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Green Peppers + Sadness

Hey look! I grew this! We are also eating lots of fresh basil and have just started on the lettuce (I've been happily helping my landlady with her lettuce overabundance, very nice as mine is puny). I will be eating chard and kale soon and the tomatoes and zucchini are just around the corner.

The sadness is that I finally got out to the store where I like to get eggs and learned that it is apparently now illegal for stores to sell farm fresh eggs unless the farm has been inspected and approved and so on. I was so mad I actually cried a bit. It's bad enough that it's hard to get good meat and illegal to get fresh milk but I thought I would at least be able to enjoy fresh eggs. I am so tired of having a government who feels it's okay to sell us cigarettes and aspartame but heaven forbid we get some eggs with actual nutrition in them. Thanks so much, for saving me from healthy eggs. It's so hard to feed my family well. I get so very very frustrated. And I wish I didn't feel so alone about it.

Recipe | Potato Salad with Yogurt Dressing

I cannot lie, I made this off the top of my head and now I'm trying to remember it. So hopefully I get the proportions right! It would be local if it weren't for the lemon juice. Lemons kill me, why can't I get them here! Oh right, I live in Canada.

Serves 4-6 people. Ish.

Dressing:
1 cup plain yogurt
juice of one lemon
chopped fresh basil, maybe 1/4 cup. (dill would also work great)
3 Tbs whole grain mustard
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp of paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Salad:
4 hard boiled eggs, chopped
1 shallot, minced
1 sweet bell pepper, chopped
4 waxy potatoes, chopped and boiled with a glug of vinegar and a bit of salt (try not to over boil or they fall apart in the salad)

Mix with dressing! Eat. Mmmm. Hey look, the baby woke up. See you all later :)

Gardening | the plan

Here's my garden, and here's how it's doing so far.
*** = Thriving
** = Surviving
* = Fail

Side A = Full Sun
Side B = Lots of Sun
Side C = A very little Sun

1 - Green Pepper ***
2 - Jalapeno **
3 - Scarlet King Pepper ***
4 - Gold King Pepper ***
5 - Parsley ***
6 - Basil ***
7 - Rosemary ***
8 - Lemon Boy Tomato ***
9 - Pink Cherry Tomato ***
10 - Stupice Tomato **
11 - Marigolds ***
12 - Roses **
13 - Zucchini - ***
14 - Carrots - ***
15 - Snow Peas - ***
16 - Beans - ***
17 - Chives - **
18 - Lettuce - **
19 - Shallots - *
20 - Swiss Chard - **
21 - Kale - **
22 - Arugula/Cilantro - *
23 - Impatients - **
24 - Hosta - **

Notes:
- Side A & B have a buried soaker hose. Side C had a sprinkler hose but it was leaking into the basement. So I hand water it.

- The shallots looked awesome and then all died. No idea why.

- The lettuce next to the beans was not as happy as the other row. When I thinned I replanted some to take over the shallot spot.

- The cilantro bolted before it hit the garden. The Arugula bolted before becoming edible.

- The pot of oregano was happy until I left and it went without water for 5 days.

- The hosta was happy in the spring but angry when the hot weather came.

- A bunch of seedlings on side c were killed by rain pouring off the roof. Need to fix the eavestroughs.

Bread Fail

So I've been successfully baking bread for some time now with my vital wheat gluten method. You'd think that would be enough, but the purist in me wants to figure out how to do it without. I know it must be possible. I love the recipes I've tried from my Christmas present "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" by Peter Reinhart, so I decided to steal my mom's copy of "Whole Grain Breads". She was happy enough to see it go as she hasn't been able to get his method to work. I however, am determined!

This is his basic master recipe, using my sourdough start to make the starter.
So, fail number 1. Here's what worked:
- The first proof went well, it rose nicely in the bowl.
- I achieved the best window pane ever with only 3 minutes of kneading.
- It tastes amazing!

And what didn't:
- Well it kind of puddled out instead of rising up the second time. If you ever want a yummy bread puddle, I can bake one for you.
- Maybe slightly crumbly. Or maybe my toast just broke because it was eight inches long and only one inch tall.

I think that the main problem was that the dough was way too wet, especially the sourdough portion. I will try again later this week!

Gardening | All set

So we finally got most of the garden planted today. May long weekend is when most people plant here so hopefully it's safe for my leafy little ones to be out in the dirt now. Most of the cilantro bolted before I could plant it so there's just a little scraggly one out there. Guess I'm cooking with cilantro this week!

I still need to pick up some supports for the beans and peas and I need to steal some oregano from my parents. It was great having Craig's parents here to help out and little S napped through the whole thing!

My Kitchen | Save the Produce!

Raise your hand if you forget what produce is lurking in your fridge and then it rots. So tragic. The theory is that I will always know what I have (and how much) by looking at the list on the whiteboard. We'll see if it continues to amuse me as much as it did this week.