I Dream of Garden

I’ve had a lot of time to (day)dream in the beginning of the week. You say, I spend about 15 hours in a car going back and forth from Normal, IL. In case you don’t know, it is FOREVER away from here. 15 hours to go to a Mitsubishi supplier conference. Best part, I get to take another long drive next week to Lafayette, IN for a Subaru supplier conference. Bleh.

I got to check out a great deal of farms. Lots of them. Unfortunately, not much difference. Soy beans, wheat, corn. Wheat, corn, soy beans, and so on and so forth. Each little town had a silo where I’m sure they brought their harvest to and I’m sure they made pennies on the dollar and needed subsidies to afford to keep their land.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single crop farm, aside from a U-Pick fruit farm, that grows something other than corn, soy beans, or wheat. Welcome to the Midwest.

Anyways, getting on with it, I had a lot of time to think about my garden. It’s hard to describe how giddy I feel when I see little plants popping out of the soil that just weeks ago I sweated over to till by hand.

So, without any more to do, here are a couple more garden pictures.

A Long Time Coming, Update Part #3

The last thing that has been keeping me busy lately has been my Project Grow community garden plot.

We couldn’t get into the garden until after the middle of May since it was so rainy… and then the man who usually tills the gardens for everyone was unable to till since it was still so rainy.

It has taken many, many hours of tilling by hand with a pitchfork but I finally have almost all of my plants in.

Tomatoes
Brad’s Black Heart (link)
Aunt Ruby’s German Green (link)
Pixie Red Rock (link)
Livingstone Stone (x2) (link)
Amish Paste (x4) (link)
Honor Bright (x2) (link)

Peppers
Fish (link)
Thai (x2) (link)
Sheepnose Pimento (x4) (link)
Mini Yellow Bell (x4) (link)

All Others
Broccoli
Detroit Cabbage (seed) (link)
Sunset Lettuce (seed) (link)
Henderson Bush Lima Beans
Snow Crown Cauliflower (x6)
Cabbage (x3)
Red Russian Kale (x3)
Kale (x3)
Thai Basil (x3)
Genovese Basil (x3)
Flat Leaf Parsley (x4)

I still have carrots, two different types of beans I got from my garden neighbor, and some Hearts of Gold Melons from the heirloom seed trail.

I added the red lines to easily point out the outline of the plot. This isn’t the most recent picture, I’ve finished those two half rows and added some at the very ends of the walking rows.

I’m heading down to Illinois for work today so no more working on the garden until Tuesday evening

Saturday Planning – 3/19/2011 to 3/25/2011

Planning my menus on Saturday before my grocery shopping trip is my go-to method for keeping organized and saving money by only buying what I need.

With that, here is my meal plan for 3/19/2011 to 3/25/2011, in no particular order. It’s pretty boring, since there is a lot of leftovers and I have no help in the brainstorming.

• Spaghetti
• Bean burgers, couscous, zucchini
• Finishing up leftover Indian, Thai (in freezer), etc
• Leftover Beef Stew

I’m really not feeling like cooking anything new, or anything at all right now. It’s so nice outside and I have so much training to do. Tim will be leaving, I think on Thursday, for skiing Utah… so I’m trying to just finish up as much food as we have in the kitchen. Feels good sometimes to finish up all the leftovers and start again.

I’ll probably be posting less too, or at least, not sticking to any schedule. Life is getting busy, even though I’m making it that way. It seems that between working, working out/training, and finding time to eat food I don’t have too much time for anything else.

Opposites, Old & New

This week has been mostly leftovers… which is AWESOME because the weather has decided to be amazing

These two recipes are, just as the title says, opposites of each and one is a new-to-me recipe and one is a usual one. An old dish, a new one. A vegan dish and a very, very non-vegan dish.

I found this recipe on The Food Network’s website, not on purpose though. We recently bought one of those really heavy dutch oven type pots and since we’ve only used it once so far I figured it was high time that we took it for another drive.

I found this by Googling “dutch oven recipes” and this looked like the best one. I was actually surprised at the number of recipes for breads!

It took a while to prepare this and the beef actually had to marinate over night. I was wary of the marinade since it was AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF RED WINE with just some crushed garlic. The beef was purple! Actually very yummy and you could only taste a tiny tiny bit of the wine after it was cooked.

I consider this to be a staple dish on my menu planning since I don’t need to look at any directions (or it could just be simple… that too!). BBQ Tofu (original recipe from the Veganomicon), steamed broccoli, and Israeli couscous flavored with curry powder.

I’ve finished up a whole bottle of this barbecue sauce just from making this! We can’t grill at our apartment complex because we have a charcoal grill (boo) so this is the closest I get to “barbecue.” I bet someone in the South is dying when I say that.

So there you have it! An old dish, a new one. A vegan dish and a very, very non-vegan dish.

Quinoa Chili & the Kitty

This past Saturday night I stole another recipe from (never home) maker and made her In-a-pinch Chili… with quinoa! I’d never even thought of adding quinoa to chili before as a way to pack in some protein.

It was super easy but my only worry as I was cooking it was that the taste of the vegetable broth was very, well, un-chili-like at first. I added a lot more spices than in the recipe (chili powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, and red pepper flakes) and in the end you couldn’t tell the taste of the vegetable broth. It was just yummy chili goodness. Also, I used diced garlic tomatoes that I had in the cupboard already instead of whole tomatoes. They cooked down really nicely.

I’ve got a bunch of leftovers so I’m taking some to work for today’s lunch

Also on the agenda for today’s post, kitty pictures!
In case you didn’t know it, we have a kitty. She doesn’t really have a name… we call her Kitty or Cat. Yup, we’re creative. Her ‘professional’ name is Leeloo Dallas Multipass (or something like that) in tribute to her being orange and Milla Jovovich rocking sweet orange hair in The Fifth Element.

Goal Keeper: Dressed to the Nines

The only way that you can keep your goals is if you keep yourself accountable – not only to yourself but to those around you. That’s why I post my goals on here, that’s why I update my Twitter. Even if no one responds, I feel as if I have an obligation to keep my goals.

Whether good or bad, I’m going to try to check-in on Sundays to go over who my goals when the past Sunday to Saturday.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so I’m not entirely sure which number I am at…. I’ll have to figure that out.

2011 Goals
1.) Lose 13.5 pounds (from 113.5 to 100 pounds)
Current Weight: ~109 pounds
Still at 109 pounds. Not sure right now if the exercise needs to be upped (as if it could anymore!) or maybe if the food needs to be looked at. Maybe I’ll check out the calories more often this week. I don’t eat a lot of packaged foods, so it’s more work to count calories. However, I wouldn’t trade that work for the processed foods.

2.) Work out five times per week.

• Monday: 6am workout with Sarah
• Tuesday: Six Week Six Pack (morning); 4 mile run (outside, afternoon)
• Wednesday: 5:30pm work out with Sarah (1 hr)
• Thursday: Six Week Six Pack (morning)
• Friday: Six Week Six Pack (morning)
• Saturday: off day
• Sunday: Shamrocks & Shenanigans 5k (real update later)

Well, the bike came off the trainer yesterday. The weather is warming up and I have had less than zero motivation to ride the bike on the trainer… even if it is not quite warm enough to do it outside yet. This week is supposed to hit 50F (can you believe it!?) so with all luck I’ll get out there.

3.) Run a 5k
Done! Completed on 2/6/2011 with a time of 30:48.

New Goal 4.) Run the Detroit Free Press Half Marathon, without walking. For my run this past Tuesday, even though I didn’t go farther than I had before it was a big success for four reasons:

-got to run outside!
-nothing was sore or hurt during/after the run
-no stopping! not even to cross the road
-did 4 miles but I felt like I could keep going at the end

5.) Eat meat only once per day or not at all.

• Sunday: 0
• Monday: 0
• Tuesday: 0
• Wednesday: 0
• Thursday: 1
• Friday: 0
• Saturday: 0

6.) Eat dinner out once per week or not at all.
We ate dinner out twice this week, which doesn’t meet this goal, but I was able to eat meat-less both times.

7.) Volunteer with Earthworks Urban Farm in Detroit and Growing Hope in Ypsilanti.
I’ll be waiting until Spring to start working on these.

8.) Have my own garden in a Project Grow community garden.
I’ve been accepted! Next weekend I’m going to a seed swap at Downtown Home & Garden and maybe Lisa will go with me

My race starts at 11:30am today…. I’m sure you’ll get a post later today or tomorrow about it

Saturday Planning – 3/12 to 3/18

Planning my menus on Saturday before my grocery shopping trip is my go-to method for keeping organized and saving money by only buying what I need.

With that, here is my meal plan for 3/12/2011 to 3/18/2011, in no particular order. It’s pretty boring, since there is a lot of leftovers and I have no help in the brainstorming.

• Quinoa Chili from (Never Home)Maker (vegan)
• BBQ Tofu, Israeli Couscous, Broccoli & Kale (vegan)
• Leftover Vegetable Korma and Spinach/Potato/Chickpea curry (vegan)
• Beef Stew (link)

It’s the second week in a row that I’m stealing a recipe from (Never Home) Maker. Sorry! I just looks really good. I’ve made lots of chilis before but none with quinoa, or any other grain, in them. Chili cook-off is this week at my work (I think, if it actually happens) but I won’t bring anything in. I’m sort of a non-participator.

I also picked a second new recipe this week – a beef stew that I’ll make tomorrow. It was actually my first time buying wine for anything (since I don’t really drink) and I had to ask the wine lady to help me find a red wine for cooking We’ve got some chuck roast from the quarter of a cow we bought from my husband’s uncle (that he raised!) that we’ll use for the recipe.

Tomorrow’s Race

Tomorrow I am running my second 5k – the Shamrocks & Shenanigans 5k in downtown Ann Arbor. There is a Daily Mile meet-up afterwards that I might go to as well. Need to decide… I really need friends in Ann Arbor though. Such a loner.

Vegetable Korma – Thai Style, from (never home)maker

Every week I try to include a new recipe or idea into one of my dinners. I get so bored doing stir fry with rice after stir fry with noodles that I need something new every now and again.

I had a tough time finding a new recipe this week, all the usual recipe websites were failing me in their vegetarian recipe section (don’t suggest I make roasted potatoes! that’s not a full meal!).

I found this recipe from blogger (never home)maker while going through my RSS feed over the weekend and decided that it had one the prize of being my weekly new recipe!

Honestly, I couldn’t find any flaws with the recipe!
One tip is that coriander seeds are NOT a good substitute for coriander powder, unless you plan on grinding them up before you use them. I don’t mind coriander powder, but biting into a coriander seed always feels soapy… I picked around them pretty well I also just realized now that I didn’t use any bay leaves, oops!

This was very good though, not too spicy and the coconut milk/peanut butter mix made it really creamy.

When all the veggies and chickpeas were cooking I did add a little bit of water every so often so it didn’t dry out. Served with regular white rice as the last time I tried to bake naan it was… disastrous.

I love finding tasty foods that are dairy-free but are still really creamy – the coconut milk and peanut butter definitely accomplishes that. It’s also vegan and gluten-free, so it’s a really great recipe for everyone. Alright, except for peanut-allergies. Darn.

Links
(never home)maker Blog
Vegetable Korma – Thai style Recipe

A Tale of Two Curries

It was the best of curries….

….well. It certainly was not the worst of curries. That’d suck.

My love for curry runs pretty deep and last week I made two different types: an Indian-ish curry with chickpeas, potatoes, and spinach, which was a brand-new recipe for me; and a normal quick-and-easy Thai mussaman curry with tofu, potatoes, and carrots.

Curry with Chickpeas, Potatoes, and Spinach
I found this recipe randomly on Food.com’s website. I really wanted to try it with the sweet potatoes, but there was no way that Tim would’ve eaten it so regular potatoes were a must.

It ended up being pretty tasty! I was a bit apprehensive about the diced tomatoes, since I am really am not a fan of most tomatoes, but they cooked down nicely. It was a bit more of a dry curry compared to the Thai curry I made.

Thai Mussaman Curry
This is a commonly made curry in my repetoire of easy meals. I’ve been able to find a brand of curry paste called Maesri that I really like.

1 can of curry paste + 2 cans coconut milk + whatever veggies/protein you want. Simple. Longest part is waiting for the rice to finish cooking.

Besides being fast and easy, it’s pretty cheap too What more could you ask for? One recipe makes about six portions for us. It’s also really good over udon noodles. Not authentic, but meh… details.

I also read on Twitter today that eating curry can help prevent cancer and Alzheimer’s… now we have another reason to eat it!

Saturday Planning – 3/5 to 3/11

Planning my menus on Saturday before my grocery shopping trip is my go-to method for keeping organized and saving money by only buying what I need.

With that, here is my meal plan for 3/5/2011 to 3/11/2011, in no particular order. It’s pretty boring, since there is a lot of leftovers and I have no help in the brainstorming.

• Vegetable Korma from (never home)maker
• Spaghetti with zucchini
• Leftover Potato, Spinach, & Chickpea Curry
• Bean Burgers with couscous, broccoli
• Leftover Mussaman Curry

Exercise Planning

Also, due to the races I’m participating in this year that I am training for, I thought it would be a good idea to make an exercise calendar. Since I need to train for biking and running races, I want to make sure that I don’t do too much of one of the other and am ill-prepared.

Each week will be basically the same in March, with the exception of any other appointments I have.

• Sunday: Six Week Six Pack
• Monday: Gym (morning), Bike (outside or trainer)
• Tuesday: Six Week Six Pack, Running
• Wednesday: Bike (trainer), Gym
• Thursday: Six Week Six Pack, Running
• Friday: Six Week Six Pack, Bike (outside or trainer)
• Saturday: Six Week Six Pack, Running

Now all I need is a heavy dose of motivation to wake up and work out…