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!

It's a New Year

A little late for New Years resolutions, but who needs em to change for the better.
2009 was a terrible year in many ways, way too stressful, I see better times ahead, I feel more optimistic than I have in a long while.

Last year I did not keep up with logging my gardening activities very well. I want to use this journal to document dates, and procedures so i will know how to make my garden even better the next year.

I have enjoyed the jarred squash all winter, I gave some away as gifts, I call my squash from last summer a success! I got a pressure cooker for christmas, I am looking forward to being able to can some things I couldn't before. Like tomatoes.

My eating habits have gotten bad, I will snack on things like "goldfish", or cheezits, or cookies, and I over eat almost every night. I strive to make yummy dishes for my family, and I succeed, I cook good now. But I am a little bored with what I make, almost always the same veggies, meat and spices. Plus I cannot lose the 15 pounds I have wanted to llose for the past year. I am not fat, I just find the muffin top belly pudge to be uncomfortable, and I hate my double chin since when I gain weight it goes straight to my face. Anyway I have a friend who eats raw food often, I am seriously intrigued by this, it is not something I have ever considered, but it is quite a bit more complicated it is much like cooking without heat. Problem is when you find recipes often times there are ingredients which make you say "huh, WTF is that?" I like that there are ingredients out there which are new and undiscovered to my bored taste buds, but they are expensive and hard to find. which means if I undertake this it could be a slow (due to funds) and wasted experience (if i don't like the things I buy). I wish it was easier to sample without buying the farm. I have grown up on processed foods. Now I try to cook using fresh veggies and meat. I have two kids, one is open to new things the other is soooooo picky.

I think I will start simple with dessert type items. who doesn't like desssert, if there aren't any raw desserts which my fam and i will eat then that will be the end of the raw food journey.

I care not for political reasons to eat any certain way, I simply want to put them most pure energy producing cleanest products in my system possible.
I have high cholesterol, I fear heart disease (its in my family history) and I fear cancer, which is also rampant in my family history.

what you eat is what you are right, well I want to be clean and pure and that is it, that is my reason, simple!

so I am off to search for my first raw desert recipe, I will post my findings and all that goes down with my first attempt.

edit - I may not be able to do much at all, I don't have a food processor which it seems is pretty necessary for most recipes.

New WebSite

I am so excited about my new website I am begging all to check it out (I really want to move up in the search engines)

www.bordeauxjewelry.com

My garden this year and its harvest

This year I feel it is important to become a little more self sufficient, less dependant, and it never hurts to be prepared for an unknown future. People think I am a bit loony but, if it is good enough for the boy scouts.....

Well, we expanded the size of our backyard garden. I should have blogged this whole time about what we did and when so we could do what worked again next year and don't make the same mistakes that we made last year.

our biggest mistake was planting too late this year. The rain has been fabulous though,we haven't had to do any extra watering, excepting about 3 days.

we plan on continuing the garden into the fall and winter to keep a year round garden going, and saving the seeds from our crops so we don't have to spend money on seeds all the time.

we planted. tomatoes, squash, carrots, beets, onions, zucchini, green beans, peas, corn, cucumber, 4 different types of hot pepper and cantaloupe.

we have had varying success with the different veggies.

the worst producer was the peas, they formed into ugly little plants with few ugly pea pods

the carrots, beets, onion haven't matured yet (these we planted too late)
well we do have itty bittly carrots right now, hopefully they will continue to grow into something substantial.

zucchini did absolutely nothing but made large space taking non fruiting plants, i think I saw one rotten baby zuc.

peppers have fruited well but isn't vine reddening, they taste nice and hot, but I like red peppers.

the tomatoes have yet to produce well. One plant has given us a modest harvest, we planted probably 10 other tomato plants who just now have little green tomatoes on them but are taking their time ripening. After pickling the squash, we had some liquid left over so we decided to pickle the tomatoes on the counter, don't know how they will taste, but they are in vinegar so the acidity level is high enough for us to jar this way, without a pressure cooker.


green beans are doing fantastic, they have given us so many green beans, we need a pressure cooker to can them properly as if you do the boil method you run the risk of botulism, they are not high enough in acidity without adding lemon juice or vinegar - then you would have pickled green beans, not sure I want jars and jars of pickled green beans.

Cantaloupe have vines and flowers, I have yet to see a melon forming though. Last year we had decent size melons only to wake up one day to find them eaten by worms overnight.
our lesson there, is use some sort of pesticide, damn bugs. I would rather not have to use pesticide, but I also don't want my garden devastated after all that work.

our Squish, are monsters of the garden. we had a very great year with the squash. We pickled them and they taste fabulous. they are wonderful on salads and sandwiches. I would eat them plain or on rice too.

first pickling harvest


second pickled harvest
and lastly but not leastly :), corn - they are small and not so pretty but so sweet and yummy! They are not a large crop to feed for a long time, but a very yummy garden treat!

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