Pics of the Carrots mentioned in previous post

Hubby working on tiller - it didn't want to work, but he finally got it.
this pic shows the carrots before harvesting them, and the garden before tilling it.

Carrot tops - still in ground



this is all of them - dirty

and then rinsed



and then with the tops cut off ready for real cleaning

pretty huh - they were a bit tart but still sweet at the same time, very edible

My Garden

Last week hubby tilled up the garden for the upcoming season. but first I pulled up all the carrots which have been there since spring of last year. I pulled up alot of carrots and they were huge and mutated looking. I brought them in and washed them off and my kids and hubby ate them as I got them clean. what they didn't munch on got sliced in the food processor and frozen for stews and such. there were alot and I will edit a photo in probably tomorrow, I am not on my desktop where my photos are.
so anyway end of Feb. garden is tilled and ready.
we will be putting broccoli and cabbage in the ground today.

Eat Your Veggies

Growing up, my parents both worked and my dad was in charge of dinners. Me and my Brother would get home from school and either play outside or watch TV until dinnertime. My dad would get home at 4:30 and immediately start t dinner every night. He always made sure it was ready and on the table by 5:30 when my mom got home. I have to say it was almost never nutritious, but bless his heart he made sure we ate together every night.
One night we would have kraft macaroni and cheese (thats it), another night it would be Chef Boy R Dee spaghetti out of a box. the next night it would be polska kielbasa with green peppers onions and yellow saffron rice. I don't remember what the other nights were but there wasn't alot of variety. I can remember anytime something unusual showed up me and my brother weren't very appreciative of the variation from routine. And every Friday night we went out to the Cafeteria for dinner.
Needless to say when I went to college I gained a bit of weight, my metabolism wasn't working for me anymore and I was clueless about nutrition, I didn't know how bad that huge slice of chocolate cake was for me or all that soda I was drinking, I never had to really think about it before. But when my dad mentioned I was gaining weight - well I hadn't even noticed. That shocked the bejeezus out of me, how do you put on 20 lbs and not know it. That is when I started learning. I got that weight off (not the healthy way), but it stayed off until pregnancy. I had learned that I needed to watch my portion sizes and exercise. It was fun watching the pounds go, and not too difficult (I had the help of xenadrine at the time too - man that stuff worked and gave me energy to boot!)
I have tried to go meatless many times, but always sunk back to my old processed food and meat ways.
My reasons for going meatless was simply I felt that my habits were using meat as a main course and the veggies come secondary. This always felt backwards.
Now I am at a place where it makes sense to me that if I want maximum energy I need the food most closely associated with the sun's energy. That is plants. why do I really want my energy from a middle man - the animal who consumes the plant when I can just go to the source.
I may still take a bite of the animal stuff I make for my family, but never more than a bite to see if I cooked it good and animal protein is still good for you, just not in large quantities.

I have stores and stores of energy now, I feel amazing almost like I did when I was taking xenadrine - only this is purely natural!

Going back to my childhood eating habits, I have never tried more than a handful of veggies, there are over 30,000 edible plants out there, and I have tried maybe 30.

It is my goal to try a new veggie (or edible plant) each week if I can.

I am gonna make a list of my dislikes here - because there are some plants I just can't stand.....

celery
turnip
brussel sprouts
coconut (its the texture)
radish

and I recently tried parsnip (the jury is still out on that one)

I have recently made and eaten artichoke and love it!
and I have recently started eating raw broccoli - its good I am really getting used to it raw

I am eating alot more raw foods, again I feel like I am getting untainted energy as close from the sun as possible. and I feel wonderful for it.

food porn

I just wanted to share some pics of what I have been grubbing on lately, I have been enjoying my diet greatly over the past couple of weeks.

I couldn't decide on just one photo so here are several of the same dish...
I sauteed zuccini and broccoli in Olive Oil, black pepper, and garlic.
put that on a flour tortilla with tomatoes, red bell pepper, and cilantro.
so yummy!

next ....

I wanted something sweet
so we have banana drizzled (ok doused) with agave cocoa sauce and dabbed with AllFruit spreadable fruit (strawberry) and sprinkled with powdered sugar - it was OK but not OMFG great!



Then I wanted to try another wrap, still having a sweet tooth, my body was really craving pineapple....This was spectacular!
On top of a sundried tomato tortilla I put pineapple slices, avocado slices, green bell pepper, raisins, cilantro and jalapenos. drizzled with tamari
so good!

next....

I felt I was needing more protein so I tried some Quinoa (Not sure of spelling here) I had never tried it before, it looks kinda creepy, but tastes fine.I mixed in raw carrots, cucumber, cilantro, mushroom, raisins, and nutritional yeast.
I put the mixture on a steamed cabbage leaf.
I unfortunately had to put salad vinegar on top, the cabbage just wasn't edible to me otherwise, not a huge fan. but a satisfying, healthy meal in the end.


I made this pizza for my child, he ate it all up....
Next I used portabella mushrooms as my "meat"
I was craving pasta, really badly, so I cooked up some noodles, sauteed some portabella mushrooms in olive oil, black pepper, garlic, then plopped in some onion to saute with those drippings and added tamari. I put that along with fresh tomato, cilantro, raisins on top of my noodles.

I have to say one thing, I never thought warm food in one's mouth could be so very satisfying. I have been eating cold food here lately and wow, warm to hot food was magical!
This dish definitely hit the spot.

and tonight for dinner I tried something new, the food itself wasn't new but how I served my children was. I simply put alot of cut veggies on a large serving platter, and had tortillas handy, had a small saucer of pork from the chinese restaurant handy if they wanted some, and a small dish of sweet and sour sauce and a dish of green goddess salad dressing right handy for dipping. I called them to the table and said "go for it" and they ate quite well. here is the pic of my platter. It was devoured!


In this platter, sauteed portabella mushrooms, sauteed onion, fresh Orange slices, fresh spinach, fresh cucumber, fresh carrot, fresh tomato

dinner last night

I have to write this down before I forget how wonderful it was.
I took a sundried tomato flavor tortilla and filled it with raw pineapple, cilantro, raisins, avacado, and green pepper strips, sprinkled a tiny bit of tamari on top, wrapped and enjoyed, it was fabulous!