Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for a Hot Week

Most of summer, we're a pleasant 75 to 80 degrees F in my area. However, we seem to get one or two hot spells that last anywhere from 3 days to a week, where it's right around 90 or even hotter. We get through those hot spells without AC, just a couple of fans. Anyway, this week was the hot week. I did what I could to avoid heating the kitchen. I used the microwave a lot, grilled, and used the crockpot. I also served a cold dinner one night. I did need to bake bread. However, I got the dough started very early in the morning, so it could bake before noon. And when we wanted brownies, I made my microwave brownies, using basic ingredients (cocoa powder, flour, sugar, eggs, butter, salt, vanilla). These are really quite good, very chocolatey and on the fudgy side.

Here's what we had for our evening meals this past week:

Friday
homemade pepperoni and sausage pizza, sautéed kale/garlic scapes/chive blossoms, dolmathes, canned peach slices (dented can -- 69 cents) and fresh raspberries for dessert

Saturday
refried beans, homemade tortillas, sautéed kale mixed with canned tomatoes, cherry and rhubarb pie

Sunday

Swiss chard frittata, kale/cranberry/almond salad, brown rice, leftover cherry and rhubarb pie

Monday
tuna salad on garden greens, steamed broccoli, toast, rhubarb sauce

Tuesday
teriyaki chicken and cauliflower, brown rice, frozen peas, garden raspberries

Wednesday (After dinner, the chicken leg quarter bones, skin, and leftover meat went into the crockpot for the night, to be used in Thursday's dinner.)

grilled chicken, crockpot polenta, garden salad, sautéed garden kale, garden blueberries and raspberries, microwave brownies

Thursday (My daughter was making dinner and had planned to make a chicken pot pie. To run the oven for less time, she made a quick chicken soup on the stove and baked the pie dough as crackers)

chicken and vegetable soup (chicken and stock from Wednesday's grilled chicken bones, canned carrots, frozen peas), cinnamon rhubarb sauce, homemade crackers (made with pie dough), last of the microwave brownies

That's what was on my menu. What were the highlights of yours?

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Wartime No-Soil Windowsill Gardening

Back to the government-produced films from World War 2 about food and nutrition that I watched over the weekend . . .

Mrs. T. and family, breakfast which includes a dish of homegrown cress

I saw this in a couple of different films produced by the Ministry of Food in the British government. They recommended families grow cress in shallow dishes or plates on their kitchen windowsills in their homes and flats. I assume they were referring to garden cress and not watercress, as that was the only type of cress I could find info on for indoor growing without soil, as it appeared was done for these films. Here's one short film that momentarily mentions growing cress.

Mrs. T. and Her Cabbage Patch

Cress (both garden and water) are good sources of vitamin C, providing about 39% of an adults daily requirement (per healthline.com) of vitamin C in 1 cup of cress. As England's shipping was cut off from many of their food imports during the war, traditional vitamin C rich foods (citrus, especially) were unavailable on a regular basis. Anytime fruits like oranges could be gotten in Britain, they were restricted to use for children. Growing ones own cress at home, even when you didn't have a garden, gave families a source of vitamin C on a daily basis.

For today's household, I see two issues for growing cress on the windowsill: 1) inexpensive sources for a large quantity of cress seeds, and 2) cress is a cruciferous vegetable (cabbage family) which are associated with goitrogens, which for folks with thyroid issues, might be advised against consumption of this vegetable in its raw state. In regards to issue 1 (seed availability), at the bottom of the health line article, the author suggests watercress as an alternative to garden cress as a source of vitamin C. Watercress, however, is also a goitrogen. To note, cooking and fermenting cress or other cruciferous vegetables deactivates goitrogens. (Functional Nutrition Answers.com)

If you happen to have a source of either watercress or garden cress seeds, you can grow the cress on plates lined with damp paper toweling. Here's an article with instructions for growing cress indoors on a paper towel.

finished lentil sprouts, stored in a tea towel-lined plastic container in the fridge

For those of us without an ample and cheap supply of watercress or garden cress seeds for indoor growing, here's a budget-wise alternative for indoor growing, lentil sprouts. Lentil sprouts are not as high in vitamin C, with 14% of an adults daily requirement in 1 cup of sprouts. The awesome thing about growing lentil sprouts, though, is ordinary, grocery store bagged dry lentils can be used as the "seeds". If you're interested in trying to grow these sprouts, I detail how I do these in this post.

slaw type salad with lentil sprouts

How do I use the lentil sprouts? I add them to salads. I add them to sandwiches as I would lettuce of other fresh vegetable. I make a slaw type salad with them, using a mayo, vinegar, sugar, and salt dressing. 

lentil sprouts marinated for a couple of hours in bread and butter pickles juice leftover when a jar of pickles was finished

And I marinate them in leftover sweet pickle juice to eat as is -- make a great afternoon snack for me.

Anyway, I think the idea to grow cress on the windowsill was for even city dwellers to produce some of their own nutrient-dense, fresh food to ease the tight supplies across the country during the war.

Planning for Fall and Winter Harvests in My Seattle-Area Garden

One drawback to keeping a vegetable garden is that I always have to be thinking about what's around the corner. This sometimes prevents me from just existing in the moment and thoroughly enjoying what is growing. What I mean is not only do I feel like I have to anticipate trouble ahead (pests, weather changes, etc), but I also have to plan the planting for harvests 2 months down the road. 

We may be in the dogs days of summer still, but I am thinking about what vegetables I need to plant for our fall and early winter harvests. Vegetables that continue to grow into the early fall months in my area are all leafy greens. A few weeks ago, I began the Tuscan and curly leaf kales. I transplanted the seedlings into a couple of large troughs on the deck. I also began a second set of lettuce in a variety of pots on the deck. The hanging salad baskets where I grow lettuce in spring through early summer get too hot for lettuce in mid to late-summer. So,  I gathered up a bunch of different pots and planted lettuce seeds in those. Yesterday I used a pencil to wiggle and tease bunches of lettuce seedlings apart and separate them into additional pots. I also began several cells of spinach this week. I'll move these down to the garden in early August when the bulk of the heat is behind us in my area. (We are right now in the historically hottest 2 weeks of summer.) As I mentioned last week, I have a packet of seeds for lamb's lettuce/mache/corn salad. In the next week, I'll begin those seeds with plans to transplant to the garden around the first of September. The spot where the garlic will come out in mid-August will be worked for transplanting the lamb's lettuce. Lamb's lettuce likes cool weather and will grow in early fall then hold in the garden all winter and will come back in early spring. 

So that's what's keeping me busy these days. What's going on in your world?

Wartime Steak

Over the weekend, I found myself mesmerized by some World War 2 cooking and gardening films, the kind produced by government agencies in the UK, the US, and Canada. I'm interested in history, of course, but more interested in how ordinary people lived through extraordinary times. During WW2, British, American, and Canadian governments examined how citizens had been eating prior to the war and identified weak nutritional areas for some of the demographics groups. They took a fairly scientific approach in determining what foods should be suggested for society-wide consumption and how they should be prepared. Working within the confines of wide-scale shortages in some food groups, government agencies made suggestions and created recipes for the foods that would be needed to keep a society strong and healthy. (We've all heard about ration books intended to ensure everyone has an equal chance to buy foods in limited supply.)

In one film, the narrator highlighted a community kitchen in England that prepared the midday meal for a nursery, a school, and a community center for adults. The menu for all of the groups overlapped, but was slightly adjusted for different nutritional needs and tastes of the different groups. On one particular day, the kitchen was preparing what they called Wartime Steaks. One of the foods that grew well in the English climate and soil was carrots. Carrots were pushed for every meal, sometimes just as is, but other times "hidden" to stretch other, limited foods. 

Wartime Steaks incorporated grated carrot with ground meat, whole wheat bread crumbs, and minced onions, forming and cooking in small steak-sized patties. You and I might call these meatloaf patties, hamburger steaks or Salisbury steak. What makes the Wartime Steak differ from my own Salisbury steak recipe is the addition of grated carrot. Once cooked, the carrot disappears. But I do think it adds moisture as well as extra nutrients.

Anyway, I made a batch over the weekend for us to use in our lunches. I used 1 pound of ground beef, 1 carrot, 1 thick slice of whole wheat bread, 1/2 onion, 1 clove garlic, salt, pepper,  a dash of beef bouillon, making 8 patties at a cost of about 38 cents per patty. Each patty, then, uses about 2 ounces of meat. That's about how much meat I might choose to use in meat-based sandwiches at lunch time. I imagine the community kitchen baked these, as they cooked for many. I, however, skillet-fried them, saving the beef fat to use in cooking later. My family loved these and said they were far better than any sandwich made with lunchmeat.

Since my family loves gravy on any meat dish, I also made a Hunter's Sauce (Sauce Chasseur), which is basically a brown gravy blended with a bit of tomato sauce, chopped mushrooms, parsley, garlic, and minced onion or shallot. Some folks also add wine to this sauce. 

There are several other recipes I saw that I will give a try in the coming days or weeks. The many good tips and ideas for stretching more expensive foods apply today, too.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the Third Week of July

Another week of home-cooked meals. We're using a lot of garden produce at all meals right now. Berries with breakfast, salad greens and berries at lunch, different greens for cooking, salad ingredients, rhubarb, berries, various fresh herbs, kitchen-grown lentil sprouts, last year's green figs (canned), plus pickles and relish from homegrown ingredients.  All of this produce is really helping to stretch our grocery budget. Plus, I know how my food is grown, and that matters, too.

Here were our evening meals for the week:

Friday
pepperoni pizza, beet salad, sautéed Swiss chard, rhubarb-grape soda jello

Saturday
hot dog cook-out, hot dogs in homemade buns, garden salad, fried kale, spiced fig applesauce

Sunday (I wasn't feeling great. My husband made pancakes for dinner.)

Monday (still not feeling great, but made a quick dinner anyway)
chicken in mushroom sauce over brown rice, steamed frozen peas

Tuesday (I made a late afternoon tea for dinner, motivated by finding the open jars of spreads in the garage fridge that had been a Christmas gift to us form our son and daughter-in-law.)

egg salad sandwiches, beet and carrot cream soup, fresh raspberries, homemade scones, a couple of spreads for the scones that were gifts at Christmas, rhubarb bar cookies, other cookies that were a gift at Christmas, almonds, chocolate candy that was a gift at Christmas, iced herb tea and hot black tea

Wednesday
ground beef, kale, canned tomatoes and garlic over rice, fresh strawberries and raspberries

Thursday
smoked sausage sautéed with Swiss chard, garden salad, drop biscuits, rhubarb sauce

After reading the comments last week, I visited the YouTube video with a demonstration for making rice wrapper salad wraps. (Link here) I remembered that I had some sort of wrap in my pantry. It turned out to be a package of tapioca flour wraps. I decided to give making a salad wrap a shot for my lunch on Saturday. This was easy and tasty. I made a peanut sauce for dipping, too. I tried to tighten it up after sealing it and it tore a hole. Otherwise it turned out okay. I used Swiss chard leaves to reinforce the tapioca flour wrapper, then filled with more garden greens, sprouted lentils, and nasturtium blossoms -- the foods I had readily available.

Anything especially summery on your menu this week?

How to Save Money on Vacations

Create the life of your dreams, so you never feel the need to take a vacation from it. 

I've seen variations on this sentiment multiple times. I've been rolling this over in my mind all spring and summer. I believe this is what I've been doing for the past few years, without really putting words to it. I have been pondering what it is that would bring me joy in my day to day life. And how can I add those activities and surroundings without extra cost. Fortunately, I find enjoyment in the simpler aspects of life, such as watching the sun come up over the trees in the wee hours of the morning in summer, or growing plants and tracking their growth, or listening to the frogs talk to each other as the sun is going down. Yet, simply knowing what I enjoy isn't enough. I have to make the time and plan for these enjoyments.

There are some qualifications to the above statement. 

I don't think it's realistic to create such a life that you never, ever want a break from it. Doing even the most wonderful earthly thing becomes routine after a while. I try to build in some breaks from the tedious for myself, either getting ahead on some chores or asking for help from other family members. Even so, I do look forward to going new places every so often. But the sentiment stands, loving my life means I don't want to escape from it.

Obviously, it's helpful to choose a vocation that fits one's personality type. I'm more of an introvert, so whatever I do each day, I need some peaceful time away from others. I also prefer to be forthright in all of my dealings. I'd make a terrible used car salesman. However, choice isn't always an option. Sometimes, we have to take a job that doesn't at all suit us, simply to provide for ourselves and perhaps others.

Which brings me to this, I need to feel like what I'm doing has a purpose beyond just making someone else wealthier. When a particular job wasn't the greatest fit for me, in my younger years, I continued with it until I found something that was better. But all the while I worked knowing that I was taking care of myself on my own. And this was something for which I took pride. Work that supports oneself and family is a purpose in itself. In the same way, I cook and clean for my family because I want them to have a clean house and good meals to come home to each day. My purpose is serving them.

Gratitude and appreciation goes a long way in finding a life of my dreams. Whatever task I'm working on, I try to find enjoyment, either in the work itself or in some added benefit discovered while working. -- finding the lovely or pleasing in whatever I'm doing. I didn't always love some of the tasks of being a stay-at-home parent, but I really enjoyed getting to see first hand the funny or sweet things my kids did on a daily basis. In keeping the gardens, I don't enjoy some of the work, but I do invoke "grower's privilege" when it comes to picking that first juicy raspberry to pop into my mouth or the first ripe tomato to add to my lunch salad.

The life of my dreams isn't just about a job or role. It's enjoying the moments before my workday begins and after my workday is completed. It's finding joyous or peaceful activities for downtime or weekends. It's noticing the beauty of a sunset. It's taking in the aroma of the first cup of coffee on a cold morning. It's reading a story on a lazy Sunday afternoon that calls to mind far-in-the-past times. It's trying a new craft or baking cookies with my kids or writing here. 

I think I am on the path to having the life of my dreams, one where I don't feel the constant need to escape from it.

You may be wondering about the photo above. Keeping the produce gardens is a big part of my role right now. I spent a couple of hours in the hot sun preparing a new spot for growing blueberries next year. It was hard and very sweaty work. Towards the end, I certainly was not having fun. So I rewarded myself with a visit to the front yard pumpkin and sunflower patch when I finished the bit of work with a saw. My reward? Seeing the first of the sunflowers open its yellow petals. This made my heart smile.

Are you living the life of your dreams? If so, how did you get there? If not, what changes would you want to make to have the life of your dreams?

When the Garden Is the Keeping Place for Produce

This amused me today.

This is what's left in my produce drawer, three carrots and a container of raspberries that I picked this morning.

And this is what's left in the fruit bowl, one head of garlic.

No, a grocery shopping trip is not right around the corner for me. And no, we're not going without produce. Someone who keeps a garden might understand why we have very little produce stored in the fridge and fruit bowl this week. Right about now, this point in the gardening season, I am harvesting almost all of the fruits and vegetables that we eat daily from our garden, berry patch, and orchard. That makes me smile.

But I was particularly amused when I opened the fridge and saw practically nothing, especially because I know how well we eat every day. 

When I do go grocery shopping next week, the only produce I am likely to buy are bananas (those will fill the fruit bowl for a few days) and carrots (it's too soon for garden carrots). We also have some canned and frozen produce to still use. We really do have a lot of fruits and vegetables on hand, both in the kitchen and in the garden.

The Flowers I Started From Last Year's Collected Seeds

I just wanted to share photos of how my flowers from collected seeds turned out. 

Last year, I had Patriot Mix petunias, a mix of red, white, and dark purple blossoms. They looked something like this photo.

We had such beautiful sunny and warm weather in May and June of 2021. The blossoms looked great for the 4th of July. This year, not so much. It was cold and wet for all of May and most of June. Petunias don't like cold and wet. The leaves yellowed and the plants looked like they were on their last legs before warmer weather finally set in, here. There were hardly any blooms at all by the 4th. In addition, the colors were not what I had hoped they would be.

So, with the petunias, I saved a bunch of the seeds and planted some of them this spring. This is what I got from some of the seeds, white, light purple with white spots, dark purple, and very dark purple. 

and

The medium purple with white spots is interesting. It has had several blossoms and each blossom has its spots in a different place, but white spots nonetheless. On this bloom, there's just a single white spot on the corner of one petal.

and

The marigolds were more like what I expected, an assortment of gold, orange, and burnt red blossoms, some double and some single in layers of petals. This is very close to what I remember from last year's flowers. I planted these last year with the idea that they would be our late summer through early fall flowers. This year, I've got them in pots and am hoping for the same gorgeous autumnal display that I can move around to decorate porches and other areas. I have a small pot of the marigolds in the pumpkin and sunflower patch, perched on a stump. The color from those marigolds adds just the right cheer as I await the formation of pumpkins.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share how the saved seeds turned out for me.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for Mid-July

Wednesday's supper -- my daughter and I collaborated. I harvested, she cooked.

I didn't take very many photos of dinners this week, which of course made it very hard to remember what we had. I think I may have forgotten a couple of items. Oh well, this is the gist of what we ate this week.

Friday
garden green frittata, hash brown potatoes, sausage links, watermelon chunks, green salad, homemade pickles

Saturday
scratch refried beans, cheese, salsa and homemade flour tortillas, garden salad, garden strawberries

Sunday
sautéed turnip greens and ham, rhubarb sauce, biscuits, ice cream (a variety of leftover ice cream from the past 2 years discovered when cleaning the freezers)

Monday
barbecued chicken leg quarters, French bread, watermelon chunks, garden salad

Tuesday
rice/cheese/chicken skillet dinner, broccoli/cranberry/almond salad

Wednesday
greens and sausage frittata, French bread, garden salad, garden strawberries, rhubarb and blackberry crisp

Dolmathes soup is something I invented last summer --
it's most of the ingredients for stuffed grape leaves in soup form,
with grape leaves shredded as the leafy green and ground beef added for protein.

Thursday
Dolmathes soup, scratch scones, garden salad, watermelon chunks 

We've been chasing a family of raccoons out of the cherry tree on a daily basis. So on Thursday I decided to just pick as many pink to red cherries as I could get to with a ladder, then pit and dehydrate those cherries. If I tried to wait until the cherries ripened, there wouldn't be any cherries. The raccoons, blackbirds and squirrels would have eaten them all. Dehydrating the cherries intensifies the sweetness (which isn't fully developed in underripe cherries). So I'm good with that. With the dehydrator on, I also put in 2 trays of sage leaves and 3 trays of oregano to dry.

As you can see by our menus, we're using a lot of garden produce now. One day at lunch, I was cutting back the basil to promote bushier plants and made a batch of pesto with the cuttings, along with some radish leaves. Delicious on French bread!

I used the crockpot several times this week, making rosemary polenta, a couple of batches of overnight steel cut oats, and chicken stock. We're low on bread, so the crockpot has been a helper in making starches for the family.

I spent more time organizing a freezer this past week, the 3rd of 4 freezers. I found a bunch of almost empty containers of ice cream. Many of these were homemade ice cream, so they were in repurposed plastic containers -- easy to not know what was in them. I found chocolate-fudge brownie (homemade), funfetti vanilla (homemade), French vanilla (commercial), peppermint (homemade), blackberry cheesecake (homemade), vanilla (commercial), and 2 slices of ice cream cake, Not bad, huh? We had ice cream for dessert on Sunday, everyone choosing what they wanted. Hopefully we'll finish it all off this coming weekend so I can have my freezer shelf available again. I also gathered together all of the containers of homemade soup stock. I found ham, beef, and chicken stock in containers. I put them all together on the same shelf, hoping we'll begin to use it up. I have one more freezer to organize. I've kept this one fairly organized all along, so it shouldn't be too time-consuming. Mostly, I'd like to take note of exactly what's in this one. I still have some produce from last summer that we should use before stocking this season's fruits and vegetables and I may have more frozen eggs in this freezer, which would be good to know about now. 

I started some more seeds this past week. I started radish seeds for the greens under lights indoors in milk jug "pots". And I potted spinach seeds, which I pre-sprouted in a baggie inside a damp paper towel set in a warm place. I have a spot in the garden that will be harvested in about 2-3 weeks and I wanted to have spinach ready to go in that spot. Pre-sprouting the seeds and getting started in pots will give me a jump start on fresh spinach to harvest in late August through early September. In addition to both of these greens, I picked up a packet of seeds for something I tried, unsuccessfully, 30 years ago -- lamb's lettuce also known as corn salad. It's a cool weather green that supposedly does well in my area in the cooler months of fall and into winter. I'll be digging the garlic early next month and will plant the lamb's lettuce in that spot to use throughout fall, if I can get it to grow.

In addition to the rhubarb-blackberry crisp I mentioned in the menu, I also baked a double batch of cranberry-orange scones. These were enjoyed by all. I found 1 container of orange zest in the freezer and 2 containers of candied orange peel. As you can imagine, I'll be thinking of ways to use these orange flavorings in baking.

That's about it for my meals this past week. What was on your menu? Are you using a crockpot or instapot this summer? My crockpot has been invaluable this past week.

Have a great weekend, friends!

A Dozen Ways to Use Up Garden Leafy Greens

My garden produces leaves, lots and lots of leaves. Turnip leaves, radish leaves, chard leaves, cabbage leaves, spinach leaves, nasturtium leaves, lettuce leaves, beet leaves, squash leaves, grape leaves, fig leaves, kale leaves, and Brussel sprout leaves. Not all of these leaves are the intended part of the vegetable for our table. We expect to eat squash, but not the leaves. We expect to eat the Brussel sprouts, not their leaves. Ditto on turnips, beets, grapes, and figs. Leaves we have not only in abundance right now, but we are still waiting for those other parts of the plants to be ready, such as the summer and winter squashes and pumpkins, the figs, and the B sprouts. So, I've been diving deep into cooking various greens using an assortment of cooking techniques. Here are a dozen ways that I've been using our leafy greens. 

One tip I'd like to offer, if you try one way of preparing a green and don't like it, give another way a try. Sometimes the issue is texture. Pureeing a steamed version of the same leaf  will skirt around the objected texture. Or perhaps the flavor is too strong. You can minimize strong flavors with the addition of other more pleasing or bland flavors, such as potatoes, cheese, ham or bacon in a pureed leafy green soup. Or perhaps using just a tiny amount, "hidden" in a highly seasoned dish like chili or a sweet treat like a chocolate cake or brownie. Anyway, these are just some of the ways I've been using our abundance of leafy greens.

• As the main ingredient in salads - kale salad is one of my family's favorite salads. I make an orange sweet and sour dressing to top chopped kale, chopped almonds, and dried cranberries. I also make a fall kale salad with apples, pecans, celery, chopped kale and a sweetened mayonnaise dressing. In addition to using kale specifically for these salads, I also use the stems from various greens, such as turnip, kale and beet stems added to the leafy greens. In the fall, after harvesting the Brussel sprouts, I use the leaves, sliced thin in slaw-type salads.  Our everyday summer salads contain very little lettuce. Wednesday's family-sized salad consisted of beet greens, sorrel, Swiss chard, nasturtium leaves, blossoms and green seeds, chive blossoms, thyme blossoms, and a mere 3 leaves of Romaine lettuce. I try to reserve the lettuce for sandwiches and burgers, as Romaine's crispness makes a difference in those meals while other greens do well in salads.

• Simply sautéed  -- my favorite way to sauté leafy greens is with some sliced onions and minced garlic in reserved ham, bacon, or sausage fat and just a pinch of salt. Growing up, my family ate canned spinach. I was not too fond of nights we had leafy greens as canned spinach. Sautéed fresh greens are nothing like canned greens. The flavor and texture of fresh greens, sautéed, is delightful. We discovered last fall that the leaves left on the Brussel sprouts plants were even more delicious than the actual sprouts. I picked the leaves and sautéed them to have as side dishes to meals. 

• In egg dishes, such as omelets, frittatas, and breakfast casseroles -- I make a lot of frittatas because they just so easy to make as a supper dish and incorporate small bits of this and that. This past week we've had frittatas twice, both times with an assortment of garden leafy greens imbedded. What makes frittatas so particularly easy in our house is that the handle of our old skillet (from my husband's childhood home many, many years ago) broke off a couple of years ago. At first, I was going to replace the handle with one ordered from Amazon. However, a price of $15 put me off from that idea. I have been checking Goodwill and Value Village for a replacement skillet or a pot/pan with a handle that I could scavenge. So far, nothing yet. Until then, I'll continue using this skillet without the handle as our frittata pan. Why would a handle-less skillet be so great for frittatas, you wonder? I begin the frittata in the skillet on the stove then transfer it to the oven to finish setting the eggs. No handle means my skillet can tolerate higher temperatures. How do I move my handle-less skillet from the stove to the oven, you follow up? I use potholders to grab the skillet by both sides. If I had a camping handle (sort of a clamping device), that would also work with a handle-less pot or pan.  You can also hide a bit of leafy greens added to breakfast casseroles. I shred the greens and stir into the egg mixture. Once the casserole is topped with cheese, the greens go unnoticed.

• Over baked potatoes. Chopped and sautéed or steamed greens tossed with a cheese sauce to serve over baked potatoes. My kids all grew up eating kale in cheese sauce on a baked potato, then sprinkled with bacon bits. I still get requests to make this simple supper dish.

• Pureed to use in soup -- if your leafy greens are on the tough or stringy side, chopping well, steaming, then pureeing will deal with that unpleasant texture of aging leaves. Pureeing is also a good way to hide purchased leafy greens (like those on a bundle of radishes) that have wilted and no longer look appealing. Cream of "green" with cheese and potato soup is delicious and not at all a burden to have for lunch or supper.

• Pureed as a pasta topping -- with garlic, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese -- this is a favorite of my family. Using radish or turnip leaves, I chop them, steam in the microwave, then puree the leaves with some garlic, olive oil and Parmesan cheese. I toss cooked pasta with the resulting thick sauce. The vibrant color and fresh taste is very summer-like to me. 

• Pesto -- Much like the above pasta sauce using garden greens, pesto to have as a cold spread on a sandwich or as a dip for vegetables or pita chips can be made with leafy greens, such as radish leaves. Here's a recipe by David Lebovitz that's economical in that it calls for almond in place of the usual, pricey pine nuts to puree with radish leaves, garlic, olive oil, and Parmesan.

• Pureed to hide in chocolate cakes, muffins and brownies, 1 or 2 tablespoons at a time. Arugula is my favorite garden green to puree and add to chocolate desserts. Just a spoonful and it oddly tastes a bit like I've added peanuts to the batter.

• Pureed to hide in traditional spaghetti sauce, just a tablespoon or two. This trick also works in chili. Because both red pasta sauce and chili are highly flavored and dark in color, I can get away with the stronger flavored greens, such as turnip greens, collards, and kale.

• Dehydrated and powdered to use in soups, sauces, dips, or "green" rice at a later time.

• In smoothies, just a few leaves at a time. I used about 5 medium-sized spinach leaves in a berry and banana smoothie the other day. Aside from the slightly darker color, the leaves were undetectable.

• Wrap sandwiches. Larger leaves can be used as wrappers for wrap sandwiches. For maximum flexibility, blanch the leaves, one at a time, in a pot of boiling water for 20 seconds. Swiss chard, collard leaves, and large kale leaves all work well as wrappers. Fill with chopped or shredded veggies, green onions, chopped fresh herbs, tofu, leftover cooked chicken or turkey, shredded cheese, chopped olives, or whatever else you can think of. Put a large dollop of the filling ingredients onto a blanched leaf, then roll up like a burrito. Add a dipping sauce, such as a Thai-inspired peanut sauce. 

Bon Appetit!

Reclaiming Some of Our Wastewater to Use in the Garden

If you've never spent a lot of time in the Seattle area, you may think that it rains here all of the time. Seattle is a rather rainy place. But we do get our share of dry spells, particularly in summer. From around the middle of June through mid-September, most years find us high and dry for weeks on end. In fact, some towns in my area suggest that folks plant drought resistant landscapes, here, where it rains and rains and rains.

We do our part and avoid watering the lawns in summer. We also keep a large swath of our property in woods. If a plant or tree can't take a dry summer, it just doesn't make it in the woods. But our gardens and orchards do need constant watering in summer.

I begin each summer with two full rain barrels, with a combined capacity of 110 gallons. These rain barrels catch the spring rain from our roof during storms. They are full and overflowing when I am beginning to set plants out into my garden each year. Most years, we get enough refill rain to keep those barrels topped off until about the 3rd week of June. At that point, what I have in the barrels is about all I'll have for the rest of summer. Any summer rainfall we get seems to get sucked up by the bone dry cedar shingles, with only a small trickle left to run off and into the gutters before dripping into the barrels.

Knowing that this rain water is limited for our active growing season, I water very judiciously. Even so, by early July, my rain barrels are about empty. For the hottest months of the year, I have to rely on municipal water to keep my gardens growing.

You would think living in a place with a reputation for lots of rainfall that we'd have low water bills. I wish that were so. It's not only the water and delivery that accounts for our high water bills. The bulk of the cost, I believe, is for the wastewater treatment for all of that water that goes down the drains, which is calculated for each household based on the amount of water used. So, I try super hard in summer to use as little extra water outdoors as possible.

This year, as I was using up the rain barrel water, I began thinking that we should save the "cleaner" used kitchen water and pour it into the emptying rain barrel. In years past, I've set the watering can on the deck just outside the kitchen door. It was a bit of a hassle pouring the used water into the small opening of the watering can, leaving a lot on the deck floor and having a limited capacity (2.5 gallon can) to hold water for the next watering. It was once in spring that I began thinking how nice it would be to have a spare rain barrel that I could put on the deck next to the kitchen, so I could pour the used kitchen water directly into that nearby rain barrel and save it until needed. Rain barrels are pricey, however. Then I thought, what if I had a larger container for collecting used water on the deck, then transferred that water into the rain barrel a few gallons at a time. I remembered the stack of 5-gallon buckets in the garage and grabbed one and put it on the deck just outside the kitchen door. I also pulled a plastic dishpan out of the pantry and placed it in the kitchen sink. We now rinse (whether that be hands, vegetables, or pots/pans) over this plastic tub and transfer that saved water to the 5-gallon bucket as it fills. Then once the 5-gallon bucket is about 3/4 full, I take that down the steps to the rain barrel next to the garden. The rain barrel has a screen on top, filtering out any vegetable debris that remains in the rinse water. I find I'm emptying the 5-gallon bucket into the rain barrel 2 to 4 times per day.

Anyway, my post today is about more than just saving water. It's about what I find I need to do to make new habits stick. I was thinking about making new habits and why we sometimes can't keep them. Every summer I've tried to save some of the used kitchen water for watering our vegetables. One or more of the steps in making a new habit are sometimes inconvenient or difficult to perform. I mentioned some of the problems I had with saving water in a watering can on the deck. It had a small opening on the top, meaning I spilled a lot of the water I was trying to save. The watering can didn't hold enough water to make much of a dent in our water usage, just a mere 2.5 gallons. If I had the time to drop everything and go water a portion of the garden with the watering can every time it filled up, perhaps capacity wouldn't have been such an obstacle. But for me, it really was. I wanted to have larger amounts of water on hand for my daily watering chore. The 5-gallon bucket on the deck was just the thing I needed to make saving the water both more convenient and help me better achieve my water-saving goals. 

I've been amazed by how much rinse water we actually save each day. We are reclaiming between 10 and 15 gallons of mostly clean water each day. (I rinse my hands a lot when cooking and baking. In addition, garden produce is much dirtier than purchased produce.) We're careful to only pour mostly clean water into the barrel, as we don't want bad odors or bacteria to develop. Some of the water that is not saved and stored in the rain barrels is still clean enough to dump on shrubs and trees by carrying the washpan directly out to a tree. So in fact, we're saving more than 10 gallons of water per day.

So far this seems to be working for me. I eliminated some of the aspects that put me off from sticking with this new habit. Such a little change -- using one of our larger buckets to collect the water before dumping into the emptying rain barrel. Time will tell if I stick with this water saving this year.

Have you encountered challenges when forming new habits? How did you overcome those challenges? What ways did you need to rethink your new process?

Using It All (or Almost All): Watermelon Rind in Smoothies

Hi friends,

I took last week off. All the cooking, cleaning and then the celebration of Independence Day wore me down, and then I had a scratchy throat and fatigue for the rest of the week. Nothing else. But I did have to choose between 1) living my life or 2) writing about my life for the week. There was not enough energy to do both for a few days.

One of the things I wanted to share was how we've been using our watermelon rind. For the 4th of July I bought a whole watermelon at 49 cents/lb. That sounds like such a great price for fresh fruit, doesn't it? Well, it is if you eat all (or almost all) the parts of the melon. It always bugs me that so much of a watermelon isn't eaten. All of those rinds tossed onto the compost heap. That's food that is being tossed out!

So, when I serve watermelon to my family, I cut the melon into slices, then cut away the green and white part, cubing the juicy red flesh for eating. I bag up the rinds and keep them in the fridge until I can do something with them, usually within a few days.

bite-sized cubes of watermelon, rind removed and set aside for later

The 4th of July left me with quite a bag of melon rinds. I knew I needed to do something with them.

I still have several jars of pickled watermelon rind to use up, so I quickly decided I would not use this rind in pickles. I thought about making chutney, but I didn't have the rest of the ingredients I would need. I gave serious thought to using the rind in a stir-fry. But what I settled on better fit what my two daughters and I have been having for breakfasts or lunches lately -- smoothies.

from a quarter of a 10-lb watermelon, this is all that I throw away/compost -- the thin green skin

My bag of rinds in the fridge was growing with each passing day, so it was time to get moving. Using a vegetable peeler. I removed the thin green skin from the rind and then cubed the remaining white portion. 

I used my smoothie blender, but I also think a pitcher blender would work for this. I put a couple of  large handfuls of these cubes into the smoothie blender and topped with some water, enough to get the puree going. I pureed the cubes until about as smooth as applesauce. 

watermelon rind puree, ready to blend with bananas, berries, milk or yogurt

I kept this watermelon rind puree in the fridge until we wanted to make smoothies. Watermelon rind has a barely detectable watermelon flavor, making it a good base for a variety of other additions. To add flavor, we've been blending the rind puree with frozen strawberries, blueberries, bananas, milk, soy milk powder, vanilla, peanut butter, and sometimes honey or sugar. 

Watermelon rind is one of those throw away parts of the fruit for most households. Yet it is chock full of nutrients (dietary fiber, potassium, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin B6, and the amino acid citrulline). This is a double win for me. I'm using almost all of the melon while boosting my nutritional intake.

How about you? Would you drink a smoothie made with watermelon rind? Have you ever tasted watermelon rind pickles or used watermelon rind in stir-fries? Does it ever bug you that so much of the watermelon is wasted if the rind isn't used too? Or do you sometimes think I take this "waste-less" approach too far?

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for the First Full Week of Summer

It's stuffed grape leaves season. The grape leaves are still young and tender
 but large enough to stuff and roll

Our first really warm week of summer -- vegetables and fruits are beginning to produce for us, we've needed slushies and ice cream to cool off, and I'm eating lunch outdoors every day. 

Here's our dinner menu for this past week:

Friday

homemade pepperoni pizza, stuffed grape leaves (rice, garlic, dill, parsley filling), spiced fig-applesauce

Saturday

homemade flour tortillas, refried beans and salsa, carrot sticks, mixed garden greens salad

Sunday

Salisbury steak with mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli and turnip stem pieces

Monday

takeout sub sandwich split between us (daughter had another coupon for a freebie), three bean salad (no kidney beans, so I used pintos with the garbanzos and green beans), more spice fig-applesauce

Tuesday

curried lentils and vegetables over rice with homemade chutney, rhubarb pie for dessert

Wednesday

sliced ham (found when cleaning the freezers) cooked with BBQ sauce (also found in the freezer), garlic, and turnip greens, with rice (found in the freezer) and turnip stem, cranberry, almond, and orange (orange zest found in the freezer) salad

Thursday

toasted corn tortillas (discovered when cleaning out the fridge) topped with refried beans (found in the freezer), cheese and salsa, sugar snap peas (garden), garden salad, fresh strawberries, last of the rhubarb pie

I was finally able to pick a large bowl of strawberries this week. I used some in a lunchtime smoothie (along with other frozen fruit found in the freezer) and we had the rest at dinner.

When I mention using turnip stem pieces, they are what's leftover after I cut the leaves off the stems. Above is a pile of these leaves, all trimmed and ready to chop to cook.

These are the stems that remain. They're from turnip roots that are about 2 inches in diameter, so not terribly stringy.

And then this is what they look like after I chop the stems into 1/2-inch pieces. I use these pieces steamed and mixed with broccoli to stretch the broccoli that I have. I also tried them in a sweet and tangy slaw-like salad on Wednesday. The salad was soooo good. 

No turnips? You can also use the stems from kale leaves chopped and either cooked or raw in a salad. Other stem pieces I used this week were beet stems from the beets I thinned. I used the leaves in a salad, then chopped the stems into 1/2-inch pieces. These beet stem pieces were sprinkled over Thursday's salad. When you're trying to get as much food out of a suburban lot garden, you have to try and eat as much of each vegetable as is edible. Careful, though, some vegetables have plant parts that are not edible, such as tomato leaves.

That's what was on my menu this past week. What interesting foods did you have?

Shopping My Freezer This Week

my chest freezer "after"
foods I will need very soon (like Friday's pizza) are on top or in the hanging baskets on either side

While  I am putting a list together of what I want to stock up on before fall begins, I didn't go grocery shopping in a store this week. I've got enough milk and eggs to get through another 7-10 days.

I did, however, shop my freezers this week while I cleaned and organized them. I have a total of 4 freezer spaces, 2 fridge/freezers and 2 stand alone freezers (1 freezer is apartment size, the other is mid-sized). On Saturday I tackled the mid-sized deep freeze. Those with chest freezers understand the frustration of trying to find anything when the freezer is full. I routinely pull everything out, putting items on the garage floor while I search for that one needed item. 

under the pizza, my daughter's ready-meals
they had been scattered, I put them all in one box

Having had it with the frustration, I set out to organize that freezer first. I once read about a clever lady who used milk crates in her chest freezer to help keep it organized. I don't have any milk crates, but I do have lots of cardboard shipping boxes in all sizes. So, I used cardboard boxes to corral specific categories of foods. I have 2 boxes for meat, 1 for frozen vegetables, and 1 each for my daughters. My daughters sometimes buy or make foods for themselves to help themselves put together quick lunches. These individually packaged homemade foods tend to get jumbled in with the rest of the family's frozen foods. Separating them into boxes for each daughter will help them find what they want and remind them to use up the foods they already have before buying or making more.

to the left of the ready-meals is a box of frozen vegetables, easy to get to
we had 2 open bags of peas and 3 open bags of broccoli -- a pet peeve of mine to have numerous open packages of the same food

I also went through everything in the kitchen freezer this week. This is the least organized of my freezer spaces. All of the little tidbits end up in this freezer. And again, my daughters had a bunch of their own foods in it. I again, sorted out their foods and put them into small boxes for each of them. I also combined items with like ones as I found them. I had a couple of containers of frozen bananas for banana bread. I put them all into one container. I found bread crumbs and a square of cornbread. I combined those to use together when I make bread stuffing again. And I had a bunch of different types of meat fat in separate containers. I combined those into 2 containers. We'll just have to be less picky about type of meat fat used when cooking. I found a bag of marshmallows (I have no idea why we froze those) and two freezer bags with whipped cream. This stuff looks a little old, but I will try to salvage it in something.

the bottom of the freezer -- a box of meat (in the flour bag and other bag), some jugs of milk, and a bag of ice packs

I said I've been shopping my freezers. I found so many foods that were prepped and ready to throw together with other items. Foods like sliced cooked ham and turkey, refried beans, cooked rice, diced fruit, ice cream, cooked dry beans, and many others. I even found some shredded mozzarella cheese, something I was really needing for our Friday pizzas. I still have two more freezers to go. Even so, after organizing these first 2 freezer spaces, I have plenty to work with for meals and snacks, so much so I really haven't needed to go to the store for any shopping.

In addition to not spending new money at the store, organizing my freezer spaces means I am not wasting the money already spent on food. There is no savings in a freezer full of food that is never eaten.

Aw -- Children Grow Up So Quickly

It seems like just two weeks ago they were babies. Um, that's because they were.

My feathered babies have grown up and left the nest. But here's a photo of them just two days before leaving. The photo is dark, taken from indoors looking through the window at the basket. The birds are in silhouette, with the mother bird in the center and two of her four chicks reaching up for a tasty bite of a worm on either side.

I'm sad that they're now gone. They left a nest dug into the soil inside the basket. I'll have to remove the nest and clean up the soil before replanting that basket. 

What a joyful stretch of days we've had with our bird friends!