Rice Milk

My son can have rice milk periodically, so today I'm making up a batch. Lundberg rice, so it's as gluten free as I can get it. I'm using a recipe from the Vegan Reader. It's worked well in the past, and I like the simplicity of the recipe.

Isn't it so pretty and white?

Artichoke Dipping Sauce

I was lucky enough to have a friend donate some artichokes from her garden to my table the recently, and was trying to figure out what in the world I had that could go with it.

No mayo dips, no vinegar, what was I going to use? Yup, lemons it is

Stevia sweet water

 I've mentioned before that sweet and sour tastes are a bit tricky for me to get. Sweet tastes are the most challenging, at least if I don't want to get sick.

I have two sweet things I can eat that are completely safe: stevia leaves and fruit. The fruit, I have to grow myself or get it from the safe farmer of mine, who doesn't grow much fruit. The stevia I grow myself. So stevia is usually my one choice - thank goodness I'm not allergic to anything in the Sunflower family or I'd lose that too, eek!

Groceries - week 2

Week 2 

Seriously, I look at our budget and I feel so decadent. This is so much money. I feel very lucky that my husband has a job that makes enough moulah that we can afford it!

Salmon Skin Garnish

So pretty, but so tasteless...

I attempted a salmon-tomato-squash sauce today, served over julienned yellow squash noodles. It was a complete bomb, so tasteless that I am not even putting the recipe up. Bad squash, tomatoes not ripe enough, squash over-cooked, so very 'blech.' Even though it looked quite pretty, didn't it? That almost made it more upsetting for it to be so nasty.

However, one thing worked awesome and was the only good thing about this recipe - the little black and gray topping on the sauce there. See it? Nice contrasting color, kind of weird looking?

A day in the life

I want to remember what this is like, right now, this one point in my life.

Today, my husband has to study for school and I need to write. He needs to get away from the distractions at home and as for me...I need to stay safe.

Recipe #: Tomato Pumpkin Soup

Pumpkin and Tomato plant that will provide for this soup later!

Time: 1 - 2 hours total (including time to cook pumpkin)
(45-60 min. pumpkin cooking time)

Groceries week 1 recap

That's right.

I'm so proud of this picture, I used it twice.

 This has been a crazy week! Discovered that my husband's work is sending him on a trip later this month, so if we wanted to get a chance to see him, we had to move our plans up. Packed up and left for the trip in two days, flat!

Adding Sour to a recipe

There are two flavors I have a hard time acquiring: sweet and sour. Today, I'm just going to list what I've found for sour, for others in that situation.

Vinegar and citrus are what most folks use for sour. Vinegar is out for me right now, and citrus only in very small amounts, as I have a limited supply from a couple farmers. So, here's a few other things I've come across that may work.

Watermelon Rind

I've heard of pickled watermelon rind, that Southern specialty, but I never realized how many different ways you could use watermelon rind, or even what it actually is.

I suppose I always thought it was the part of the watermelon that was left over, but I was wrong. It's the pale green part of the watermelon, in-between the outer skin and the pink inner flesh. One has to cut off the outer, dark-green skin, after you've eaten the pink skin, and that will leave you with the rind to use in recipes.

Herb garden

A tiny slice out of my herb garden.

Messy, isn't it?

I show this because a lot of people have much tidier herb gardens and I thought I'd share the other kind. This is the kind where things are planted next to and among each other, sometimes due to space constraints and sometimes deliberately to help each other. It's got mulch that's made from the wild grasses and non-toxic weeds in my yard. Some of the herbs are deliberately left to go to seed to grow next year. But it's doing great, so far.

Groceries - week 1

So, inspired by the 100 days of Real food family, I'm attempting to track what groceries I buy for the next 8 weeks - a little over 100 days, but a convenient number.  The goal is $150 per week for 3 people. I would love to do less, and I hope that eventually I can, but I have one fisherman I can get fish from, possibly 2 ranchers I get meat from, and one farmer I get veggies and/or fruit from. The kids can get a few things at places like Whole Foods, but as my farmer is often cheaper, it's not that helpful.

Days of Real Food

I just found a blog called 100 days of real food. It was a lovely idea - a family was going to try to eat only whole foods, nothing processed, for 100 days. Then they tried it again on a budget.

It was a really neat idea, but I wasn't sure how much it would relate to us, mostly because our own diet has become so extreme. Their criteria for what made up unprocessed food was broader than I'm allowed in my own diet, so the question was, would they have foods I could eat, on their diet?

Home again, home again

About a year ago, my Super Geek (aka hubby) got a new job that was in another state. We had a long discussion about it, but in the end, we decided that he should take it. It's a good job, great people to work with, and the pay is good. But we're still a state away from him.

However, we're also homeschooling, so we can be a bit more flexible until we have the house all fixed up and ready to try and rent it...or something. So every few weeks, I pack up the kids and the car and we head out to spend a week or two with Daddy.

Learning to Wait

There's something to be said for learning to wait for things.

Not that I'm not as impatient as the next person sometimes, but I've been gaining an even greater appreciation of waiting. Gardening has played a big part in that.

Stuffed Poblano Chiles

I want to be ordered about my recipes, but I've realized that if I want to have the best chance at success, I'd better go with my strengths. Order is not one of them. I throw things together, and even when I'm researching, I do best when I have a pile of things and tumble them about.

So, new format for the recipes. These are mostly for me anyway, right?