This is my mini-blog. For the first few months I posted exactly what I ate every day, so you could see that I live the diet, and how closely I follow it. Especially for the summer (growing) months when we have things to do away from these blasted computers, I'll post what's up, but not what I'm eating. If you're new and you want to see the day-to-day menus, just have a look at some of the archived mini-blogs from February 2010 through April (scroll down.) I have a real Wordpress blog, which is where you go if you click any of the "leave a comment" links. And that's pretty much all that blog is for. So, if you want to see what others are saying about this site, please visit TeninTenDietlog.

Sunday, July 25

Oops, when I bought cabbage seeds at a local seed swap the only ones I found to buy were 'Early Jersey Wakefield'. I've been watching them closely as they grow in my garden, as I do with everything outdoors,

 

and noticing how the heads, instead of 'cupping' as they describe on agricultural sites, built corners into their leaves and became conical. So I looked up 'pointed cabbages' and sure enough it's a heritage cabbage, highly regarded, but way too early for my root cellaring plans. So, I emailed all my gardening buddies hoping to swap some for produce I don't have enough of to preserve. Soon I'll have enough cukes for a batch of bread & butter pickles, but I could use somebody's peppers or onions.

Thursday, July 22

Yum: My homemade whole wheat bread, roasted red pepper hummus from scratch, and male squash flowers instead of lettuce or sprouts.

Saturday, July 17

Two batches of cabbage soup after cold-storage cabbage ran out here in Ontario, I'm now eating fresh veggies from the garden instead. Green beans, kale and the chard is starting to be ready. For a week I ate quinoa salad (made with brown rice instead) using the asparagus my neighbour brought me. My own cabbages are getting real heads! I can hardly wait between bread-makings, I just love the process. Today I'm making Red Soup (Beet & Bean Stew) with some changes. In the slow-cooker I used 1 cup of kidney beans, 1 cup of pinto beans, and 1 cup of (huge!) fava beans. I wondered if the big ones would take longer, but they were all soft at the same time. And I replaced 1/4 of the red rice with pot barley. I'm using a very small imported cabbage – not red. Maybe the next batch will have one of my cabbages in it. The little deep freeze I got when mom moved into the retirement complex has bags of loose strawberries, a bag of loose green beans and little baggies of blanched kale so far. It saves bags (and cost) to freeze things on a cookie sheet, then bag them so you can take out only as much as you need.

Today I remembers the red wigglers I have in my root cellar. It had been so long since I gave them any veggie peelings I thought they might be toast. But nope, they're fine. Off to a gradual start, the food had mostly been turned into humus and the worms are in there.

My garlic is a bit pathetic, probably because my soil is only in its first season of remediation. I'm pulling them when they're all dry on top, no danger of them bursting with size.

I'm particularly looking forward to making bread & butter pickles with my cukes. The recipe is in the pdf, not here on the site. SO good on hummus sandwiches.

Saturday, July 3

I'm rediscovering bread-making! I dabbled by making my friend's 'easy' no-knead, raised-in-the-fridge-overnight baguettes, but using stone ground whole wheat flour was disappointing. It had no fat or sweetener in it. Now I'm making some caraway rye with the method from the good ol' La Leche League cookbook. It's got butter and honey and one-third of the flour is unbleached. I made a sponge with half the flour and let it double in the barely-warmed oven for an hour. Then I kneaded the finished dough for 15 minutes, really hard work. Six seconds of pushing each time to flatten the dough enough to fold it in half. Then I raised it in the buttered bowl for an hour and a half. Beautiful! And it smells delicious. I punched it down and have it back in the oven hoping it will double in 45 minutes. (It's late.) Then I'm going to make two round loaves and cover them with a cloth and put them in the fridge overnight. So I can bake them early before the day heats up. I plan to slash the tops and spray the oven with water for a nice crust. Picture tomorrow.

Friday, June 25

Instead of making cabbage soup this week, with an imported cabbage, I made a batch of creamy soup with a cup of my garlic plants' scapes. 4 1/2 cups of diced potatoes, 1 cup of diced scapes, 6 cups boiling water, 2 veggie bouillon cubes. Simmer 45 minutes and buzz with the immersion blender.

 

Friday, June 18

I used PhotoShop to make this sit in a rectangle, so that's why the onions and beans seem to be leaning way over.

Top left to bottom right: 1. Butternut Squash, carrots, parsnips; 2. Swiss chard, celeriac, beets, garlic; 3. cabbage (under net), rutabaga, turnip, 4. cucumber, green pepper, onions; 5. tomatoes, yellow snap beans, black turtle beans, beka beans, white kidney beans, zucchini. (Pole bean patch is elsewhere.)

 

Tuesday, June 15

Hard times down on the old organic U-pick strawberry farm. The first day is usually the best, according to a regular I met today. But it was slim pickin's. It took me three hours to pick twenty quarts. The farmer fences a dozen turkeys in on the patch and their job is to gobble up all the weeds. But apparently a rodent chewed through a connection in the electric net fence and in one night, coyotes got every last one. Now there are enormous, luxuriant plantains and dandelions crowding out the strawberry plants. And here at home I had my first experience picking off beetles that were making lace of my veggies' leaves. The strawberry farmer said, "Farming is mostly killing everything you don't want." Which is why being a vegan doesn't get you off the hook for all killing.

 

Wednesday, June 9

Here's a picture of my cabbage patch with its floating row cover, which I made from a mosquito tent someone gave me and I never used. This week I bought my second imported American cabbage this year. Now I wish I had planted spinach early, or better yet, planted it near a warm wall last fall so it would come up in force in April. Then I'd have fresh veggies for lunch. Fortunately the kale plants I put in a couple of weeks ago are growing fast and soon I'll be able to have miso soup with kale for lunch.  And my 30 celeriac plants are thriving. (That's them in the top right corner.) My plan is to root cellar them and use them in cabbage soup once Canadian celery is no longer in season.

Sunday, May 30

Every morning I get up and go outside to survey the damage snapping turtles have done in my vegetable garden. Not to mention the animals who then dig up the eggs. Today I caught a skunk in the act.

Saturday, May 21

The battle of the cutworm is on. I've lost a few pepper plants and one tomato to cutworms. Yesterday I found a few people in forums swearing by toothpicks placed next to the stems. I'm here to tell you THAT DOESN"T WORK! So now they each have a collar made from half of one of the tall plastic cups I promoted the seedlings to. My earth isn't very easy to drive anything into, so they aren't pushed down an inch. But here's hoping...


Saturday, May 15

I've changed my plan to try and grow lots of dry beans. Instead I have lots of root veggies – foods I eat and buy that use lots of fuel to reach me. Dry beans are compact and easy to ship and they store for ages. So I'll let somebody else grow them. This is the first year fir the veggie garden, in really poor soil, so I don't expect much in the way of produce. The rebuilding through composting is Job One this summer. Everything else is a bit of a dry run.

Saturday, May 8

I transplanted my babies today – 27 cabbage seedlings. They each have a sheet foam collar on the ground to keep one kind of pest away and I cut up a never-used mosquito tent to make a floating row cover to keep flying insects from laying eggs on them, which would then lead to worms that would skeletize the leaves and poop all over the heads.

And I got enough rhubarb from the row I planted last year to make a pie for Mothers' Day. The drought has not been good for the rhubarb.


Thursday, May 6

Breakfast: Buttermilk pancakes and eggs

Lunch:Cabbage soup, peanut butter sandwich, peaches

Supper: Hummus & sprouts sandwich

Wednesday, May 5

Breakfast: Oatmeal &  wild applesauce.

Lunch:Cabbage soup, peanut butter sandwich, peaches

Supper: Macaroni & cheese with fiddleheads, picked yesterday. (Not very tasty, I must say.)

Tuesday, May 4

Breakfast: Oatmeal & yogurt, with last fall's wild applesauce.

Lunch:Cabbage soup, peanut butter sandwich, strawberries

Supper: Ratatouille, rice & green lentils

Monday, May 3

Breakfast: Oatmeal & yogurt, with last fall's wild applesauce.

Lunch:Cabbage soup, peanut butter sandwich, peaches & yogurt

Supper: Black & Orange

Sunday, May 2

Breakfast: Oatmeal & yogurt, with last fall's wild applesauce.

Lunch:skipped

Supper: Friends' house (meat)

Saturday, May 1

Breakfast: Oatmeal & yogurt, with last fall's wild applesauce.

Lunch:Cabbage soup, peanut butter sandwich, peaches & yogurt

Supper: Potatoes and eggs

We had a least a few rain showers today. We're going to have a 'starts swap' in a couple of weeks.

 

Friday, April 30

Breakfast: Oatmeal & yogurt

Lunch:Cabbage soup, peanut butter sandwich, peaches & yogurt

Supper: Friends' house

What a meditation on how cheap food is: I spent an hour and a half transplanting my 26 cabbage starts to larger pots. How can a cabbage ever be only 99 cents?

 

Archive:
April 2010

Archive:
March 2010

Archive:
February 2010

Archive:
January 2010


Many, if not most of my climate changes tidbits come from Tenney Naumer's blog, where she ads links almost daily.
 
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