Mendolonium

Last summer and fall our tomato plants yielded enough fruit for us to make and preserve, four gallons of marinara sauce, 7 pints of salsa, and 12 pints of canned whole tomatoes.  Last week we consumed our last pint of sauce and our last pint of tomatoes and today I cracked open our last pint of salsa.   So I headed off to the grocery store to buy tomatoes for the first time since last May and it felt so odd.  I actually felt that I was cheating on my garden.  The conversation in my head went something like this:

Garden:  You bought tomatoes from a store!

Gina:  Well, just this one time, since you haven’t been able to give me any lately.

Garden:  You couldn’t wait another few months!  You just had to have the sauce!

Gina:  I’m Italian!  I can’t live without it.  A girl has needs, you know.

So today I took the ill begotten fruits and made sauce.  We’re all finally healthy as well so we’ve been getting into spring work mode.  Over the past couple of weeks we’ve:

1. Plant Something or Take Care of Something You’ve Planted:

• Bareroot strawberry crowns (about 36).  You know, it is not easy to lean over and plant things at 34 weeks pregnant, but I did it…only to discover the next day that crows had dug up about half the crowns and scattered them about.  (What the hell – they haven’t touched the mature plants with fruit 20 feet away, but they go after the dormant roots?).  I did not cry, but I considered it.  Sensing an imminent meltdown, Jeff quickly replanted the uprooted crowns and hopefully they will be none the worse for the wear.
• Leek seedlings (90).

2. Harvest something:

• A few strawberries.
• Parsley
• Peas.  So good.  I am never buying frozen peas again.

3. Preserve something:

• 1/4 cup basil (dried)
• 30 cups vegetable stock (frozen)
• 34 cups marinara sauce (frozen)
• 3 servings (24 total) butternut squash triangles (frozen)
• Clearly, I am stocking up (pun intended).  It seems like I am going to be having a baby in about six weeks (or five, or four, that would be awesome!).  I seem to remember that it was a challenge to take care of the baby and have time to cook and eat last time so I am attempting to make us up a whole bunch of easy meals or meal components prior to arrival of this little one.   Ironically, one of the items I made up last time prior to Thomas’ birth was quiche…delicious egg-y quiche.  And as it turns out, Thomas is violently allergic to eggs.  Sigh,  perhaps that explains some of the more difficult moments of Thomas’ babyhood.

4. Prep something:

• Set up a changing table in our room for the little one so as not to disturb Thomas for the inevitable middle of the night diaper changes.  Story of the week:  Thomas surveyed the changing table set up with neat little stacks of infant sized cloth diapers along with a small stack of disposables for the first few days.   Thomas, holding up a disposable diaper asks,  “What are these?”  “Paper diapers” (what we call disposables), I replied.  Scowling Thomas stated, “No paper diapers for my brother”.  (Thomas hates disposables and we never use them unless we go on a trip longer than 2 – 3 days).  I tried to explain that we would only use them for a few days and then switch to cloth and he was not amused and reiterated, “No paper diapers for my brother.  He like cloth.”  Glad he’s sticking up for his little brother already.

5. Cook something new:

• Slow Cooker Black Bean Soup, verdict:  quite good and ridiculously easy.

6. Manage your reserves:

• Purchased 6 months worth of pasta from Amazon.
• There are a number of food items (pasta, peanut butter, spelt flour, yeast to name a few) that I order in bulk from Amazon as they have the best price.   About 25% of the time, my order has arrived damaged.  Because Amazon only sells by the case, their policy is to send out an entire replacement case, for free, even if only one item in the case was damaged.  I am not sure if I just have a violent delivery guy, but I don’t mind because it makes food from Amazon a phenomenal deal.

7. Work on local food systems:

• Going to give away my extra leek seedlings to the neighbors.  I don’t have room for any more!

After five doctor/urgent care visits (The score:  Thomas – 4, Gina – 1, and Jeff-0) in the past eight days, I am impressed we’ve managed to do anything at all besides shower and eat.  Acutally, I am not sure we have all showered each day, but we have:

Plant Something or Take Care of Something You’ve Planted:

2. Harvest something:

3. Preserve something:

• Not that I can remember – in fact, we’re about to run out of a whole bunch of preserved foods from earlier in the year:  salsa, marinara sauce, and tomatoes.  Note to self:  plant and preserve more tomatoes this year. 

4. Prep something:

• In the spirit of Food Not Lawns! we began to dig up about 100 square feet of our front lawn (OK, Jeff dug up 100 square feet of our front lawn) to plant strawberries and greens (lettuce, spinach, etc.). 

5. Cook something new:

• Sick Day Pretzels

6. Manage your reserves:

• Updated our freezer inventory.  I keep a whiteboard of what we have on each freezer, but sometimes somebody takes something out and doesn’t update the board.  I know, could life get any more exciting?

7. Work on local food systems:

• Wrote a retrospective of our 1st year around the farm. 

Rats!

Literally. Below is the bi-weekly independence days update. You will see that we harvested some broccoli the past two weeks. Unfortunately, we only harvested about 3 heads out of 9 growing. Something else got the rest. One day it was there ready to harvest and the next day it was gone. It was a neat job too, only the heads were taken, not the stems. I suspected something intelligent, our money was on raccoons. However tonight while tending to one of the compost bins Jeff found the likely culprit – rats. He found two rats (quite alive) and a nest. Can I just state for the record…Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Trying to grow a significant amount of our own food and live sustainably is turning out to be quite a learning experience. It isn’t all warm vine ripened tomatoes and free-range toddlers. It really is OK though. If we can’t solve the problem with methods such as inspecting the compost bins weekly, installing protective netting/wire over the beds, etc. we’ll just turn our big cat, D’artagnan, out back. I may be a pacifist, but he is not. In addition to trying to stop the broccoli thieves, we have been quite busy the past two weeks…

Plant Something or Take Care of Something You’ve Planted:

2. Harvest something:

3. Preserve something:

• Vegetable Stock (14 cups, frozen). It probably sounds like I make an insane amount of vegetable stock but we use 1 – 6 cups a week so I have to keep up with the demand.
• Lemon juice (6 cups, frozen).  I got a big “free” bag of lemons in trade for some iris rhizomes and terra cotta pots I posted on craigslist.

4. Prep something:

5. Cook something new:

• Strawberry cupcakes.  Verdict:  pretty good, albeit, a bit dense and not enough strawberry flavor.
• A potato and broccoli aloo.  Very good.  Nice and spicy and we even got Thomas to try it.

6. Manage your reserves:

• Added refried beans to my massive canned bean stockpile.

7. Work on local food systems:

• Need to work on this one.

I did not put together a menu for the next couple of weeks.  The pregnancy nausea is somewhat better, but it is still really difficult to predict what I might want to eat in advance.  So I picked up a whole bunch of staples at the grocery store for our favorite meals and I’ll just wing it for now.

After a nasty bout of gastroenteritis over the holidays I sort of fell off the wagon on the menus and Independence Days. But I really need the menus and the challenge of Independence Days to motivate me so I am back on the wagon. Our planned menu for the next two weeks is

Friday

• Veggie Fajitas
  

Saturday

• Veggie and Chevre Calzone

Sunday

• Black Bean Burgers
• Sweet Corn
• Roasted Potatoes

Monday

• Takeout/Out to Eat Night

Tuesday

• Black Bean Torta (a slow cooker meal)

Wednesday

• Thick & Hearty Minestrone Soup

Thursday

• Broccoli and Shallot Risotto

Friday

• Chana Masala
• Mango Lassi

Saturday

• Butternut squash ravioli with Gorgonzola cream sauce
• I haven’t had ravioli (all the dough contains egg) since Thomas was diagnosed with his egg allergy over a year ago and I miss it so much.  I am going to try and make my own egg-free dough and recreate one of my favorite dishes.

Sunday

• Grilled cheese sandwiches
• Tomato soup

Monday

• Takeout/Out to Eat Night

Tuesday

• Penne w/ Red Bell Pepper, Fausage (tofu sausage), and Creamy-Spicy Marinara

Wednesday

• Veggie Stir-Fry
• Rice

And now for the independence days update:

1. Plant Something or Take Care of Something You’ve Planted:

2. Harvest something:

3. Preserve something:

• Vegetable Stock (12 cups, frozen)

4. Prep something:

5. Cook something new:

• Egg-free blueberry muffins.  Verdict:  Just ok; they didn’t have any oil/fat in them and stuck to the paper muffin liners like crazy.  This recipe needs work.
• Peanut-butter oatmeal bars.  Also just ok; too dry and crumbly.

6. Manage your reserves:

• Purchased another case of canned black beans and canned pinto beans.  I try to use dried rather than canned, but it is good to have cans on hand for quick dinners and emergencies as there is no cooking required.

7. Work on local food systems:

• Does going out to eat 3 times at the local family owned Mexican place count?  (Their salsa is so good and doesn’t contain garlic!).