...a mini-blog

For staying in touch, why not 'like' the 10in10 Diet Facebook page?

My partner, Craig Pittman, is is co-admin on the Facebook page. I'll paste some of his posts from there in here since he has so much fresh enthusiasm for eating this way.

Saturday, January 21, 2012 (Lynn)

Tonight I made buckwheat pasta with locally grown and milled buckwheat flour and an egg. No more packaged GMO wheat pasta for us!


Friday, October 7, 2011 (Lynn)

I dug up the sweet potatoes today. Last night's frost killed the leaves, so it was time. The curing process is pretty much impossible here in the north in autumn (moist very warm temperatures for ten days. I don't think so!) But for 24 square feet of garden space, not a bad bit of food. The slips cost $6. and they were no work at all. Plus they looked very nice around the cabbages and broccoli, where they eliminated any chance of weeds growing.

I wish I had known (before October!) that the young leaves are also edible and delicious. Treat them like any other green. And the stems, too, if you peel them.

 

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 (Craig)

Expanding on yesterday's comment about having been the consummate carnivore I spent several decades wherein the only vegetable to pass my lips was either as a add-on in a burger or on a pizza. Fruit was also limited to whatever type of pie I was eating. That said I felt healthy enough and had enough energy to do hard physical labour outside year round but then I was a young lad (much younger) than I now am. I was ready for the transition.


Monday, October 3, 2011 (Craig)

Tried a new dish this evening. Lynn is calling it 'Tomato Pesto Bean Stew'
Everything but the macaroni comes from our garden. If anyone is interested I will post the recipe.
As a dyed-in-the-wool carnivore I was pretty much dragged screaming and kicking into the flexitarian diet. Now that I have lost weight, gained energy and feel great, I am fast becoming a convert and may ultimately become a vegetarian.


Thursday, June 2, 2011

It's been a cool, sunless spring here and my garden starts are weak and spindly. Tomorrow I may plant my veggie seeds, since there will be rain the day after. But composting is going great guns. The large pile of winter kitchen compost mixed with leaves is already quite black and decomposed, thanks to the worms. I'm taking the long view of the garden. This year's crop may not be bumper, but the soil will get another good year's improving.

I'm pretty happy with my recipe for White Pizza on homemade crust. It's pizza with less cheese and more veggies. A friend who's recovering from open heart surgery feels this is within the limits of her low-cholesterol diet.

Friday, March 18, 2011

What gold my red wigglers made this winter! I scooped out about a medium mixing bowl from one bin today. In a large tub I combined one part worm castings, five parts sifted finished compost and five parts peat moss. I planted 370 plugs with onion seeds. My peppers have started to germinate. The celeriac is always slow. I planted both 9 days ago.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

I've really perfected my bread recipe.It turns out hard winter wheat is even better than hard red fife spring wheat. And I'm using less unbleached flour, since I can get a nice fine texture and a tall loaf without more than a cup in two loaves.

The yogurt is really working well made with half a cup of the last batch and three probiotic capsules.

I've planted my first starts, peppers and celeriac, in a mixture of sifted finished compost and worm castings.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Crap. My yogurt didn't set – the culture has run its course. This time I tasted it and it's like great buttermilk. So I froze 1-cup bags to use in pancakes. Frozen pancakes are not-too-decadent snacks, eaten with some homemade jam or chevre if you know someone with goats who makes cheese....

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Dinner for a few friends tonight. The menu:

  • Squash soup (recipe)
  • Black & Orange (recipe)
  • Yogurt (homemade) with my strawberry jam and frozen U-pick strawberries
  • Pumpkin Bread (recipe)

Tuesday, January 4. 2011

I've managed to fill the winter gap left by gardening: knitting socks! While weeding and harvesting good food we get to enjoy the outdoors. While knitting up pretty, warm socks we get to listen to music or talks. Not a bad skill to work up, in case the mega ships stop bringing cheap socks from our poor underpaid workers in China. I noticed last week that the price of a cheap comforter had shot up since the failure of some cotton crops. Wave of the future. There's another pleasant and useful old-timey winter craft — making crazy quilts from old clothes.

Wednesday, December 22

I have a lot of extra-spicy squash soup to eat up after last night's solstice pot-luck. Tonight I threw a cup of cooked black beans into the pot as I heated up a bowl. Yummy! Instant meal. (I cook four cups of dry black beans in the crock pot, drain and rinse them and freeze in those small 'snack' baggies.) I have many squashes in my cool room, so this may become a frequent dinner this winter.

Sunday, December 19

This week I bought big bags of all the flours I use, just making sure I have basic supplies in case I get snowed or iced-in here. So much extreme weather these days. I have friends and neighbors who were without hydro for three weeks during the big Ice Storm in the late nineties.

Monday, December 13

So, it's abundantly clear to me that the U.S. government is only posing as climate change deniers. In fact they're letting it roll on while profiting from business as usual. The military needs of controlling a scrambling world populace are just another 'opportunity'.

 

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.

Monday, December 6Yesterday a bunch of us met in the village to discuss our priorities regarding food security and any ideas about activism. As usual it came down to getting to know more of our neighbors and planning next year's gardens. It's time to order seeds and next spring I'm going to get the selection of soil amendments that our friend Tom Waller of Elm Tree Farm uses himself, including rock phosphorus, green sand and dried kelp.

Thursday, December 2

I just came across this guy who's providing super-clear instructions for making a self-watering planter from a storage tub and a few other cheap parts. Great for people who want to grow their own food, but don't have a yard. The EarthTainer.

Tuesday, November 30

I've just read a 26 page Royal Society paper being presented in Cancun. What the world is doing in planning for mitigating climate change reminds me of management meetings in my old job. First we made extremely optimistic predictions of the coming year's revenue. (They count on carbon capture and other unproven technologies working soon.) Then we apportioned the expense budget assuming the projections would come true. (They set 'economically feasible' reductions in emissions – in other words a high budget of carbon added to the atmosphere.) This is how all businesses function, so some succeed and some fail. Widgets get made and employees move around. But when you play the same game, as governments are, with the entire planet you're not part of a landscape of competing companies. It's all one thing. Nobody's willing to take 'economic prosperity' off the table.

The paper says that 1° is the new 2° (centigrade increase in global average temperature by 2100) because we previously underestimated the severity of the impacts of this amount of warming. The current 'orthodox' plans incorporate a lot of ideal technological mitigations and 'non-contextual' plans for reductions (in other words, they're just dreaming) and doom us to 4°, which I can only assume means the impacts of the old 8°.

Tuesday, November 16:

Tom Pawlick, author of The War in the Country, spoke to about 150 people tonight, gathered in our small village's community hall. He's giving these talks to encourage people in diverse organizations that work toward aspects of maintaining a vibrant rural life to form a coalition. It would have enough power to stem the tide of agribusiness squelching small farms, farmers markets, health food stores, cheese factories, small egg producers, small abbatoirs, small butcher shops, and even independent school bus operators. In the meantime the organizations such as the National Farmers' Union, the Landowners Association, the organic growers association, etc. can work toward an alternate food supply network – locally based and outside the industrial food production and distribution system.

December 5 there will be a follow-up meeting where people can choose their area of interest and activism.

Friday, November 12:

I'm making a slow cooker full of Black Bean Soup, but I've put in different veggies from my garden.

Sunday, November 7:

October was my first 'normal' month after my first season of gardening and after the extra expenses of preserving seasonal fruit were done. My grocery bill for October? $75.00. I'll keep you posted.

Wednesday, November 3 – Maybe there's hope:

SAN FRANCISCO – Voters in California soundly defeated Proposition 23 today, delivering a decisive and historic victory for the state’s clean energy economy, clean air and climate policy.

The defeat of the Dirty Energy Proposition signifies the first and largest public referendum in history on clean energy policy. With today’s election, California voters cemented their state’s role as a trailblazer for clean energy policy across the country and worldwide. Today’s results also signal an important triumph for the broad coalition that stood up to out-of-state oil refiners who sought to unravel California’s groundbreaking clean air law to protect their own profits.

“In the midst of a major economic downturn, and with a barrage of fear mongering and scare tactics, voters still said they want a clean energy future,” said Tom Steyer, co-chairman of the No on 23 campaign.

Sunday, October 31
 Snowfall on Hallowe'en, first of the season. I did get the carrots and parsnips into their bins of damp sawdust the other day (when it was warm enough to work in a T shirt). Small and few, but it will be an experiment to see how well and long they keep. So far the turnips are as good as new.

Thursday, October 21
 We still haven't had a hard frost here, so the last of the root veggies are still in the ground. Lots of fall pictures and some of this morning's visiting deer here on my Flickr.

Sunday, October 17
 I found out I can get sweet potato slips at Burt's Nurseries near here next spring. Some people say it's hard to obtain the slips here in the North. So maybe next fall I'll have some in my root cellar along with rutabagas, for a winter's worth of Black & Orange! I bought a sweet potato at Local Family Farms the other day, grown near Burt's. I've never cut into a crisp sweet potato before!

Wednesday, October 13
 A friend who has a large row of raspberry bushes is going to dig me up a bunch of 'daughter' canes next spring. Right where I thought I'd locate my row was a long stack of firewood. I finished moving it today, noticing that there were lots of worms under the bottom logs on the sod-free ground. So, it was easy to turn the soil. Then I covered it with a good layer of finished compost. So, it's ready for plants whenever they poke up from the ground. One good thing about being a certain age is that spring doesn't take so long to arrive.

Friday, October 8
 A dirty day stacking firewood in the screen porch and sifting finished compost. And planting garlic. Got a friend coming for supper and all's right with the world. I'm cooking a medley of veggies from my garden in celeriac broth that I froze after blanching the roots. And we'll have macaroni & cheese.

Monday, October 4
 Yesterday I went to a meeting with a bunch of like-minded people concerned about how to relocalize and strengthen community. We weren't very clear on what our goals are, but we talked about life in the country, living on the cheap, growing food and making our own fun. There was a fair amount of doomer talk, but the emphasis was definitely on how to proceed in the healthiest, most constructive way. We'll continue to meet and see where it takes us. The meeting hosted Tom Pawlick, author of The War in the Country. He wants to form a coalition that will fight or sidestep the corporate and government forces that are crushing rural life.

I put fresh instructions on exactly how I make my bread. And just uploaded photos, since today is bread day.

Sunday, October 3

Wal-Mart just had three behemoths built that carry 15,000 containers each across the Pacific in only five days, meaning they can bring perishable foods. So, now it's more important than ever to demand truth in labeling. Or, from my point of view, more reason than ever never to shop at Wal-Mart.


Saturday, October 2
 The celeriac harvest wasn't the bust I expected, just because the roots were small. And what I did with it will save me money and eliminate one more thing I have to rely on refrigerated imported produce distributors for. I made a new page and linked to it where celery turns up in my recipes.

Friday, October 1

My nine squash plants produced eight squashes. Slightly disappointing, but my neighbour, who doesn't even like butternut squash, grew lots and was willing to take money for a bushel of them. Much better to buy from my neighbour that down the road, right? I need lots to make squash soup with, to eat with hummus sandwiches and my bread & butter pickles. Next year I have a windrow that will host my squash hill. They keep all winter in a cool, dry room.

Tuesday, September 21

Since my whole wheat bread has been turning out so well, I've been hankering to make some nice soft buns, the kind you pull apart from each other, so the sides are nice and moist. And I wanted rosemary and black olives, but not the kind of super-crusty artisan bread that's very stiff and tricky to make. These would be like my Mom's dinner rolls, but with extra flavour and half whole wheat flour. Then I was given a cup of fresh chevre by my friend who has a few goats and more milk that she knows what to do with. Thinking I'd find something like Spanakopita that would use up the cheese and the remaining kale in the garden, I googled the two ingredients. I found a creamy soup which I adapted to the ingredients I had on hand. Then I had my excuse to make buns. And the soup recipe includes beans (yaaaayy!) I added these two recipes to the bottom of the Pinto Beans page.

 



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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