know I shouldn't complain because it will probably be very dry later in the summer and we'll be wishing for rain.

I do have some exciting news, my seeds are actually coming up!! I'm so excited, I've never grown anything from seeds before.

Can you see those little green spots down the center of the dirt? That's my heirloom lettuce seeds. I'm beside myself that they are actually growing. I just hope I can keep them alive and keep any pests off of them.

And these green dots along both sides of the container are the heirloom baby bok choy. I know I will have to thin out some of the lettuce and bok choy, but I'm waiting til they get a little bigger. I still  have seeds left in the packets so I'm hoping I can plant them again after I eat all these.

The herbs and tomato plants are growing and doing pretty good so far. I'm just worried about the lettuce and bok choy and the herbs with this whole weekend of rain. The rain has come down pretty steady at times and then just a drizzle at other times. But my seedlings are so small I'm afraid they will drown in their containers. So I came up with a brilliant idea to shelter them somewhat but still get some of the rain water.

I've got plastic on top of the tables because the tops aren't solid. The plants have still been getting wet but not beat down with the constant rain. The plants above are chives.

They say it's going to stop raining after tomorrow and be sunny and warmer later this week, I certainly hope so. It's common knowledge that I like the heat and this 59 degree weather today is depressing me, it's Spring after all!!

I will admit though that the weather has helped me save energy. Since the furnace doesn't come on because it's not cold enough, we haven't had to use the air conditioning either. I always try to get through the month of May before I turn it on, sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't.

Lola is watching over her kingdom just waiting to bark at somebody!!


Kathy

They're In The Ground

Well, actually, they're in the containers but I think you know what I mean. I spent yesterday evening planting, fertilizing and praying that they grow!

I found transplants of heirloom tomato plants and I got two of them along with some herbs

These are the chives.

That's basil on the right and parsley on the left. I only hope the squirrels aren't attracted to them

And I am most excited about these, the tomato plants. I love, love, love homegrown tomatoes.

These are the lettuce seeds and the one thing I am a little nervous about. I've never tried to grow any kind of lettuce before, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. By the way, Lola was trying to get my attention while I was taking pictures so that is why her "rear end" is in the picture.

Another thing that I'm keeping my fingers crossed on is the baby bok choy seeds, but I have high hopes. There's Lola's "rear end" again. You would think that no one ever pays attention to her, which if FAR from the truth.

This is just some more of the herbs that I had left over, chives, basil and parsley.

I'm just adding this to show you what Lola looks like when she runs through the puddles in the backyard the day after it has rained. But I still "wuv" her!

Now it's time for the sunshine, water and prayer to get this garden growin'.

Kathy

"Edible Foodlike Substances"

I love Michael Pollan, well not love love, but really admire him and his philosophy on nutrition. Another of my favorite books is "In Defense Of Food" (an eaters manifesto). I can honestly say that this book really, fundamentally changed my thinking of food, nutrition and the nutrition business. And yes, it is a business.

According to Mr. Pollan, "the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become". It is what he refers to as "nutritionism".  Just what is nutritionsim? I won't be able to explain it as thoroughly as Mr. Pollan, but I will give you the general idea. We've always been told to eat lots of fruit and vegetables because they are healthy for us. Nutritionist have told us that these foods are full of antioxidants such as beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamin A and others. So over the years food scientists have made supplements containing these nutrients so we can just take a pill instead of eating the foods containing them.

I'm sure you've all seen milk containing omega-3, orange juice containing added calcium and other products containing beta-carotene and lypocene. But it seems that even with all this new science, we are getting less healthy and more overweight than ever. Maybe, just maybe, is doesn't all come down to isolating the one particular nutrient.

Whose to say that the beta-carotene in a carrot, while being a powerful antioxidant, doesn't work it's magic because of the other nutrients in the carrot, whether it's the fiber, vitamin A, etc. Could the beta-carotene be destroyed in the digestive system without the other parts of the carrot to help it out? What about the omega-3 in salmon, maybe it needs the nutritional compounds in the rest of the fish to be of any value to us?

That's why Mr. Pollan urges us to eat food instead of  "edible foodlike substances".  It seems that a lot of products on the market today are "no longer the products of nature but of food science". Mr. Pollan also laments our culture of eating in the car instead of at the dinner table. And no truer words are spoken when he tells us to not eat anything if there is nothing in the ingredient list that your grandmother wouldn't recognize and if the list is more than five ingredients long. We should also avoid foods that make health claims.

This is just a small portion of what the book is about, but I think you might get the general idea. He talks about the Western Diet, why you shouldn't get your fuel from the same place your car get its fuel, try to eat with family and friends to fuel not only the body but the soul.

I'm not going to sit here and say that I can follow all of this advice all the time. But I learned a phrase from the Oprah Winfrey Show a few years ago, lean into it. While I would like to follow all these suggestions all the time, making sudden changes usually doesn't work. And when I am eating out or at someone else's home, I will eat their food and enjoy it and be thankful for it and fuel my soul with their company. But I will try to take one day, one meal at a time and "lean into" this way of thinking about food.

If you haven't read this book, I hope you will. I think you will like it and I hope, as fascinating as I did.


Kathy

Seeds..Seeds..Seeds...

I've gotten the official word, well, not me personally, it's time to plant some seeds. Our local gardening expert was on the radio last week and said now is a good time to plant seeds in our area. Planting tomato transplants or peppers really cannot be done until the first week or two in May, in our area, because the chance of frost is about over. As a matter of fact, after it being in the 80's last week, the past two days it has rained and gotten a lot colder. Sleet was even reported in some areas of town and last night there was a danger of frost. But we're warming up again today.

I've received several seed catalogs in the mail and I have narrowed it down to two that I want to use. Both sell non-GMO seeds and are totally involved in saving seeds and have taken a pledge in favor of both of those ideals.

This catalog even shows you how to save tomato seeds.

I do want to say that I know my photography skills aren't the best in the world, but be assured that I am working on that. So if some of the pictures here are not as good as they could be, hopefully in time I will remedy that problem!

This is my other favorite catalog and I am going to order some heirloom tomato transplants from it. Ahh, just the thought of some homegrown tomatoes has me weak in the knees.

I've decided to only plant a few things this year just to see how it goes, if I have a "green thumb" or not. I do plan on growing some herbs. It will be nice to just go out on my deck and pick some herbs for whatever I'm cooking.

Here are a few other things that I am ordering from the catalogs:

Doesn't that lettuce mix look yummy?

Sorry about the quality of that picture, but this is baby bok choy. I love some bok choy, sauted in a skillet.

This would be planted to come in this Fall. I love some roasted brussel sprouts!

The tomatoes with the blue ribbon are the transplants I want to buy. They are Italian Heirloom. My mouth is watering.

I promise I will work on my photography skills :-)


Happy planting!!


Kathy

Enlightenment

It's widely known, well at least among people I know, that I have always, always absolutely positively loathed yard work, cutting grass in particular. I've always liked a pretty yard, but I just didn't want to do it. But this year it just seems different. I raked and cut the grass this weekend and I actually didn't hate it. Now I'm not going to dance a jig everytime I have to cut the grass, but I have a new, enlightened attitude about it.

I love being outside on a nice, warm day, I don't mind getting dirty and I just feel different about it this year. I don't know if it's my new outlook about all things natural or what. The one thing that did just about send me over the edge was my weedeater stopped working. The weeds had almost grown a foot overnight after the rain so I had to weed eat before I even tried to cut the grass. Then later I wanted to weed eat another area and it wouldn't come on. I thought maybe it had just overheated from all the work. But I kept trying and finally it came on and I finished. But today when I got it out it wouldn't come on at all. It took everything in me not to heave it across the yard. Sometimes it just seems like whenever I'm around electrical or electronic things something happens to them. My solution for now is to not think about it for a while and maybe it will magically start up next time.

Earlier in the year I had considered mowing my grass with the pushmower I have. But as much as I would like to use it, after cutting grass this weekend, I've decided it just wouldn't be much of an option. My backyard is so uneven, with lots of ruts where I had a large tree cut down not long after I moved in. I would never be able to get a good, even cut. Also, my son will be cutting the grass quite often this summer and he would refuse to use it so I think I'm going to have to give up on the idea......for now anyway. I do hate to put those emissions out into the air, but sometimes you just have to choose your battles.

Remember I had talked about getting an easy recipe to make homemade bread? I got my camera out today, ready to take lots of pictures of some yummy bread. Well, that was a complete and utter failure!! I don't know what I did wrong. The dough didn't rise the first time but I went ahead and kneaded it again and put it into the loaf pans for the second rising, zero...zip...nada....didn't rise again. Since I had invested all the ingredients into the dough I went on and put the loaves in the oven hoping by some miracle that they would magically bake into bread. But nope, after baking they came out of the oven looking just as raw as when they went in.

Tomorrow I'm going to ask my friend, who gave me the recipe, to help me figure out what I did wrong. I was so looking forward to some nice homemade bread. The recipe seemed so easy. Dang it!!

Tomorrow is a new day and more challenges await.......


Kathy