Eat local
This will be our third year participating in a local CSA. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. In late January/early February I sent a farm a check to pay for half a year’s worth of fresh vegetables. Starting the first week of June we’ll receive a box of vegetables every week, a small share of fruit every other week, and a dozen eggs every other week. I’m looking forward to our first box of fresh vegetables.
But this year we’ve gone a step further in eating local. Instead of just winging it, buying a few vegetable plants from the garden center, throwing them in pots and hoping for the best, we built three Square Foot Garden boxes. Square Foot Gardening is supposed to be easier and less wasteful than regular gardening. By using a special mix of soil in raised beds sectioned off into square foot plots SFGs are supposed to eliminate weeds, and increase garden productivity.
Our three boxes add up to 48 boxes, half of which have been planted with early spring vegetables. We planted strawberries, peas, spinach, lettuce, and broccolini and started some other seeds indoors. I have a few green bean plants waiting to be transferred outside, basil seeds that have sprouted, and I threw caution to the wind and planted some carrot and onion seeds outdoors, despite the warning to wait until after the last frost, which could be as late as May.
I haven’t figured out what else I want to plant when the summer planting season starts. I know we’ll have some tomatoes, green beans and spaghetti squash but that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I don’t want to plant anything I know we’ll get a ton of through the CSA so chard and kale are out. If all goes well it looks like we’ll have plenty to eat and freeze for next winter.
Sam, our three year old, is having a great time digging holes, planting seeds and watching them sprouts. Even if the garden doesn’t work out as well as I hope, I know he’ll have learned about where food comes from and how plants grow.
The first episode of Food Network Canada’s 
Yes, it’s Tuesday, and by the time I get around to actually posting this it will most likely be Wednesday, but I need to get on the ball and start doing this before I lose my mind.
Stretch the dough into a thin rectangle, about 14×10″ on a half sheet of parchment paper. The parchment will keep it from sticking and help you transfer the bread in and out of the oven. Brush coarse mustard evenly over the dough. Sprinkle about a third of a cup of shredded mozzarella over the dough. Add a thin layer of sandwich pepperoni. Sprinkle with another third of a cup of cheese. Roll it the long way, jelly roll style, using the parchment to help. Turn the bread seam side down and cover the bread with lightly greased plastic wrap.
This is one of the only bread recipes I’ve used that is impossible to screw up. Whether I knead by hand or with the stand mixer, whether I use all whole wheat flour or a mix of white and wheat, whether I forget ingredients, let it rise too long, don’t let it rise long enough, or put the kids to bed while it’s in the oven and miss hearing the oven timer so it overbakes by a good fifteen minutes the bread always turns out okay. But for the record, I recommend not letting it bake for 20 minutes too long. The color isn’t nearly as attractive and the crust is a bit crunchier than a sandwich bread should be.
There are many reasons to shun anything made with high fructose corn syrup but the newest study shows it contains Mercury. From the Washinton Post:
I’ve posted this recipe before, and I’m reposting a slightly modified version now. The toddler wanted noodles with butter and cheese again for dinner so I decided to see if I could trick him into eating something a bit more substantial. Carbonara, aside from the obvious chunks of bacon, doesn’t look all that different from just plain butter and cheese. It didn’t really work but I can’t tell if it didn’t work because he wasn’t hungry or because he feared it.
4 Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
After several overly dense loaves, loaves that did not rise, loaves that were raw on the inside, loaves that tasted cardboard, and rock hard balls of dough I just had to throw out, I’ve finally become confident in my ability to bake bread. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t so much practice that made it happen as it was advice from others. Here’s the advice that has worked for me.



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