Mini harvest

My first harvest from the garden!

Fennel tops
Raspberries
Green beans
Gooseberries and
Spearmint

Am cooking the gooseberries up now with a bit of maple sugar. There weren't really enough to do anything with so I think I'll add them to some thickened yogurt.

If I had more I would have made this.

2008 Strawberries!

Spent a lot of today making jam with a friend. Was a lot of fun, we ate a lot of jam off giant wooden spoons and ended up with 5 batches of jam.

The first and second batches were made with certo pectin. The recipe called for 7 cups sugar to approx. 4 cups crushed berries. These batches turned out great but were sooooo sweet.

For the next batches we switched to Pomona's natural pectin. We used 2 cups sugar with the first batch and only 1 cup of sugar with the next two batches. They taste amazing.

But then I called my mum who told me that there likely isn't enough sugar in those batches to stop them from going mouldy.

:-(

Jam anyone?

Mmmmm muffins

Somewhere along the way in my experiment with the Riot, it became impossible for me to only use the oven for one thing. I can't bear to see that second rack with nothing on it.

So I've taken to making muffins. Since I only use the oven about once a week, I can make one batch of muffins at the same time and that will last me until the following week.

I've tried a few recipes and my favourite by far is the below carrot muffin recipe (modified from this original version). I think they are delicious but I'm still trying to have as little sugar as possible so some might not find them sweet enough.




Carrot and cranberry muffins

1 cup spelt flour (from Little Stream Bakery)
1tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
1tsp cinnamon *
1/8 tsp all spice *
1/4 cup dried cranberries sweetened with maple syrup from Upper Canada Cranberries
2 tbsp coconut (think I'll try elminating this next time to make the muffins more local)
2 tbsp oil
4 tbsp apple butter (Filsinger's organic apple orchard - Ayton ON**)
4 tbsp rice syrup (probably could just use 8 tbsp apple butter. I'll try that next time)
1 cup grated carrot from Terre a Terre farm
1 egg (local, organic, free range)

Mix the dry together in one bowl
Mix the wet together in another bowl
Add the wet to the dry (or the other way around) and stir until just mixed (this is the part I always used to get wrong and I'd end up with hockey pucks instead of muffins).

Bake at 375 F for 10-12 mins (until brown on top and a tester inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean).

* I used 1 tsp mixed spice instead of the cinnamon and all spice. Its a mix commonly available in the uk - corriander, cassia, ginger, nutmeg, caraway, cloves. So basically any combination of these spices or cinnamon or all spice would work just fine.

**Ayton, ON is not within 100mi (is 602km from my house according to google maps). A local option would be apple butter from Hall's apple orchard in Brockville. They aren't organic tho'.

Looky looky!

I got a mention in the Otesha Journal! Thanks Otesha! :) I wasn't the only one mentioned either - my pal Unstuffed was awarded blog of the month. And Hit Pay Dirt (another great Ottawa blog and a fav of mine) got a mention as well.

For those who don't know, Otesha is an awesome Ottawa-based not for profit organization. In their words, Otesha "was created to mobilize youth to create local and global change through their daily consumer choices. We believe that there are alternatives to our culture of overconsumption, and that each one of us has opportunities to have positive impacts every single day."

They do educational outreach with high school kids (actually folks of all ages), publish a book and just generally spread the word.

I think they are great.

This is what has been keeping me busy lately

In this bed amongst the flowers there are:

3 climbing lebanese cucumbers (in container)
1 striped zucchini (to the left of the container)
2 gooseberry bushes (although they are rapidly multiplying. They are to the right of the cucs)
raspberries (along the back of the fence)





Over here we have 2 types of beans (french bush beans, and scarlet runners). And more raspberries. Mmmmm, raspberries.





Herb garden. If you look really closely you might see some fennel, some parsley and some chives. If you look closely you'll see oregano. And if you just look, you'll see some mint, some more mint, and oh yeah, some mint.





And this is the new bed. This was filled with flowers last year which I had to squeeze into other parts of the garden because I couldn't bear to just dig them up. This bed contains:

• 3 types of tomatoes (2 x yellow cherry, 2 x roma, and one brandywine )


• basil


• 3 red pepper plants (red knight)


• peas


• sugar snap peas


• more beans - these were a gift - believe they are a different variety of scarlet runner


• 4 eggplant plants

Oh garden, I love you.


Oh and in case anyone is wondering what happened about the dirt, we ended up ordering 3 cubic yards. And it was plenty. Thank goodness we didn't order the 30 or so yards that we were originally told we'd need.

Still no fridge

Yep, we are a full 8 months into life without a fridge and are happier than ever.

Here are a few extra benefits we learned this weekend:

1. Its really easy to pack for the cottage when your fridge is a cooler


2. Silence - the cottage we stayed at had a fridge and after not hearing it for so long, the hum from the fridge seemed extra loud

I get quite a few questions about how we are doing this. The main question is how we keep food cold.

Now that it is no longer cold outside, we make the ice for the cooler that we use instead of a fridge in the small chest freezer we keep in the basement. For the time being we are able to keep the cooler cold with two 2L pop bottles of ice which we change daily.

I'm also often asked if not having a fridge means we have to buy food every day. Thankfully the answer to that is no. We get most of our produce (food that goes in the cooler) from the organic farmers market which I go to once a week. I found that this spring as things got warmer and the house got too warm to store root veggies outside the cooler, I did have to make 1 or 2 extra shopping trips mid week. I'm hoping though that since we have a pretty decent veg garden this year that mid week shopping will be replaced by garden picking. :)

Also we have found that being restricted in the amount of food we can buy means we waste a lot less. We now only buy the amount of food that will fit in the cooler. Which interestingly is about the amount of food that will last us a week.

As the summer goes on I think we'll have to switch to a smaller cooler because I think the demand for ice will be too great. This also should be easier to do once we are feeding ourselves mostly from the garden.

The last of the 2007 strawberries

This deliciousness was a super easy experiment.

Ingredients:

• 1 apple (local)


• 1 ish cups of frozen local strawberries


• 1 cup oats


• 1/4 cup oat bran


• handful hazelnuts (chopped)


• 1/8 cup safflower oil


• 1/4 ish cup of rice syrup (I'm off sugar and most substitutes at the moment)

1. Peel and slice the apple and put at the bottom of the baking dish


2. Cut up strawberries (frozen) and cook in microwave for a few mins


3. Add berries to dish with apple (will be v. v. juicy)


4. Drizzle over a little bit of rice syrup


5. Mix oats, oat bran, hazelnuts, safflower oil, and rice syrup


6. Add this granola-like mix on top of the fruit and bake at 350 for around 20 mins? (think I did about 10 and then turned the oven off and let it finish cooking with residual heat). Basically cook until bubbling and brown on top.


7. Eat.

The cool part was that the oat bran soaked up all the strawberry juice so once it cooled I could slice it up like a granola bar.

Free stuff!

Yesterday a rep from Capital Environmental stopped by the house. He told me about the TAPS Program which encourages water conservation and is sponsored by Enbridge Gas. Basically they are providing (per house/apartment) a:

• showerhead


• kitchen sink aerator


• bathroom sink aerator


• foam pipe insulation for hot water pipes

We got two of everything so that we could also install them in our tenants apartment.

The showerheads look awesome. Lots of settings and all are only 4.7 litres per minute (1.25 gal per minute). This is way better than our existing "low-flow" showerhead which is 9.5 litres per minute (or 2.5 gal per minute)

As part of the riot I'm trying not to buy anything new but I figure new stuff that saves water is ok. Especially since the guy just showed up at my door - how perfect!

If you are interested in finding out more about the program, here's the info from the flyer (I couldn't find a web site).

1-877-save-gas

Captial Environmental Ltd
613-667-8561
tapsprogram@rushpost.com

Dirt costs *how* much???

Went to Richie Feed and Seed today to get a quote on some soil. We are turning most of our backyard into a vegetable and fruit garden and our soil is a bit questionable (potential contamination) so we are creating some raised beds.

Turns out for the amount of soil we require it will cost us somewhere in the neighbourhood of $800.

I'm sorry? What? Run that by me again... Did you say $800????

<picks herself up off the floor>

Ok then.

I need to come up with a new plan.

I'm thinking of getting a truckload full of compost from the Trail Waste Facility. But I need more than just compost to make me some soil.

I better get investigating because my seedlings are ready to get planted.

Also I bought 3 new tomato plants at the organic farmers' market this morning. One is an heirloom variety called 'Brandywine' and the other two are a yellow cherry variety (not sure of the name) that I know is the most delicious I've ever had because I bought oodles of them last summer at the market.

Ooo and I had a look at my gooseberry plants this morning and they have gooseberries on them! Quite exciting as this is year one for them in the garden so I wasn't expecting them to fruit.

Been away

For various reasons, I decided to take a short break from posting. The biggest was starting a new job but I think almost as much was a desire to disconnect a bit (from the computer, from the dialogue....). I just needed a break.

But I'm back! Who knows, maybe its the sunshine or the fact that I'm already enjoying the herbs in my garden, or maybe its the sight of my lovely seedlings growing strong in my greenhouse, but I'm feeling a renewed energy.


While I've been away I fell off the Riot wagon a bit. I've been feeling the guilt associated with that and expressed to a friend how I didn't want to post about it. My great friend said essentially that "maybe falling off the wagon is terrible, maybe its not, but shouldn't we at least be able to talk about it?"

Fair point I thought.

So let's talk.....

Consumer spending was my biggest weak point. I came to realize that I live a pretty freakin' comfortable life. While in all other categories I'd say we were already below the average, on consumer spending I'd say we are quite a bit above. Which seems crazy as I hardly ever bought clothes, and I can't stand 'stuff' so avoided buying it whenever possible. But I am a home owner and even though we haven't put much money into our place, it doesn't take much before all of a sudden we've spent a lot. And this was my problem over the last few weeks. The first was the purchase of a new washing machine. Its a front loader and will replace our water-hog top loader. AND...we decided not to buy a dryer. How's that for a commitment? Also, we scored the washer at 50% off which really was an absurd deal. But the bad news is, that one purchase pretty much adds up to our 10% of consumer spending right there. We'd have to not buy one extra thing all year. And I'd actually attempt that, except our deck is falling down. It's a multi-story deck and its rotting away. At this point its downright dangerous. So it needs replacing. We'll use FSC certified wood of course, but the cost alone will basically put us at average household spending. Two items. Ok, two BIG items. But that's what I mean by living a privileged life.

So anyway, all that to say that I'm feeling bummed that I'm obviously not going to succeed in making any reductions from the average when it comes to consumer spending even though it feels like I'm doing a lot.

While I'm in a confessing sort of mood I may as well talk about food. Other than eating too much restaurant food (nothing new there), I'd been pretty good. Until this weekend. I was too sick to make it to the farmers' market on Saturday. So tonight I went to the herb and spice and bought some food. Some fresh, decidedly un-local food. I blame the sickness - my body wanted healthy and yummy food. So I bought some rice cakes, and some cilantro from the States and 2 apples from New Zealand, and some hazelnuts and papaya from god knows where. I'm sure I'll be feeling v. guilty later but for now that papaya is SO GOOD.
I did buy one local item - some fermented beets from quebec. Have been curious about fermentation as a method of food storage for sometime and I have to say, these beets are pretty tasty. Supposed to be quite healthy too.

Anyway, enough rambling. But before I go, I want to share this wonderful post from GreenPa. It made me smile. The wonders of water.