Monday morning review

Tractors were a huge attraction at the parade.

 It's been a super crazy week. I went to Utah for the 4th of July, saw my first small town parade with cowgirls and Elvi on motorcycles and tractors and cheerleaders on ATVs.

Elvi - note cheerleaders on ATVs in the background

I came home and went into full on wedding mode for my office mate, Mary's wedding as I made her veil and it needed to be delivered by Friday, hence, no posting last week!  

This weekend I spent Saturday with one of my famous headaches, which, thankfully, wasn't a migraine. Then Sunday I spent the morning with Ms. Peigi who will be leaving for her new life in Peru this coming Saturday and then I did some farm maintenance, including harvesting six of the most gorgeous tomatoes (and one green one that I accidentally cut off the vine) and two huge zucchini. 

I ate two of the little tomatoes for dinner last night with some very stinky cheese but I'm not sure what I'm planning for the remaining 4.  I definitely must do something before they go bad.  Sometimes I have a tendency to wait for the perfect thing to come along rather than just using what I have for something ordinary.  Must get over this, especially since I have about 20 more green tomatoes on the vine right now.

This week I am toning down the busy just a bit.  I have a hat to knit and then I'm heading up to Napa this weekend for said wedding.  I'm definitely going to post a bit more this week though. 

Also, if you have any ideas for four of the most gorgeous tomatoes ever, I'd love your suggestions.

Home cookin' - zucchini bread

The zucchini season has begun!!!  This is one half of a zucchini. Not kidding. It is 6 inches long. No exaggeration. I didn't check on my zucchini for two days and it went from a normal looking size to this monster. These are some others....

I've been getting some serious zucchs, so what does one do?

Bake zucchini bread!!!


As far as I'm concerned, this is the best recipe for zucchini bread ever. It's both simple and not too terribly sweet and you can add and amend as needed. I do not eat nuts, so there will never be nuts in my recipes. Feel free to add them if you want to RUIN everything (ok, maybe that's a little dramatic...). But really, it's the season!  Bake a loaf!




Zucchini Bread
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Makes 2 loaves

3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsps. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt


Preheat oven to 350°F.
Grease and flour two loaf pans.

In a large bowl or mixer, beat eggs. Mix in oil and sugar, then zucchini and vanilla.
Combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
Stir this into the egg mixture. Divide the batter into prepared pans.
Bake loaves for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Super yummy. I'm bringing a loaf to a meeting tomorrow. Hope it's well received!

Word Wednesday - Sustainability

A trend is afoot called the sustainable living movement. It has noble goals of reducing our use of resources, not buying so much, using less. Less water, less oil, less packaging. I believe in this.  I think there are things that we can do to make ourselves less dependent without suddenly becoming granola-eating, prairie skirt-wearing, kombucha-drinking*, kumbaya-singing dirty hippies (my apologies if you do any of these things!). There is a middle ground.

Kelly Coyne, in the New York Times article profiling her and her husband and their new book railed against "lentils and gloom". I tend to agree. (Note, Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen do not know me, I just love their books).


I didn't get into the "sustainability movement" because I felt I was too dependent on oil or because of factory farming or because I read something horrible about chicken McNuggets.  I got into this lifestyle because I grew a tomato and I found that getting my hands dirty made me happy and at the end of a couple of weeks, I could eat a tomato. I liked coming home from my desk job, putting on a pair of work pants and digging out weeds or sitting at the dining room table julienning orange peel for 4 hours in complete silence.  I also didn't jump into everything at once.

I think this is key.  I think if I had tried to plant a huge farm immediately because "zomg we are killing the earth!!!!1!!!  I would have completely burned myself, not to mention bummed myself out. It would have felt like a chore. Who wants to do that?

On the other hand, what I did is far more sustainable in a personal way. I started with zucchini. I'm now up to 10 different crops and working on the rest of the farm. It is becoming more and more enjoyable instead of being a chore. I look forward to coming home and looking for projects to do in the yard.  Some days I'm freaking exhausted though. I get up at 5 a.m. for work and when I get home in the afternoon, there are days that all I want to do is take a nap.  Thankfully, the way I've built this up gradually has allowed me to figure out how to work at my job, work in the garden and then take a nap, if necessary. Soon I'll be adding on more chores, and I'll just fall into bed every night. But I imagine I'll be pretty happy about it.

Last night I came home from work looking forward to my afternoon. I pulled out the peas (done for the season), weeded a bit in the tomatoes, picked some zucchini and spread some straw in the basil. Then I made a zucchini, bacon and gruyere quiche, ate it and fell into bed exhausted and happy.

I'm not doing any of this because of the big, bad industrial food complex, but it has the effect of being good for me and good for the earth. But I'm not getting rid of my car just yet, and let me tell you, she's a damn guzzler.

Hopefully in the next couple of years, I'll be able to get a hybrid.

*Kombucha is not safe for people with immune deficiency.