Things I've been doing when I'm not blogging...

So even though my energy level is at somewhat of an ebb these (many) days, I have managed to do a couple things. Today for example I finally collected seed from the snack pea and radish plants I've had drying on a laundry rack in the basement since September. I have a new appreciation for seed savers and collectors, because what you see in the picture here is the sum total of seed I collected from three radish plants, and about six pea plants. Now I know why good seeds seem 'expensive' and why you sometimes get what seems like a tiny amount in each seed packet.

I had also collected bean seeds from my 3' by 5' patch of Golden Rocky Beans in September, and I shelled those about a month ago. After setting aside the best of these gorgeous indigo blue beans for seed, I had enough left over to make one pot of soup. Again, a good realization of how much time, effort, and resources (human and earth-given) go into the making of one seed. The soup was delicious by the way - it was almost an entirely local soup with dried kale from the CSA farm, dried thyme from my herb garden, and potatoes from my garden as well.

I've also been corresponding with my local MP's office via email about my unhappiness with PM Harper's decision to prorogue parliament AGAIN! My MP, Brian Storseth, doesn't want to converse with me via email however -- his office staff says this is because email correspondence could be "altered" and then forwarded, and because they can't be sure I actually reside in the riding if I don't give a mailing address. Never mind that if they checked their files they would see that they already have my address because I've corresponded with them in the past. I was hoping for a bit more of a spontaneous and personal exchange with my elected representative this time, but I guess I will have to settle for another delayed regurgitation of Stephen Harper's talking points, AGAIN.

I've been reading a number of books as well - Gord and I signed up for library cards last summer, and we've been enjoying the benefits ever since. I've been soaking up all sorts of Buddhist books, some of which include: "Waking Up: A week in a Zen monastery," "Joyful Wisdom: Embracing change and finding wisdom", "Sit Down and Shut Up," "Finding the Still Point: A beginner's guide to meditation," and I've just started reading "Zen Mind, Beginners' Mind."

I've been getting better at working in a 10 minute meditation period into almost every day - it doesn't sound like much, but from what I've read, meditating for a short period every day is better than longer periods one or two times a week. Both my butt and my brain are slowly getting used to this meditation thing, which is like a whole lotta nothing and absolutely everything at the same time. Who knew that sitting still and breathing could be so profound?

And I think I may have taken the first step out of my depressive funk today, after catching a few minutes of one of my all time favorite TV shows no less: Northern Exposure. In it, there was a scene where one character (Ed) is lying prone on a general store counter top lamenting the soon-to-be end of the world as we know it, and another character (Ruth Anne), the 'wise-woman' proprietor of the general store, tells Ed to just shoo, get out of her store and do something, anything: read a book, go for a walk, make a movie, anything. That advice makes sense: when you're mired in lamentation, just pick something and do it. And I know that of course. But the thing that struck me was how silly the character wailing and moping on the counter looked. That's been me. I've been moping and wailing. And it's time to stop.

So thanks Ruth Anne, I'll get off the counter now and get back to it.

Solar Oven to the Rescue!?

This morning, for the second time in about a week, the power went off. The last time it happened it was off for about 90 minutes. That day, I had been up already and had had my morning cup of tea, but Gord hadn't: he wanted tea and couldn't have it. So this morning when the power went off again, it was one of the first things he said: "We could boil water for tea in your Sun Oven." I agreed this was a great idea, and so I went downstairs to put water in the black enamel pot and set up the solar oven outside.

It was a clear and sunny day, so everything was looking good. The oven was already up to 150F before I had even put the pot inside of it. Once I had the reflectors up and the glass door latched shut, I puttered around for a bit in the yard, picking and eating the odd saskatoon berry while gathering some greens from the garden for the guinea pigs. When I went back inside the house, the power was already back on! Considering the power company had told me that a substation had gone down, this was a bit surprising, and almost disappointing! I left the water in the solar oven anyway, just in case the power went off again. And because I wanted to see if it would really boil water.

It ended up taking quite a while (i.e., 60+ minutes) for the water to boil, probably because I put way more water in the pot than I needed for two cups of tea, and because the early morning sun is not very intense, particularly this time of year. The water wasn't boiling anymore by the time I got it in the house, but I made some red raspberry leaf tea with the still-very-hot water, and it was just fine. (Gord made his with the electric kettle while I was still outside - cheater!)

A few hours later, it dawned on me that today would be a good day to make a pot of potato-leek soup in the Sun Oven, and if I hurried I could still get take advantage of some of the good solar cooking hours (10 am - 2 pm). I used the rest of the still-warm tea water to make (instant) soup stock, and within a half hour had a pot of soup ingredients ready to simmer in the solar oven. The oven got up to 300F this time (I have only used it once before, since it arrived in the mail about two weeks ago), which seemed like perfect soup-simmering temperature. Unfortunately I had missed most of the good cooking hours, but even so, by 6 pm we were eating some darn good soup!

Some things about the solar oven I really like are: that I don't have to stir the soup, and I don't have to worry about it burning. Later, washing up was really easy, because nothing was stuck to the sides or bottom of the pan. And the flavors of the soup seemed a lot richer, having been slow cooked - more like home made soup usually tastes the next day.

I do hope the oven reaches some hotter temperatures at some point - I will have to make sure I'm ready by 10 am next time, so I can give it a fair test. Even if it doesn't reach the 400F that the info on the box claims it will, I do think the Sun Oven will be a useful cooking option, regardless of whether there is a power outage or not. So far I have roasted veggies in it, boiled water and made soup: my next goal is to find a biscuit or cookie recipe that is suitable for moderate baking temperatures.

There's nothing like cooking with free energy! Thank you sun!

What's For Dinner? Edible Weeds

Recently while doing a little investigating into the types of weeds I was pulling from my veggie garden, I found that at least one of them was edible. Lambsquarters, pictured to the right, are apparently very much like mild chard or spinach in flavor, and can be cooked much as one would cook those greens. I plucked off a leaf or two and popped them in my mouth, and lo and behold, it did taste very much like spinach. The next step was to pick a whole bunch of these leaves and cook them up in my favorite way: sauteed with nutmeg.

I ended up picking a relatively small amount of the leaves, because I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out. It didn't take long, since I have an abundance of these weeds in and around my garden.

After washing the leaves I put them in my cast iron skillet

on lowish heat, along with some margarine and nutmeg. I covered the pan with a lid, the way I normally do when I cook

chard, kale or spinach this way. After just a few minutes, the

leaves were tender and looked ready to eat. They cooked much

more quickly than kale, chard or spinach, maybe because the leaves do not have a very thick stem.

And then, time for the taste test. It was extremely good! Milder than kale, but with more flavor than spinach. Probably closest to chard or collard greens, or even beet tops. Once they were cooked up it was easy to forget that they were weeds in my garden just a few minutes ago. What a difference it makes when I look at these plants now and see a food source, rather than a pesky weed!

It turns out I have more than one edible weed in my yard. Fireweed leaves can be eaten raw when they are small and tender, and the buds can be used in stir fries. You can make jelly out of the flower petals, much like rose petal jelly I expect. Even the roots are edible. It seems like almost every part of this flowering weed can be consumed at some point in its growing cycle. Once the plants get big and the stem covering has toughened up, it's no longer edible but can be used instead to make twine. I always loved the look of the purple fireweed plants as Summer turns to Fall, but I never knew they were so useful! It's too late in the season for me to try eating the leaves and stems, but I might just try stripping off the fibrous part when Fall arrives, and see what I can fashion out of that....

Of course we have plenty of dandelion leaves in our yard, and those are edible too. I have tossed a few dandelion leaves into my salads on occasion, but mostly I pick dandelion greens for our two guinea pigs, Scooter and Sophie, who really love the more bitter taste.

Even more exciting was the discovery this Spring that plantain leaves are edible, and that they purportedly have some anti-cancer properties. I have nibbled on this leaf as well, but so far have been feeding it to Scooter for the most part, because he has a cancerous lump on his front leg. I am not sure if it is helping, but he loves to eat the plantain leaves, in any event. And it can't hurt. Chewing the leaf into a pulp makes a good plaster to apply to mosquito or bee/wasp stings too. In addition, the long seed stalks can be used like millet, to feed the birds.

Very tasty is the tiny chickweed plant. It is particularly good in salad, and has fresh and crunchy taste and texture. The small white flowers make it very pretty too, and this year I haven't even bothered separating it out from the lettuce I'm growing -- I just pick it all together and make salad. Of course the guinea pigs love the chickweed too, even though its taste is more mild than either the dandelion or the plantain.

Last year I discovered yarrow and bergemot growing in our yard. While I haven't eaten these plants outright, I have made delicious tea from them. A few leaves of each, along with some honey, and I have a wonderful, free, herbal tea! I didn't pick enough to last me over the Winter last year, but I plan to remedy that this year, for sure.

Once I started looking, it was quite astounding to see what there was to eat in my yard! What useful weeds do you have growing where you live?

Radish Leaf Pesto Rotini

So I tried out the radish leaf pesto recipe for supper yesterday, and it wasn't half bad. I forgot to put the garlic in, unfortunately, but even without that it was quite tasty. I had some on a cracker as a dip/spread, and that was even tastier than my rotini dish. In hindsight, I don't think I put enough pesto on the pasta. I will be trying this recipe again though, since it is very very easy and quick, and there is very little mess that needs cleaning up later.

First, I gathered my ingredients: washed and de-stemmed radish leaves from my garden, extra virgin olive oil, Parmesan cheese (just the pre-grated stuff) and some pecan pieces.

Then, I chopped the radish leaves just a little bit, so they would more easily fit into my small food processor/chopper. (This can apparently be done with a mortar and pestle as well, but I don't have one of those yet...) Next, I buzzed the chopper for about 30 seconds or so, adding a few more leaves when there was room, along with a bit more cheese, oil and nuts.

The result was this 250 ml jar of pesto, which I immediately tested on some crispy crackers - delicious! This amount of pesto came from the leaves of about 8 radish plants, so even with my reduced number of radishes this year, there are still a lot more leaves where that came from. I realized when I made the pasta dish for supper that I had left out the garlic, but oh well - I will do that next time. I may also try using almonds instead of pecans, since both Gord and I like almonds better. The nice thing about pesto is that you can use pretty much any type of leaf, oil, nut and hard cheese you like, so there are lots of variations to try.

Every summer there are more and more things I can just pick from my yard to eat, and that is a really good feeling.

Depression Cooking Lessons

Yesterday in a very rambling post, I tacked on a link to the YouTube site of Depression Cooking with Clara. After watching the very first of her cooking lessons, I just had to try the easy and quick recipe she demonstrated, for pasta with peas. While she was showing her viewers how to prepare this filling and economical meal, I realized that it was the perfect thing to use up some leftovers I had: A lone potato out of its bag in the pantry, some onion chunks sitting in the fridge, and some very old frozen peas languishing in the freezer from when I had used them as a cold pack long ago. Clara added tomato sauce to her pasta dish, but I had visions of alfredo sauce on mine, and I have alfredo sauce powder as part of my food stores, so I was all set!

It turned out deliciously, and the pasta cooked with retained heat after I turned the burner off, just like she said it would. Clara commented that during the depression this was a common way to cook - turning off the gas flame, to conserve fuel and save money. During her cooking lessons, 91-year-old Clara talks about how things were for her and her family during the depression, and how they managed to stay healthy in tough times. Pasta and potatoes were a large part of their diet, and a home garden was essential. Very inspiring viewing, I must say.

Thanks Clara, lunch was very tasty!

Woodstove-baked buns

It remains chilly, and we are still using the woodstove for supplementary heating these days. So today I decided to give my little camp stove oven another try. A few months ago I roasted vegetables in it, and that went fairy well, but today I wanted to see if it would bake bread. I still had one frozen portion of my no-knead bread left from a few weeks ago, and after thawing and double-rising it, I formed the little buns you see in the first picture.

I was able to get the woodstove oven up to about 375 F, but 325 was where the temperature would mostly hover once I had the buns in there. The normal oven temperature for baking these buns is 425 F, so I wasn't sure just how it would work out. But after a half hour, things seemed to be coming along reasonably well, and it smelled heavenly in the basement, where the woostove is.

I gave the buns another 15 minutes, which was probably 5-7 minutes too long. The tops were a lovely golden brown, but the bottoms were quite dark. Nonetheless, the inside of the buns was moist and delicious, and along with a sprout salad, made a delicious lunch!

(I figured out later that I could adjust the rack height in the little oven, and if I were to use non-dark bakeware, I could probably reduce the bottom browning problem significantly - that will be my next test!)

Cozy Saturday Cooking

I've been really looking forward to this weekend. I arranged things so I didn't have to leave the house at all, and these are often my most favorite times of the week. This weekend I planned to cook, clean and organize, things I've begun to appreciate doing more and more. Yes, even the cleaning!

Today was a day of cooking, baking and laundry. I made vegetable barley soup, baked bread/buns, and turned the last of the potatoes from our garden into a nice batch of whipped potatoes with nutmeg.

In the soup I used the last of the potatoes from the CSA farm, along with some dried chard from the CSA farm as well. Come to think of it, the onion I used was still from the CSA too. I added some celery, carrots and sauted it all in some olive oil before adding veggie broth, a couple handfuls of pearl barley, spices, and a generous splash of red wine, and mmmm....mmmm. Soup!

I also started another batch of alfalfa seeds to sprouting. I made a batch last week (Gord and I took turns rinsing the seeds/sprouts twice a day) and they were extremely tasty just out of the jar, or in sandwiches. It's nice to have something fresh in the middle of winter.

I'm also a fan of an easy, no-knead bread recipe from Mother Earth News (can't find a link!) - it is a very forgiving recipe and the dough can be stored in the fridge (for a more sourdough flavor over time) or frozen to be used later. The buns turned out really well - nice and crisp on the outside and really moist in the middle.

This evening we're hunkering down to watch a romantic comedy, after a nice day of pleasant Saturday chores. Tomorrow is cookie and cleaning day, and I expect I will enjoy that just as much.

Wishing everyone a pleasant and relaxing weekend!

Breakfast lessons

Yesterday Gord requested that we have a 'nice breakfast' today, Sunday morning. This request is short form for a breakfast consisting of eggs, toast, hashbrowns, and maybe some fake bacon, or possibly Dutch pancakes or French toast. We have an excess of eggs at the moment, as well as some fake bacon to use up, so I opted for the first choice. I'm not a terrific cook by any means, but I can whip up a pretty good breakfast.

The breakfast itself turned out well: my homemade hashbrown patties were nice and crisp, I managed to make Gord's eggs over medium like he likes them, and my egg soft basted the way I like it, all at the same time as having the toast ready. And the fake bacon is always just bacon-y enough to satisfy one of my few cravings for meaty flavor.

I sat down with my breakfast, along with my tea and orange juice and dug in. My thought process went something like this:

"Gotta eat my egg while it's hot. Wait, gotta taste that hashbrown patty first to see if it's crisp this time. Oo...I need a swig of tea while it's hot too. My toast is getting cold, ack! My bacon is cold already, dang! Hurry hurry, dunk toast in egg yolk! No time for orange juice, gotta have hot toast!"

About 30 seconds into this, I realized that maybe a breakfast consisting of six items, including two beverages, is too much to appreciate properly. I was just gobbling it all up. Maybe it would be better to just have egg and toast OR hasbrowns and bacon, so I can enjoy everything while it's hot and not have to rush or gobble. This seems obvious, but until I actually paid attention to my thoughts, I didn't even realize I was rushing and gobbling.

Funny how this is a lesson that keeps popping up for me - probably because I haven't actually learned it yet. It strikes me that this is a lesson that our society hasn't learned yet either. We're still rushing and gobbling at the world's un-refillable buffet table, leaving little for those who are further back in line. Another lesson for me personally is that of humility: I continue to make the mistake of mindless consumption at my literal breakfast table and need to remain compassionate towards those doing the same at the metaphorical world buffet table.

Further, I need to continue to work on becoming mindful of these things beforehand, rather than just catching myself in hindsight. Doing so, and changing my habits accordingly, could serve as an example that sets off a chain of insight in someone else, and so on. Not that what I do is particularly exemplary, just that seeing someone do something differently tends to have more of an impact that just talking about it. Which brings me back to my 'resolution' for 2009, which is, in a nutshell, more action and less talk.

Picture of veggie bacon courtesy this blog.

Big Pantry, Small Oven

I'm in the midst of writing a post on my tendency to become over-invested in certain political outcomes. As an antidote to such things, I have once again tried to focus on the small and the basic: food and the storage and cooking thereof.

A few weeks ago I picked up what I thought would be a nifty way to use our woodstove to bake on - this little campstove oven. The salesperson at the camping store thought it might not get hot enough on top of a woodstove, but when I explained that it was our household woodstove, not a camping woodstove, he and I figured it would be worth a try.

Well, it works about as well as my home-made solar oven, getting up to a maximum of 250 F. I am still roasting some veggies in there right now -- they've been in for about 5 1/2 hours so far and the potatoes still aren't soft. So unfortunately, this neat little stove will have less utility than I though it would. The good part is that we did pick up a used Coleman campstove at a garage sale this summer, and that's what the oven is designed for. So it is not a total loss.

Also, this weekend we have finally gotten our basement pantry shelves assembled and securely fastened to the wall. We looked around a few places for some used shelving, and also tried to cobble something together out of some wood we already had, but in the end decided to go with two very reasonably priced wooden shelving units from Rona. Both Gord and I are very happy with them - they turned out well and are quite sturdy.

I've been ramping up my food storage over the past six months or so, and I put what I had stored so far on our wobbly ping-pong table onto these sturdy shelves. It's a good start, but I can see that I have a ways to go towards my goal of having 3 months worth of food stored.

These shelves, combined with our small freezer and the pantry upstairs should give us enough storage room for that goal though, and now I can easily see how much of each type of foodstuff we have. I think we're good for peanut butter for a while! And pasta and rice. But I could do with some more canned fruit and soup, and my two little cans of pickled beans look pretty lonely. But it feels good to see food on the shelves, and know that I can cook and bake without electricity, even if it is a little slow!

Belated Beets, etc.

Just like with the cabbage earlier in the year, I had been neglecting the red and golden beets in my crisper. The beets were from our last CSA pick up day, which was many weeks ago now. Only two were past saving - the rest were still very firm, and a couple had a few green leaves growing out of them even.

I don't have a lot of experience cooking beets, but I do recall really liking the taste of beets in Harvard sauce, like my mom used to serve when I was small. So I decided to try and make them. I must say, they turned out deliciously! The red and golden beets are a nice contrast to each other, and the sauce was sweetly tart, just the way I like it. Mmmmm.... I had my fill of beets today, and I still have six more servings ready to pop in the deep freeze for future enjoyment.

Three of the smallest beets that had new leaves growing I decided to plant in some moist sandy dirt. I figured if some beet greens were growing out of them just sitting there in the fridge, maybe some really nice beet greens would emerge if I actually helped them along a bit. I have no idea if it will work, but I thought it was worth a try. I doubt I will get enough beet greens for me to eat, but our guinea pigs will love the fresh treat in the depths of winter.

I was glad that my beets were relativley successful, because my cinnamon buns were not. I had tried out a new dough recipe from the latest edition of Mother Earth magazine. The dough was supposed to be as good for sweet dough recipes as it was for regular bread. And it probably is, as long as you don't keep the dough until it gets to its more sourdough stage, a week later. The buns look nice, and they are edible, but a sourdough cinnamon bun is not really the flavor I was after. Oh well - bake and learn!

We got a couple other things done this weekend as well, namely having the chimney cleaned (after several failed attempts to do it ourselves - but now we know how!), and putting up two wooden shelving units in the basement so my food storage efforts will be a bit more organized (pictures to follow). So, it was a nice practical weekend, which felt good after an otherwise surreal kind of week.

Wishing everyone peace and contentment in these strange days :)

Yogurt --> Tzatsiki

A couple of people who commented on my previous post about my unexpectedly successful yogurt-making also mentioned their fondness for the Green cucumber dip made with yogurt called tzatsiki. I've been making this stuff for years - usually on a Friday night when it doesn't matter if I smell a bit garlicky for a day or two. I got the recipe from a Frugal Gourmet cookbook, but I have modified it somewhat since then, so I don't think I'm breaking copyright if I post my version:

• 1 cup thick plain yogurt - (called "Baltic Style" here)
• 1/2 cucumber, grated (I use the largest grating surface on my cheese grater), with the liquid squeezed out. ( I just drink the squeezed out cucumber juice - it's refreshing!)
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (approximately - sometimes I add a bit more)
• 1 clove garlic - finely grated or squeezed through a garlic press
• 1/2 lemon's worth of fresh-squeezed lemon juice (bottled is also fine, but fresh is more tasty)
• 1/4 tsp salt, or you can leave it out entirely.

Mix all these things together and taste. You may wish to adjust a few things to your liking, but I'd hold off on adding any more garlic right away, because the flavor intensifies with time. I find that this recipe gives me enough flavor to be tasty immediately, but doesn't become too much when I eat the second half the next day. Serve with pita bread wedges that have been brushed lightly with olive oil and grilled to your liking. Mmm!

Be sure anyone you plan to kiss in the next couple of days doesn't have a garlic aversion!

Kimchi - Day 2

The adventures in lactofermentation continue!

After letting the salted cabbage sit overnight, this morning I drained the brine solution and reserved it. Then, I added what I thought were reasonable amounts of crushed chiles, fresh ginger and fresh garlic (also from the CSA farm) and some sugar. Then I poured the brine back over the cabbage, just to cover it in the jars. From one cabbage I got two 500 ml jars of what I hope will be kimchi in a week or so from now.

I've followed Sharon's instructions and put the lids on the canning jars loosely, so as to let the gas from the fermentation process escape. The two jars now sit in the basement, next to my pickled beans. It's fairly cool down there - about 14 degrees C/58F. I tasted the cabbage mixture before putting it in the jars and who-ee! It's salty! I'm assuming this will mellow over time as the lactofermentation works its magic.

If this works, I will definitely be doing it again. It's a really low-engery-input process, just letting salt and time do all the work!

Yes I Can!

Today was the day! I took the plunge and made canned pickled beans.

The green string bush beans from my garden have been producing like crazy, and I was inspired to try pickling them when I was talking with my hairdresser last week. She is about 15 years younger than me, and was talking about how easy it was to make pickled beans. I figured if she could do it, so could I! When I told her I didn't have a canner yet, she said that the local hardware store had them on sale this week. It seemed like it was just meant to be: I would be making pickled beans this weekend!

It didn't take me long to pick this huge bowl of beans - enough for seven 500 ml (pint) jars. I found a recipe on the internet that was similar to the one my hairdresser was telling me about, and started to get things ready. It took a while, because I was a bit nervous and wanted to do everything quite slowly and carefully. Finally I had the beans washed and cut, and the jars and lids sterilized. Then I added the garlic and dill (from our CSA) to each jar. (There are six jars in the picture, but I had to add a seventh later because I had a lot of beans - fortunately I had sterilized seven anyway, because that's what fits in my canner).

I stuffed the jars full of beans, leaving a half inch of headspace from the top, like the instructions said. I had a few bean tails higher than that which I snipped off. Maybe it would have been ok, but I figured I should go by the book my first time out.
I seriously underestimated the amount of hot pickling liquid to make, halving the original recipe. This filled just 2 1/2 jars, so I made a whole other full batch of the packing liquid for the other 4 1/2 jars. I may not have packed the beans in as tightly as I should have, but I was worried about touching the inside of the jars with my (clean but not sterile) fingers. The pickling liquid smelled wonderful, with all that vinegar and chile flakes! It was super salty though, when I tasted it.

Finally the jars were ready to go into the canner. Because of the altitude here (657 metres or 2,155 feet), the instructions said I had to add an extra 5 minutes to the canning process. I wasn't sure if this meant from the time I put the jars in the canner, or from when the water was boiling in the canner again, so I picked the latter just in case.

Ten minutes later, I carefully extracted the hot jars from the water bath and placed them on a tea towel-covered cutting board to cool. I'm happy to report that all seven jars' lids popped within the hour, and my smile got bigger after each pop!

Now I have to wait two weeks to open a jar and taste them. The canning process sure went well, other than a couple of jars falling over in the water bath (I think I need a better rack than the one that came with the canner), so I have high hopes for how these things will taste.

I'm feeling better and better about my ability to preserve and store food. Next on my list is drying some chard from last weeks CSA share, and some of the multitude of sasakatoon berries that are still ripening in the yard. It's shaping up to be a tasty winter!

CSA Bounty! : Week 3

After coming home from the Canada festivities in my home town, I headed over to the CSA farm to pick up this week's share.

This week, my bag was stuffed with two absolutely huge heads of lettuce (curly red and freckled), a big bunch of chard, another big bunch of beet greens with tiny beets attached, and then these curly things in the picture that I've never seen before. They smell sort of garlicky and oniony. They are not hollow like I would expect an onion or chive to be. And the curliness is really throwing me off. Does anyone have any idea what they might be? I nibbled on one and it tastes oniony and garlicky too, so my guess is a garlic chive, but it doesn't look like any chive I've ever seen!

I made my favorite buttery nutmeg greens again with the chard and some of the beet tops - I just can't get enough of that dish! And I find that greens are really filling too - after eating them I don't get hungry for hours.

After cutting the little beets off the end of the beet greens I wondered what to do with them. I like the taste of cloves with beets, so I ended up just frying the baby beets, tails and all, in a little margarine and some clove powder. It was fantastic! The tails got nice and crunchy and the beets themselves were tender and sweet. And to think I considering putting them in the compost!

Solar Oven Contraption - Half Baked!

This weekend it was really hot! It got up to about 30 C, (86 F) yesterday, which is really too hot for my Canadian self. But I thought it would be a good time to build and test out the simple solar cooker I have been thinking about making for some time.

I wanted to see what could be done with just the stuff I had at home already, so I found two boxes that fit inside eachother, with at least one inch clearance all around. After lining both boxes with tinfoil (shiny side out) I stuffed the space with an assortment of packing material I've collected over the years -- packing peanuts, bubble wrap, sheets of foam, etc. I put black matte corrugated plastic at the bottom of the inner box and after putting my foil-wrapped potatoes into my thrift store black enamel roasting pan, I covered the whole thing with a clear plastic 'oven bag' (which I bought several months ago for this exact purpose). I threw this contraption together in about half an hour -which you can probably tell by looking at the picture! With some glee, I put it outside on the concrete driveway, under the blazing sun.

After about two hours in the sun, I wasn't hearing any sizzling or any other sounds of hotness, so I repositioned the cooker, propped it up at what seemed like a better angle to catch the now lowering sun. It wasn't getting any cooler so I decided I may as well stay outside myself and do some yardwork (the weeding is never ending!). After about two more hours, the sun was going behind the trees and so I figured I would check into the potato situation, seeing as it was now time for supper and I was planning on having baked potatoes after all.

Well, my potatoes were only half-baked. I'm sure that the main reasons for this is that my cooker contraption is slightly half baked as well! The instructions I was using as guidelines say that it helps a great deal if you have a steel plate in the bottom of the inner box, painted matte black. I didn't have a steel plate or any black paint at home though, so I skipped that part. I also didn't seal the plastic oven bag very well over top of the inner box, so I'm sure some heat escaped that wouldn't have otherwise. It would also have been better to have my box lids better angled to reflect the sun into the box. My box lids collected sun, but didn't really direct it inwards. An oven thermometre would also be useful, to see just how hot this thing is really getting.

Despite these shortcomings, I probably would have been able to fully bake those potatoes with another four hours of sunlight. It took me until the afternoon before I was motivated enough to even gather the materials together, so it was after 3 pm before I had the cooker outside. The best cooking sun would have been between 11 and 2.

There is still a lot of summer left though, so I will be trying this again once I get a metal plate of some kind and pick up some matte black paint. I will also keep my eye out for a bigger outer box, and one with a lid that can be cut into a reflector. I'm also seriously considering getting a proper Sun Oven, since I just love the idea of cooking with free energy!

I did get my supper of baked potatoes after all, although I did have to put them in the microwave for another two minutes or so. That's not so bad I guess, since it usually takes about 5 minutes for a potato to bake in the microwave.

Two neat things....

Two days ago we saw a porcupine in our back yard. It was meandering along the grass, and then waddled its way into the bush. We have named him/her Pokey. I wouldn't have expected to see a porcupine here, although they are supposedly quite common in this area. He sure was cute. (But apparently they can do a lot of damage to trees, I guess I will have to keep an eye out for this.)

Then today I threw something together for supper and I think I can actually call it a recipe! I had cooked up the rest of the CSA greens with butter and nutmeg again, and thought I would boil up some wild rice in my veggie soup stock. I did, and for some reason when I tasted it, my tongue decided that dried apricots, raisins, pecans, freshly grated ginger, some flax meal and some balsamic vinegar would go really well mixed in with it. My tongue was right! Fortunately I have enough left over that I can even have it for my lunch tomorrow at work. (There are no more greens left though - I gobbled those up again with a big silly grin on my face.) I guess now I can finally put a check mark in the "cook something" column of my Independence Days spreadsheet!

CSA Bounty!: Week 1

Oh. My. Goodness.

Today we received our first share from our CSA farmers and it was absolutely delicious. Let me say again: absolutely delicious.

It's still early in the season here, and our Spring has been cool, so this first share wasn't big, but boy did it satisfy. We received two crisp heads of lettuce - one romaine and one butter, I think, and then a bag stuffed full of what looked like rainbow chard, some other kind of chard, and some kale.

I wanted to taste this stuff in a fairly unadulterated fashion, so I made a salad with the lettuce, and I sauteed the greens with some butter, sesame oil, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

To the salad I added my favorite salad fixins, which are some pecans and raisins, apple chunks, cucumber, carrot bits, some feta cheese and drizzled this all over with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The salad was so, so good. The sauteed greens were yet a step above that - the flavor, the flavor, it just didn't stop. The buttery nutmeg-y kale and chard were like no other greens I've ever had. I can see now how mindful eating becomes easy. When the food is this good, you just can't pay attention to anything else!

And then there was the preparation, which made me smile the whole time, because while I was cutting and washing the lettuce I remembered helping to plant the lettuce (not these exact ones - those are still too small to harvest), and I remembered gently fluffing up the leaves to get the dirt out of the middle of the lettuce. The dirt I was now washing down the drain, I knew exactly where that dirt came from and whose hands had planted this glorious food.

Things just won't ever be the same. That sounds dramatic, and I suppose it is. But my mouth and my mind have tasted goodness, and now nothing is the same.

Canadian Film: "Be The Change"

I wanted to help spread the word about this film by David Chernushenko, Canadian filmmaker and environmentalist (among other things). Its full title is: Be The Change - Living Lightly and Loving It.

It's not a doom and gloom film, but rather one that is a "celebration of the human spirit" and shows how living sustainably is a rewarding way to be and to act. According to the website, the film was even made locally to the film maker's Ottawa home base, and bus and bike directions are given to the film's premiere in Ottawa, this coming Friday, June 2oth. The trailer for the film is encouraging, not despairing, and fits well with what a bunch of bloggers have been talking about lately -- that people want to be part of something joyous and uplifting, not a movement that only talks about sacrifice, hardship and guilt.

Have you had a joyful moment related to sustainability recently? One that comes to mind for me was when I used my mesh produce bags at the grocery store and the teen-aged bag-person said, "Hey, that's cool." Tasting my home-grown kale in my noodle stir-fry yesterday was also pretty darn good!

A snowy day...

In contrast to last weekend's summer-like temperatures, this weekend we are getting a Spring snowstorm. It's not that bad where I live, but some areas of the province are getting 10-20 cms of snow. I'm grateful for it actually, because it has been a pretty dry Spring so far.

So I'm doing inside things today, which I don't mind a bit either. Some bread-baking, some soupstock-making, and some regular Saturday things like dusting, laundry and book-keeping. And some blogging of course!

This morning, while doing another one of my favorite things, reading, I came across two really interesting articles in the latest Westworld Magazine, which we receive as part of our AMA membership. The first was a short piece describing the work and life of The Urban Farmer, Ron Berezan - how neat for this local permaculture guru to exposure in this magazine! It seems as though words like 'permaculture,' 'locavore' and 'foodshed' are becoming more and more mainstream these days. What a great day it will be when these concepts reflect just the way things are, and when people just can't imagine treating the earth any other way than with respect.

The second article was a reminder that we still have a long way to go in this regard. The author of the article states,

"For me, as for many Albertans, the cumulative impact of this latest oil boom is only now lurching into focus, the rousing parade of economic numbers, buoyant immigration figures and housing starts slowly turning sour as familiar places become unrecognizable. Soon, one can’t help thinking, the archetypal Alberta land-scapes of bald prairie and foothills and rolling fields with patches of parkland bush will exist only in carefully cropped, soft-focus postcards. Meanwhile, one immediate consequence of the boom is the steady loss of Alberta’s agricultural land to residential and industrial development..."

The author goes on to report that despite the perception of Canada being a 'breadbasket' nation that exports a lot of food, it is actually a net importer of food if you take wheat out of the equation. Alberta actually imports 85% of its vegetables. All around the Edmonton area where I live, top grade top soil is being stripped off the land, and large subdivisions are being grown instead. Where farms used to stretch to the horizon, now I see closely clustered rooftops, surrounded by asphalt, with some tiny saplings planted in the depleted soil.

"Only five per cent of Canada is capable of producing food, and only 0.5 per cent of such land is Class 1 (characterized by ideal climate and soil quality), yet the loss of superior farmland is a countrywide phenomenon – from the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia to the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario to B.C.’s Okanagan and Fraser valleys. And it’s particularly significant in Alberta. In 1971, 1.5 per cent of Alberta’s Class 1 land was occupied by urban development; by 2001, the figure had jumped to 6.5 per cent, and has continued to increase since."

Only 6.3 % of Alberta's landmass is Class 1 farmland. So why do we keep scraping off and paving over the land that we need to grow food? One of the people the author interviewed for the article seems to have an answer:

“The land is a reflection of our whole attitude, and what it’s showing us these days is a complete lack of accountability. We have such powerful means to intervene in the world, to reshape it, yet we have no real sense of the long-term effects of any of our interventions. All the same, I remain eternally hopeful.”

Despite the snow outside today, I can still hear a robin singing merrily, as if the sky were blue, the leaves green and the worms abundant. I guess the robin is eternally hopeful too. I hope that it won't be long before the robin shares her vision with the rest of us.

Bread is Beautiful

I am a lover of bread, and all things starchy. When I saw this recipe in a recent issue of Mother Earth News magazine, I was itching to try it. While the recipe doesn't involve kneading, it does involve some foresight and planning, which my scatterbrained self has a hard time coming up with sometimes. But last night I remembered to mix the ingredients together, so they could sit overnight and do magical and yeasty things.

I have just taken the loaf out of the oven, and it is the most beautiful looking loaf of bread I have ever made. It looks like something from a fancy bread shop, and as you can see from the picture, it actually looks like the picture in the magazine! When I cook, it never looks like the picture in the magazine, so I was pretty happy! Now I have to wait an hour for the loaf to cool so I can finally have a taste of this delicious looking creation. Hmmm....that might be just enough time to whip up some handmade butter, a la Crunchy Chicken Cooks.