Front porch herbs

Four types of basil (cinnamon, lemon, Thai and Genovese), two types of oregano (blue and Italian), parsley, peppermint and aloe.  Also my strawberry plant, and a left over hanging basket from our wedding last summer.

And this is my favorite re-use project.  These are mini kegs that my Dad gets, and when the beer is gone they make beautiful planters!

Harvest Time

This is what we had left after eating out of the garden for three months:

two bowls of lettuce, a bowl of broccoli, a basket of chard and a basket of kale

Chard is my husband's favorite vegetable.  When he saw this pile he said it was "a dream come true".

So needless to say, we're eating a lot of greens this week.  Last night I sauteed a shallot and some chard in white balsamic vinegar (my favorite).  Tomorrow I'm going to try this recipe, only with chard and onion.  I'm also going to make this recipe, which my friend Lisa (of Sippel Family Farm) recommended to me.  And that's just the chard!  I've lost my recipe for sweet potato and kale soup, but if I can find it, that and kale chips are where the kale will go.  The broccoli will be eaten with hummus, and the lettuce will be used in salads. 

After we were done with our harvest, my husband and I sat down and planned out what we're going to plant next, and then today, list in hand, we visited Austin's Natural Gardener.  It was too early for pepper plants, but we were able to get tomato plants and lots of seeds.  My only request was that we plant so much basil I get sick of it (impossible!).  We came home with 3 types of basil, 6 different types of lettuce, spinach, squash and zucchini, two types of beans, and 4 heirloom tomato plants.

*Edit: I found the sweet potato and kale soup recipe I love!  The only thing I change is I use homemade veggie stock.*

Frustrations with Food

I've been feeling disconnected and frustrated with the people around me lately.  Brian and I have been very dedicated in our workouts and eating habits in the hopes that someday soon we might be moving near some mountains.  We've also discovered the most awesome restaurant in Texas, Casa De Luz.  They are a vegan, macrobiotic restaurant, and their food is amazing.  We've taken to going once a week.  They also introduced me to my new favorite obsession, twig tea.  I love tea, but am sensitive to caffeine and so have to be careful about what I consume.  I'm so sensitive that even a cup of green tea around eleven in the morning will affect my sleep at ten or eleven that night.  Sadly, that means no green tea for me, and I've been bummed about missing out on its healthy benefits.  But enter twig tea, made from actual twigs of the tea plant and containing no caffeine.  It has a slightly nutty flavor, and many of the same health benefits of green tea.

So while we are doing so much for our health, it upsets me to watch people around me who are so disconnected from themselves and what they eat.  I know several people who have had to have major stomach surgery lately, but then afterward go off and do things like consume fast food.  One person literally said she stopped on the way home from her surgery.  Now, I believe everyone has the right to do what he or she wants with his or her own body.  But it hurts me to see people doing such harmful things and not even realize it.  You're carrying around a colostomy bag, and you're not even going to try to eat better?  I have another friend who is allergic to wheat, and her undiagnosed allergy was even a factor in her cancer (which is back), yet I see her eating sandwiches and animal crackers.  What has happened in the last 50 years that had caused us to become so disconnected from our food and our bodies?  I remember as a child, my grandmother had all kinds of home remedies that she used, weird things she wanted us to eat to fix this or that health problems.  Food used to be our medicine, our fuel, what brought us together with friends and family.  Now it's become the enemy, something that harms us, something we have to fight against. 

 

Our Garden in January

Winter garden with broccoli, kale, chard and lettuce.

broccoli

golden chard

lettuce

Thanksgiving Confessions

For two people (my husband and I) who love to cook, we made an odd decision this year involving Thanksgiving. This year we decided not to cook. We made this decision for several reasons, but our main two were that my husband has to work Thanksgiving night, and that you could order a vegan Thanksgiving meal from our co-op, Wheatsville. It's currently looking like we won't be in Texas next Thanksgiving, so we wanted to take this chance...it's not often that you can get a totally vegan meal cooked by someone else!

We're spending Thursday in Austin, but then Friday heading out to the the family farm for my husband's birthday. Since everyone out there is a proud meat-eater who refuses to touch anything even remotely vegetarian, we'll both have plenty of chances to cook for ourselves out there.

Our fall garden is growing strong, so I'll post some new pictures in a few days:)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Soda is like Cigarettes, or Why I avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup

I'll admit that I've never been much of a soda drinker. I grew up on apple juice, and while there was a time we bought Diet Caffeine Free Cherry 7up, it's not something I ever consumed much of. So I don't understand why people "need" a Dr Pepper, or a Pepsi, or a Diet Coke. I had a teacher in high school who carried around her own cooler full of Pepsi, just to get her through the day. But I will admit that there was a time I smoked. I have ADHD and am terribly shy, so smoking both calmed me down, and made it easy for me to talk to people I didn't know (other smokers). But when I met my husband, and we both really considered the long tern health effects of what we were doing, we quit.

But back to the soda (or pop or coke depending on where you're from). My husband and I have, for most of the last year, been avoiding high fructose corn syrup. This began after watching the movie "King Corn" and seeing the complicated and dangerous process of making high fructose corn syrup, and was supported by the studies that came out recently about the mercury levels in corn syrup. Since neither my husband or I drink soda, or even eat much processed food, avoiding high fructose corn syrup isn't a terribly complicated task. We already read labels, and apart from the few times we couldn't find a vegan/corn syrup free bbq sauce, or the time I discovered it in my almonds, it hasn't changed our habits much.

A few weeks ago my husband and I took a trip to the coast. We camped on the beach, and I enjoyed a few rum and Blue Sky cola's. Driving home we had terrible car trouble that really slowed us down. Our jeep is sans air conditioning, and so it was a long, hot journey. About an hour outside of San Antonio, we were both dying of thirst, and the only thing we had was a few leftover Blue Sky cola's. So we split one. And I noticed something I never had before. I could only have about half a can before the sweetness was too much for me, and I just wanted a glass of water. Not something I ever remember experiencing with a conventional, corn syrup filled cola. And I got to thinking about what I've read about corn syrup, how your body absorbs it differently than sugar. Now, if you're, say, a soda company in a capitalist system who wants to sell lots and lots of your product, making something that people can only drink half of before they want water isn't really the best idea. Think about the last time you drank soda with corn syrup in it. I could drink and drink and drink it and never felt it was 'too sweet' and I sure never wanted to stop. That's dangerous to your health, and also reminds me of another addictive substance another large group of companies put into a common product: nicotine.

So this brings me around to something that happened the other day at my job. I work with kids at a recreation center. In our kitchen we have a drink machine, but my former boss would only put sports drinks and juice in it. My new boss, who is one of those people who has a rough day and just needs a Dr Pepper, filled it with soda. And I find this to be a terribly negligent act. We might as well have a cigarette machine in the building. I read an article the other day that said 40% of our health care costs as a nation are related to obesity, and that as a nation we average 60% of our caloric intake from soda. Hell, if you even just crawled out from under a rock after the last 20 years, you know obesity is currently a huge problem in this country. Not unlike smoking was a huge problem, and led to many long term health problems. High Fructose Corn Syrup has only been in our foods since the mid 90s, so we really have no idea what the long term health effects are. And from the way my co-workers who are addicted to soda act, it reminds me of when I used to step out to have a smoke. Corn syrup just makes you want more and more corn syrup, because you don't know when to stop, unlike real sugar. So why are we making this available to our kids? Why do people buy this stuff? Isn't your health worth more than drinking a can full of chemicals and a little instant gratification?

As a Midwest gal growing up, my family always had a garden. Summers were spent outside in the dirt with my parents. There was always something to harvest, something to can, something to eat. I grew up loving homemade ketchup in the summer, cherry pies in the fall, and strawberry preserves all winter. Gardening in Texas and the gardening I grew up with are two very different beasts, and I'll admit I'm (we're) not doing too well this year. We got a late start (what with all the wedding planning and all) and then my husband forgot to add our organic fertilizer. So our garden was a bit of a disappointment this season. I'm already making plans in my head for our fall garden, but being in an extreme drought right now, we might wait until next year to plant anything more. But what has turned out well this summer, is my herbs. I've really taken to doing pots of herbs. They're mobile--so if my basil is getting too much sun on one part of the porch, I just move it--and they take less watering than our in-ground garden. I've been using the water after washing my dishes to water them, and it helps remind me to do it! I really enjoy having fresh herbs nearby to add while I'm cooking, and it smells so yummy every time I walk out the door.

one of my basil plant

Italian oregano

spearmint

and mr caterpillar enjoying my parsley