On Friday’s during March we do a weekly wrap-up about how we’re all doing for the Real Food Challenge. ***comment with your wrap-up by Sunday and you’ll be entered to win a garden seed collection (winner chosen, congrats Xan)
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This time of the year is busy for anyone who loves to garden like we do here at Chiot’s Run. I’ve been spending the days working outside, cleaning out flowerbeds and planting lettuces, radishes and peas for late spring meals. So far I’ve been able to plant: peas (2 different kinds), radishes, spinach, lettuce, and arugula. I started seeds indoors for broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes and peppers. Along with all the seed starting for spring/summer/fall veggies, I grew some sprouts on the kitchen windowsill for eating this week. We enjoyed them yesterday atop pizza. I gave some to my mom and my sister to eat on and we kept the rest for ourselves. It’s amazing how many sprouts 2 tablespoons of seeds will produce (note to self, use fewer seeds next time).
We also harvested our first salad from the garden. I had some mache, or corn salad, growing in the garden that overwintered (wonderful little hardy green if you live in cold area). If I had more planted we could have been eating it all winter long. I also harvested some wild garlic mustard, which is an invasive weed that grows all throughout our gardens. I harvest the plants and we really enjoy eating them, they make a nice spicy green. The salad was topped with a homemade maple mustard vinaigrette, which is the house dressing here at Chiot’s Run.
I made a batch of crackers using this recipe. I used half freshly ground whole wheat flour, and I must say, they’re delicious. They taste kind of like wheat thins (not as sweet). I used my pasta roller to roll them out thinly, which is a trick I learned when making flatbread. They were super easy to make and made a delicious wholesome snack! I made some fresh flour tortillas on Tuesday, two batches some all white and some whole grain. I used this recipe, but I added organic vegetable shortening instead of oil to the recipe (and I added more than the recipe called for). Making homemade tortillas isn’t new for me, I’ve been making them for years. We don’t eat them very often though, often opting for sourdough bread. I’m thinking of experimenting with making overnight sourdough tortillas, I think I could make some them healthier and even tastier this way.
All-in-all it was a good week for the Real Food Challenge. We ate lots of seasonal foods. Squash was front and center this week with a few meals of butternut squash with brown rice (a variation of this recipe) and a few meals and butternut squash soup. We enjoyed quesadillas with homemade tortillas filled with local pastured chicken, local cheese, corn from the freezer and lentils. A few salads were enjoyed as well sided with venison burgers on homemade sourdough bread topped with caramelized onions and homemade pear chutney. It was a week of delicious homemade meals that provided much needed energy for all the chores we had to get done.
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Kim here…I must say that I would call this week the ‘Rice and Egg Week’! I was totally sick of homemade bread (is that possible?). So instead of bread at most meals there was baked brown rice. My big kids ate it with peanut sauce and my little ones opted for soy sauce or a sprinkling of local cheese. I also made a lentil chili that we ate over rice.
Our hens started laying this week so every day my kids have begged for egg sandwiches!
I will say that these are almost too pretty to eat!
On a darker note there was the China Apple Juice Incident…enough about that.
I also found two York Peppermint Patty wrappers in the laundry…which nobody confessed to0!
My hubby was thrilled when a co-worker gave him some elk-sausage. He has not found a local source of meat and since I’m buying any at the super market he has been meatless this month. I won’t let him eat the camel…
We will have spinach soon and a few other greens. My peas are a couple of inches high now. I even have dandelion greens (which aren’t my family’s favorite) that I will harvest soon.
So as we head into the end of the month my only major break in our challenge will be this weekend when it is Sweet Girl’s 7th birthday. She wants subway (not the restaraunt) sandwiches with a packaged veggi-bologna she loves. So I will be buying that. She also want a rainbow cake with organic jelly beans making up the rainbow…it is a tradition. And since I have no clue how to make jelly beans I will be going to the health-food store for those too!
But overall it hasn’t been too bad…although I am sooooooo ready for a fresh tomato!
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We had another very full week here at Unearthing this Life. The arrival of bees and chicks within days of each other, plus gardening, and a family gathering – well, let’s just say it really threw my schedule out of whack. This past weekend we did not eat one home-cooked meal. We were so busy with preparations for our new family additions that we took the easy way out for lunch on Saturday. That evening we had a double date with some new friends and Sunday followed up with a good ol’ Southern potluck.
Once we got all the excess sodium out of our systems we were able to pick right back up where we left off with lots of good real food. I baked some cinnamon swirl bread with dried cranberries, and we had rabbit stew with turnips and sweet potatoes, even some bison burgers with homemade hamburger buns (substituted 1/3 whole wheat). I’ve had a horrendous craving for bright colored fruit and I’ve been experimenting with a mixed fruit oatmeal crisp using frozen stores from last year’s crop. Not as good as Kim’s I’m sure, but it was good enough to feed my cravings. The freezer has been hit hard this week, and I’ve been able to start making room for this year’s haul.
This last week isn’t going to be much of a challenge, I think. We’re over that 21 days of routine and hopefully have committed this all to habit. And yes, bring on the spring veggies! I’m watching my spinach and peas poke their little heads up without much worry for my impatience!
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Don’t forget to link your progress by Sunday to be entered for this week’s drawing! (winner chosen, congrats Xan)
Real Food eating has become second nature to me since my little family of three follows the McDougall Program (low-fat plant-based diet) and the Feingold Program (no artificial colors, flavors, or petroleum preservatives). But I’ve loved this challenge because it keeps me mindful and intentional. This week we’ve enjoyed black beans tacos with cooked-from-dried beans and homemade tortillas; pizza with homemade crust and sauce; scalloped potatoes from scratch; and homemade Chinese “cook-in” (instead of “take-out”). I’m always on the lookout for local and seasonal; tomorrow I’ll be buying a 5-pound bag of new-crop TX sweet onions! Thanks for the support and encouragement.
It’s been all about baking for me this week. I emptied my pantry of all the processed foods (mostly canned soup, and some store bought bread), and gave it to my adult son, the starving musician. But he’s moving back home in 3 months, and then he’s going to have to get with the program.
Adapted the basic cracker recipe I was using and came up with some wonderful honey-sourcream crackers, very savory and nice. Recipe’s the latest one on the Mahlzeit blog.
As I said on Jen’s entry yesterday, this whole thing has just made me much more thoughtful about food, thank you again and again for giving me this push.
This week was crazy for us. The best weather and the worst weather made gardening a challenge, but some was done. Even some harvesting: overwintered mache, claytonia, winter lettuce and spinach, and the last of the carrots.
Lots of food is growing under lights in the basement and I’m waiting for a hole in the clouds to transplant them out so I can sow some more!
We bought mostly local foods, and made flour tortillas too, and homemade pizza with frozen food from our garden. Our raw milk man went out of his way this week to get us our milk. I am gearing up to make some of that flatbread!
I love the recipes and the links to recipes here. There are millions and billions of them out there, how to choose! I choose the ones on Not Dabbling!
Great week for us. I spent quite a lot of time at the grocery store this week asking questions, reading labels and making tough decisions. First decision? Stop spending so much time at the grocery store! Get my fanny out to the farmers’ markets, look into local CSAs, etc. Rating very high on the to-do list.
We also purchased a copy of “The Backyard Homestead,” and started making plans. We had planned to plant a tree for our son for his first birthday, but had been torn over what to plant. No more. Now we know we’re planting a fruit or nut tree for him!
We received our cheesemaking kit (thank you again!) this week and will be trying that out soon.
And the biggest news of all? I had a very good discussion with my mother about non-GMO food. She’s nearing 60, very stubborn, very set in her ways and we almost always end up arguing about something. It was so nice to have this very thoughtful conversation with her!!
Your mom should talk to me– same generation! I’m also nearing the moniker of nearing 60, and yet here I am. You *can* teach us old dogs new tricks!
I’m doing about the same….getting it done some days and others not. I posted an update here: http://nourishingthecrew.blogspot.com/2010/03/this-weeks-progress.html
OH, I did get water kefir grains since I last updated. I need to get that worked into my schedule. A two-three day culture is hard for me to get used to. Kefir at one day is good and kombucha at 7-10 days is good, but I haven’t gotten the habit of the catching the water kefir at the right time. It’s been super-sour each time, and no one can drink it. Any suggestions for a great tasting recipe kids will like?
So, Xan and Toni, I celebrated my 60th this week, and I am still learning – especially some new fixings from this site! I would have peas up, but my first planting was dug up by some critter, so I expect my second planting to peek up soon, as well as some dwarf pak choy. It is hard to hold back planting this time of year. Of course, today’s SNOW put my outdoor work back a day or two. I made deli-style light rye bread (bread is my part of this challenge) yesterday using a recipe from ARTISAN BREAD IN 5 MINUTES A DAY. http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ To be honest this is the first I’ve used the recipes of this technique. I have a few issues but nothing practice won’t probably solve. I loved the texture and taste.
I admit that we went out to eat (it WAS my b-day, after all) at a restaurant that has a great greens, cranberry, and walnut salad and I ate a scrumptious dark chocolate cake, and I was in heaven.
I love your blog and read it regularly, but I think this might be my first comment.
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your salad. We grow that here every winter and I told my Canadian girlfriend she should grow it but I never knew what it was called in English, now I know (we call it Feldsalat here in Germany).
Your blog has actually inspired us to document our own gardening endeavors in Germany and Canada (we are still working on the layout so it is not yet live) and I look forward to April and sharing spring time with you.
(we wish we could have been documenting our real food challenge on the blog… but perhaps we just do it a month later!)
Anyway, thanks for the inspiration and information, warm greetings from Germany,
Andrea
Pretty good week here on the hill. Homemade fritattas, lots of homemade bread, oatmeal wth dried fruits, salads and a fabulous local tenderloin, plus lots of potato dishes. I gave a bagful of junk “food” to the local soup kitchen. , and made a fabulous homemade apple crisp from some local, oragnic, Maine apples. 100% germination on my seedlings, tomato, cilantro, basil, zucchini, and hot peppers. Woot Woot!
A very different week for us. I am a camp director and we had a group in all week so my husband, son, and I were eating in the camp Dining Hall with the group. So, the menu was completely out of my hands. But, there is always a salad bar and our chef is very good about using as few processed foods as possible. This week, it was up to us to make wise choices with what was there. I am happy to say that we did a good job at choosing the options that were whole foods instead of processed. I also went to a great conference today called “Farm to Table”. All about eating whole, local foods so there are as few steps as possible between the farm and your kitchen. I learned a ton and found some great resources. Also, got a cold frame and getting ready to start the seeds for the garden. I thought we might be ready to plant some things directly into the garden but it snowed last night. Ughhh!!
We are getting so used to eating from our home grown/on-site animal produced products that I have to think about what we did differently this week. That is a good feeling, especially since I was “in town” yesterday and didn’t have to stop by the grocery store. The treat this week was a pizza made from all our home grown ingredients and using the AB5 pizza dough. My husband asked why we ever went out for pizza in the past. I enjoy those compliments!
Today we move the cold frame and wee-bitty greenhouse to the south side of the house so I can start some lettuces and spinach. However, I’ve been told it is suppose to be in the 70′s here in WI by the end of the week. That would be nice but we really need some rain first. Starting seeds for the grow lights today. In the past this would have been plenty of time for the seedlings to grow before last frost. Now, with the changing weather patterns I am starting to wonder if I need to start them even earlier next year!
We had a mostly good week; roasted a chicken on Sunday and ate that with baked potatoes and our frozen garden green beans. Then made white chili with some of the chicken and used the rest of the chicken in lunch sandwiches. Later in the week we heated up our frozen homemade tomato soup, made from last summers garden tomatoes.
We ended the week out of town and eating at an Asian food restaurant, but got an important appointment out of the way.
Went grocery shopping today and I think I have next weeks meals lined up. Also made plans today to expand our garden, I am very excited to get started in the garden but will have to wait for the ground to warm up.
Did make the flatbread, or crackers. They were delicious with home made (un)frozen pasta.
This week I did not get done what I would have liked to…I emptied a storage that I have had for 7 years!! and having boxes taking over my living room didn’t motivate me to do much baking. We still ate lots of real food, but I didn’t bake. I did make a new batch of crackers today…everybody ( my mom, sister, kids dad, kids) have all loved them and wanted some for themselves! I have got through a good chunk of the boxes in my house and hope to get to baking more this week…I still have bagels and tortillas to try again. I also just found a recipe for graham crackers and think I’ll try those. The end of this challenge is definitely not the end of our real food eating….just the beginning! Thanks so much for all the AMAZING recipes, stories, and encouragement!!!
It’s always great to organize & declutter. I believe doing this often helps us not acquire things we don’t need. I’ve been organizing my basement. We had to empty it this past summer to waterproof/radon proof it and everything was moved to the attic. Over the past week I’ve been carrying everything back down and organizing & decluttering. I decided I didn’t need to buy any more shelves/totes. I’m getting rid of so much stuff and organizing the stuff I have. It’s so liberating!
[...] 30, 2010 by chiotsrun The winner of our week 4 prize is Xan, who blogs over at Mahlzeit which she describes as: A common sense cooking blog for regular [...]