Stress Junk

Some people "stress eat" when they feel twitchy and angsty. So do I, actually, but most of my preferred comfort foods are grain-based, so the discomfort associated with eating them sort of takes all the fun out of that bad habit. I guess I "stress waste" and "stress toxify" when I'm wigging out, which, let's face it, has been much of the time since we moved.

Making good choices and eschewing waste and avoiding toxic junk is HARD WORK. And when I'm stressed I just feel like I don't care. I do things I don't even want to do.

Like....

Reviving my Diet Coke relationship. I had been fairly soft drink-free for quite a while (LaCroix fizzy water not included), but now I have one from the pop machine almost every day. Yes, I said pop. You can take the girl out of the Midwest but you... Anyway.

Diet Coke. In a single serving, toxin-loaded can (yes, even highly recyclable pop cans are coated with BPA).  Something about the cold beverage and the caffeine. Even (gasp!) not bothering to bring the Sock Bottle with me to Starbucks for my latte fix. Not even a once in a while. Give me the cup. The paper one, with the #6 plastic lid and the corrugated cardboard sleeve. Just give it to me! I need it.

Or maybe I need some Online shopping. Or to go to Target "just to walk around and look at things".

Bleh.

On Thursday I went to a yoga class for the first time in over 8 months. I am still sore. But that happy kind of sore that reminds you that your body can do some pretty amazing things. AND it reminded me that getting back into healthy habits can be painful, but the payoff is big. Photos remind me that I used to be pretty fit, and yoga and running made that happen not sitting around and whining.

So it is almost June, and I need a goal to work towards to stay focused. Baby steps are called for. I'm going to start with this: NO soda for the month of June. Yoga at least once a week. Calling a friend instead of driving to Target.

We'll see how that goes while I try to keep my garden alive, get our apartment ready for out of town guests, and keep my cool when stressed.

Up with Veggies!

Several Mondays ago, I whipped out my hammer and hodge-podge of random upholstery tacks and nails and went to town on a pile of natural burlap and a plywood scrap (from our friendly neighborhood Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $3) to make my Vertical Garden dreams come true:

My wonky little scrap of plywood.

Supplies: nails, hammer, burlap.

Technique: eyeball your burlap strips (double thick) into thirds and tack up some pockets.

Editor In Chief supervised my lazy math and reminded me that a  ruler or tape measure would have been handy.

I tacked up my vertical garden slab, but none of my plants were robust enough to plunk them into the burlap. Remember my little basil and tomato sprouts?

They were sweet little munchkin nubs when I built the Vertical Garden.

I waited impatiently for weeks (over a month!) for them to get bigger. And today I decided they were finally ready. But I had 6 pockets in my vertical garden, and only one tomato and 2 little basils had actually survived my ignorance and instruction-non-reading, so Les and I went to the Farmers Market to get them some friends. 

This afternoon, I gave Tomato his own room and transplanted his basil brothers to one of The Pockets.

My how you've grown!

Yay! You were just seeds a couple of months ago! And now you look like food!

Here's my Vertical Garden with all of her pockets stuffed with herbs and stuff!

1. Upper Left: The only 2 green bean sprouts to survive the Heat/Rain/Rain/Heat/Bugs of the last couple of weeks.
2. Upper Right: 3 different types of thyme
3. Center Left: The Basils!
4. Center Right: Rosemary and I think Lavender (crazily, I can't remember, and it smelled more like Rosemary to me than Lavender when I planted it)
5. Lower Left: Mint
6. Lower Right: Feverfew - pretty little flowers, and good for drying and mixing into tea for headaches, which we sadly get a lot at our house.

I'm hoping that by making this garden tall rather than low, it will get a lot of sun. I moved the whole operation to fit under the roof overhang, because I noticed that my tomato and basil leaves were turning a bit yellow from a little toooo much water. I want to be able to have a bit more control of their moisture.

Now, I'm sure there is a proper way to plant these bad boys. I know several of them spread like mad and may need to be moved into bigger containers. But I wanted to try this, since the whole thing cost a whopping $8 ($3 for the wood, $5 for on-sale burlap). It's an experiment, like most of these endeavors.

Oh! I also bought a 6-flat of green peppers at the Farmers Market, and planted them in halves of the Trader Joe's coffee cans I've been hoarding (with holes poked into the bottoms/lids for drainage.) I knew they would come in handy for something.

The other little starter pots are the beans that I haven't quite been able to give up on yet. They have slim signs of life.

I did have to give up on the peony bulbs I planted. Sad. They just never came up. So I assuaged my grief with these lovely little dahlias, grown by a more capable farmer, and transplanted into the pot I bought for the peonies.

In addition to my joy at finally filling the Vertical Garden, adopting some flowers, and using the coffee cans, I ALSO skipped to the car with this little beauty tucked under my arm:

My long-dreamed-about Meyer Lemon tree. Yep. I'm going to grow lemons on the porch. The grower assures me that they will fruit even at this sprouty age. She can grow up to 5 feet tall, and needs to stay indoors in the winter, but during the spring, summer, and fall, she should make us some lovely sweet lemons. Oh, be still my heart. If that actually works I am going to freak out with joy. Living in the Midwest for so long I forget that people actually grow fruit in their yards in our very own country.

Last but not least, I also gave my own dahlia bulbs a late-starting shot by planting this little guy who had courageously sprouted inside the bag that I was planning to wrap up and put into storage until the fall.

Come on up and join the Porch Party!

I'm super excited about these new plant friends! Keep your fingers and green thumbs crossed that they actually do their thing and I don't kill them off before they bloom/fruit/veg.

Delicious Grain Free Baking Failure

Let's be honest: Grain is delicious. I love grain. Fried Rice, Corn chips, Bread, Pasta, Biscuits, everything inside and around every Burrito I've ever loved. Grains are everywhere and in everything. Everything pre-made. Just about everything you can "whip up" on the cheap. Try finding a grain-free, vegetarian microwavable entree. Not just gluten-free - GRAIN free. Paleo adherents have their meat. Vegans have pasta, polenta, and rice. Grain-free vegetarians have most of the produce aisle and the dairy case. Thank heavens for pastured eggs and the total lack of convicting conscience about cheese, or I seriously think I would have chewed my arm off a long time ago.

Anyhoooo, when people ask me how the grain-free thing is going, I usually say something like "It's hard, and I cheat a lot". Which is true. I do. I have polenta one night, veggie gyoza the next, just a "handful" of chips with the guac. Just "half a spoon" of rice in my Chipotle burrito bowl. I've turned down cookies, bagels, bread, pasta, and cake almost every time I've been tempted by it. I've tried to scoot by with nibbles and cheats.

But you know what?

I FEEL CRAPPY EVERY SINGLE TIME. Tired, achy, broken-out, creaky-jointed, bloated and overall gross. Every time. I keep telling myself that this bite will be the last one, but it hasn't held yet.

Until maybe today.

It just so happens that my dear Hubs has gotten on a baking kick. And out of the blue, he decided to start baking bread and to try to perfect Challah. What? Only my favorite kind of bread in the history of bread thankyouverymuch. Not only that, but his first loaf (of bread, ever) turned out like this:

Perfect. Golden brown on top, beautiful butter yellow on the inside, and that marvelous doughy goodness that lets you tear hunks off with your hands and eat them all carnivorously.

And I ate some. And I felt crappy.

Undeterred, I ate another steaming slab of the second loaf he baked last night, complete with butter dripping warm from the crusty fringe. And then I ate another. And then I felt, SURPRISE!, really disgusting for the rest of the night and most of today.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There is hope.

Thanks to a review in my dear Whole Living magazine, I made an Amazon impulse buy a few weeks ago and brought this little beauty into my life:

La Tartine Gourmande - Recipes for an Inspired Life by Beatrice Peltre. Friends, this is a beautifully photographed, delightfully written cookbook that just might change my life. Not only are most of the dozens of recipes vegetarian, they are ALSO mostly grain-free. A vegetarian, grain-free French cookbook. Be still my heart.

I have taken this book into bed with me to read while I fall asleep. I read the recipes with a glimmer of wonder and excitement. I mapped out a plan to bake something. Something savory and biscuit-like. I choose these delightful Cumin and Parsley-Flavored Cheese Gougeres:

Oh. Yum.

They are made with Quinoa flour, which turns out to be hella spendy. So I turn to my mega-bag of plain old quinoa from CostCo (We pretty much live in the suburbs now, so we shop at Mega Marts. I choose not to feel bad about this).

A few pulses in the coffee/spice grinder....

And viola! Quinoa flour:

Ok, so technically the recipe does have a little corn starch in it. But Geez Oh Pete! Try finding anything that even slightly resembles a biscuit that does not have any grain of any kind. I dare you.

After a pretty simple set of mixing, pouring, and piping steps and a mere 20 minutes in the oven, I pulled out these little babies:

Notice their distinct lack of "Puff". Hmm. Well, they smelled pretty awesome, and tasted like a digestible dream. And do you know the best part about mynewbestfriend French cookbook? It recommends you eat your Gougeres warm out of the oven with a glass of Champagne:

In fact, I'm noshing some un-puffs and sipping some sparkling white wine from good ole' Trader Jacques' right now.

There may be hope for this food deal yet.

10 Good Things About Today

1. I finally made the grain-free Coconut Chocolate cookies, and they were incredible. Good breakfast.

 2. We spotted "Not So Wee" Snapping Turtle at the lake on our walk. "Wee" and "Frickin' Huge" must have been somewhere in the deep end.

 3. Every single log in the grimy, slimy little lake looks like this on a warm day.

 4. The lake path itself is pretty if you don't look directly into the water.

 5. Ducklings!!

 6. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm and breezy day for a long walk. And this is what "our neighborhood" looks like.

 7. I made this omelet salad thing from my new French cookbook for lunch, and it was crazygood.

 8. The beans have finally sprouted!

 9. Some timid signs of life finally poking through in my Peony pots.

 10. It's still light enough in the evenings to take a late nap in the sunshine after a long day of cooking and outdoorsyness.

Laura Ingalls Does Laundry

Or, "Getting Greener By Default"

Our clothes dryer decided to retire unceremoniously in the middle of a load of clothes on Friday. Oh, and there as another wet ball of laundry in the washer waiting for its turn. Oh, AND we were going away for the rest of the weekend.

After a small panic and a gaze at the mid-day sun just beginning to slink downward, I grabbed my purse and announced that I was going to the hardware store to buy clothesline.

Blog Editor in Chief Auggie supervised the installation of the line anchors, and kept a lookout for any neighbors who may decide to report me for some sort of city ordinance violation.

I have to say, I felt pretty crunchy granola as I toted my basket of wet clothes down the line, pinning up shirts and dishtowels and soppy socks. I thought I heard the "Little House on the Prairie" theme song playing somewhere in the distance. I felt a bit nostalgic, too, remembering my mom hanging laundry in our yard on hot days, and how everything came inside a bit stiff, but smelling warm and clean and just like summer in the farmland. A happy smell.

We probably will have to replace our second-hand dryer, if for no other reason that because I'm not sure I can handle wearing clothes that have been blowing around in our pollen clouds all day, but I actually really REALLY liked using the clothes line. I like living in a place where we have enough sun, space, and anonymity to pull this off.

Why is it that so many old-school energy saving practices are so maligned? Rhetorical question. It's because they are associated with poverty and the have-nots. Obviously, anyone who could afford a dryer or a trip to the laundromat would opt to use electricity. Honestly, I would too if we had more than two people's laundry to do. But I hope that enviro-nerds like me can help change that stigma. Because there is a weird sort of satisfaction from letting the sun and the breeze do some housework. And a great inner smirk from watching your neighbors watch you clip your socks one by one to a piece of rope in your backyard. I highly recommend it.

Porch gardening, and justifying my peony pots

Go look at some greeny-green gardening sites and books, and most of them will urge you to focus your energy, space, and resources on EDIBLES ONLY. Flowers take up space, sunlight, water, and lots of mental and physical energy. Practically speaking, they are - gasp! - wasteful.

But since I can't imagine a garden without flowers, there was no was I could stomach that indictment. I just had to find a way around my practical brain. No problem. I am an Epic Rationalizer.

The biggest hurtle I came up with was the water. We get plenty of sunlight, the pots don't take up that much space, and if the bulb kit I bought can be trusted, they shouldn't require a lot of other special TLC. So, where can I get some extra (otherwise wasted) water?

I looked into rain barrels, and though tempting, they are kind of expensive and would require me to alter the eaves and gutters on our rental. Our landlord is already a bit twitchy about our little menacing dog, so asking if I could take a hack saw to the gutter pipe seemed like pushing my luck. I took a trip to the hardware store to survey my options, and came up with this:

When I was a kid, I remember that my grandma kept a bucket in the bathroom next to her tub. And I asked her why. She told me that she uses the bucket to catch all the water that goes down the drain while you wait for the water to get warm, and then any more water that drips out of the faucet while you are in the shower. She used the water to water her plants. And wouldn't you know it, I fill up the ENTIRE 3.5 gallon bucket every time I shower. Geez oh Pete, that is a lot of totally wasted water!

But my plants don't need 3.5 gallons of water every day. So I got this too:

A big plastic garbage tub with a snap-on lid. I filled this baby up with just a little over a week's worth of showers. Now when I go out to dump my shower bucket, I check on my plants, and give them a little drink if they are looking dry.

And today I started a bunch more of my organic veggie seeds. Cherry tomatoes and green beans. In little starter cups and an egg carton:

 Check it out! My itty bitty basil sprout is now joined by a whisp of tomato sprout! All the shower water and sunlight are actually working. I have to say, I'm amazed.

I think Aug thinks that if he lays in the sun, he might keep growing too.

Anyway, now that I have more than enough water for my plants, I have no problem planting my dahlia bulbs as well. As soon as I get some more big containers. The peonies haven't shown any signs of life yet, but I'm hopeful.

Woot!!

Look!!!

A basil sprout!! My first sprout! My very first vegetable-related sprout. And I didn't even use a Simple Garden Dome! I put my Simple Garden pot out on the back deck, and have been faithfully checking it every day. And today, lo and behold! A tiny bit of green in each of the quadrants where I had planted my basil seeds. Yesterday, nothing. Today, micro-bits of sprout. Of course, it has also been 80+ degrees here during the day for the last couple of days so I'm sure that helped. And my peony pots are still just bowls of dirt, and my strawberry seeds appear to have been dug up by some local critter. But in ONE of my 4 pots, some hope.