Whine-Free Update

Just an update on some of the plants that have graduated from Bucketville to The Bermuda Rectangle (the lot next door where we've spread horse barn compost throughout the year, giving rise to a jungle of Bermuda grass and various other lawn-mower-defying growths....oh for livestock!)

Last year, this lot was flat and bare. Now we have a good collection of test plants going. Seen here are a pigeon pea and some moringas in the background.

We see these both as potentially valuable crops to us beginning now, but even moreso in the future. Rather than back up and reiterate the many uses of these under-utilized (in our country) plants, here are a couple of good links from one of our favorite resources, ECHO (an hour away, practically in our own backyard, yay!)

Pigeon Peas link

Moringa link and Another Great Moringa Resource list from another site

And not pictured in this post, but something we're trying to encourage the proliferation of is the Chaya plant (the link is a download...it's worth a good read) Jack's trying to get some cuttings of our very small plant going in the Bucketville nursery.

If there's anything that can pick me up from the doldrums, it's seeing that some of these plants are hardier than our horticultural learning curve, and the joy of spending time reading many of the resources from lists like this...it inspires me that we have so many underutilized plants that we really NEED to gain the wisdom (regain, more often) to use in our own backyards. And we DON'T have to have fancy equipment...there is so much we CAN do at the most basic level (reminder to self!) Here's such a list...


MJ had recently requested pics of the pigeon pea progress here, so here are a few. We didn't know when to plant them this year, so we may have planted them late...no pods on them yet, but one of our intentions in growing them was as a fodder plant for livestock. (We're working out the growing part ahead of time... no livestock as yet) See how tall this one is? Kaleb's size lends perspective to how much growth we've seen in these in a relatively short time. I think Jack planted the pigeon pea seeds in July, starting them off in (what else? ha) 5 gallon buckets. Things learned?

1. They prefer being in the ground
2. They're vigorous enough to skip the bucket stage and just be sown directly at their permanent site.
3. They prefer a drier location that's not often waterlogged.
4. They really put on growth quickly.
5. Of all our plants, they are among the ones that take the most abuse...heat, drought, extremes of weather. Let's see how they do this winter...
6. They make good nurse plants to give partial shade to smaller seedlings. That's what the buckets beneath are in the pictures shown.

Shown below are the moringas, started at about the same time, or even later than the pigeon peas. The growth is amazing...I think these are in the 8 to 10 foot range high. We were supposed to cut them at the 3 to 4 foot height if we wanted a coppice sort of rotational leaf/limb harvest, but we have to get our act together and read up on it before we start hacking away. Thankfully, there are excellent resources ( see those lists above) to familiarize ourselves with. But to answer the question of whether they'll grow? Yes! They are not much good as a shade tree, but the leaves and the entire tree all have individual uses...the leaves are packed with so much nutrition, they're said to be the cure for malnutrition in most of the known warm-weather world, even where there are weather extremes of heat and drought. And I believe they are cheap and easy enough to grow that their harvests should benefit the entire world at large nutritionally, without science and marketing putting a hefty price tag on it.

Here's some idea of our little jungle we have going. There's something really encouraging about seeing this where before I couldn't get a shovel to penetrate the hardpan. Jack gets the lion's share of credit for the brawn and sweat involved moving a lot of that manure and digging all those holes! He told me once he never knew he could grow things, but I have to say the plants and he seem to have a symbiotic enthusiasm for each other. Most likely my biggest contribution is fueling the plant addiction...ha! (that's not really an exaggeration)

Below, a closeup of a pigeon pea bush/plant

Here is another superstar plant...to say they grow like weeds falls short of describing how, in plastic bins, these things grew so fast they now top seven and eight feet in height...so fast we got preoccupied with other things and didn't get them into the ground fast enough! But the ones transplanted even at this late date are going gangbusters. These are the cranberry hibiscus, also known as false roselle. It looks along the lines of a japanese maple, and the leaves are simply delicious picked at the small tender stage and eaten fresh...they are a fresh lemon flavor, and the color is gorgeous. It's on my To Do list to expand my use of these in the kitchen...I have many ideas I just haven't tried yet. In the meantime, they just continue to grow. Our plan is to keep these much shorter so they'll take on a bush form instead of more vertical leggy growth. One thing we've learned is that the leaves have to be utilized immediately upon picking, or they wilt quickly. They can be prolonged by cutting a branch and keeping it in a vase of water...and make beautiful leaf bouquets that way.

I can't get enough of this color...

Here is a closeup of the moringa leaves, with morning dew. All parts of the moringa are edible. The leaves can be cooked, or dried and powdered. They are edible fresh, too, but have such a strong peppery flavor that way that a little goes a long way. Cooking them or drying them for additions to soups and so on de-intensifies the sharp flavor significantly, and it's not very noticeable...but oh, the nutrition! Super great, and responsible for keeping whole populations of third world babies from malnutrition, and mothers in milk. Don't get me started on breastfeeding as a topic :) My baby is 21 and I was fortunate enough to be able to nurse her for a great start in life. Ok...back to the post :)

One of the few branches of medicine I'm really enthusiastic about :)

Well, that's about it, but no post is complete without Kaleb photos. I'm sorry about my rant in the last post. Besides my hubby, Kaleb is a bright light every day...how can anything be really terrible when you have 100% devotion and adoration from this soft and loyal companion?

Regal canine... and his squeaky toy.

He's not always asleep on the floor. I took these pics to illustrate that wherever I am, he accomodates me, but HAS to be next to me. I love those instincts. I have to be careful not to step on him sometimes...he's truly a Velcro dog.

See what I mean about having to be careful? This is the wheel of my computer chair...as I am sitting in it.

Love is...my own personal bodyguard glued to whatever I'm near, if he can't be glued to my person. Love you, Kaleb!

And of course, the frog leg pose always makes me smile!

Thank you so much to you all for encouraging me after my last post. I really love you guys!

I know it's time to go now because Kaleb's run out of patience and trying to get my attention with a very insistent wet nose. I'm not alert enough to read his mind just now, and just got a blank stare from him when I asked him if little Timmy is trapped in a mine shaft. Plus we're in the wrong state for mine shafts. But outside we go for some air and sun :)

Update Riddled With Gratuitous Dog Photos

Farm dog, sans farm...must make do with rawhide till there are more interesting things to chew.

Update: We were just made aware that rawhide chews can contain carcinogens and other toxins. Nylabones and other safer alternatives have been recommended to us. Bye-bye, rawhides...

First it must pass the sniff test. From the looks of this rawhide, it made the grade in prior sniff tests.

Speaking of tests, I've been catching up on my health stuff that was neglected while we didn't have insurance, and of course "they" have been running tests. Some tests came back good but my sugars didn't...ugh. Must. Keep. Daily. Journal. Yeahyeahyeah... Roger.

Mmmm...Kaleb goes for the prolonged back teeth gnaw.

And I went for my first mammogram, ever. Which meant girlish things were subjected to what I suspect the above-pictured rawhide experienced, for the sake of Health. Ow.

I've been making homemade dog food to supplement Kaleb's kibble. I can already notice a bit of a difference in Kaleb's coat, but I'll give it time.

Meanwhile, I continue to subject the very Aussie-and-all-other-farmrelatedsubjects-savvy (and patient) blog friend at Trapper Creek to questions, and have been given great feedback as we navigate new dog ownership of this particular fellow...and breed. I can say I'll probably never go back to any other breed. Smitten, I am.


Had lunch with my daughter today, and I'm SO enjoying being the mom of an adult daughter. Plus I can count on uncensored candor, if I ask for it, on about any subject, so when I asked her if my silver/gray hairs that seem to be overtaking my formerly-brown hair need to be colored, she said "YES, mom, YES." When I reminded her it was SHE herself who initially dared me to allow it to go au naturale in the first place, she said "well, yes, it was pretty cool when a few silver ones were there, but I mean this is a little out of hand!" I love my daughter.

And to think I used to anticipate the days when she'd learn to talk...ha :) Anyway, silver/gray hairs notwithstanding, we had a great lunch together between my doc-visits-ugh.


We have some bleeps on the radar as go our efforts lumped under the general category termed Land Things, but we curb the enthusiasm till there's some finality. One thing we've learned is that "it's not over till it's over"...I really can't wait to write about some of the specific details we've gone through the past three years with all this, and some of the knocks that have come either just because life's that way sometimes, or sometimes from our own mistakes/lack of experience. But like I said, it's for another day.


I don't feel like I have my (rapidly-graying) head on straight right now in comparison with other years in which I had constant projects going and could post interesting (to me, at least) things here for fun. I'm feeling slowed down in general, though we are in a productive period if you look at things from a distance. For the past five years I've enjoyed good health overall, but this off again on again stuff since June of this year has kept me Sub-par. Today's news from the doc as to why my ears still hurt? They are still infected. I'm taking antibiotics again, which goes against my grain, and still haven't regained all of my energy back.

But having Kaleb means going for walks are fun (truly!) and even if that's all the exercise I get right now, it's incentive enough.


I'm trying to get a handle on my eating. During the summer flu/ear stuff/lung stuff, I had little appetite, which is uncommon for me, and so it trimmed some weight off. That's the good news. The bad news is that my practice of being involved in trimming the budget by cooking everything optimally (using the turkey for different dishes, freezing the leftovers, using the brother for soups , TYPO: I meant BROTH for soups...i have no brother but it's not due to anyone being made into broth... boiling the bones for stock, etc etc) had to be streamlined...I simply didn't feel good enough to spend as much time in the kitchen, and lacked inspiration (and appetite) the short times I was. I also haven't felt like experimenting or fixing many fun treats. We have been eating homemade, but I didn't stretch everything to the Nth degree like I usually do. That to me means much of what I could have stretched was not, which makes me feel wasteful. At least being able to incorporate some of these things into the dog's diet helps utilize them, but I'd rather be at peak creativity for the people of the house first.

Now I'm feeling better by comparison, but still have a ways to go to get back to being with it that way again. I haven't felt like doing craft or art projects, writing projects, or continuing to further research the alternate-use plants we have growing outside. I have a good many calabazas to bake and freeze, and some other foodie things pending. I have a backlog of things in the fridge that are cooked but need to be at least frozen for later. (true confession...I have been reading books and watching prodigious numbers of PBS mini-series and assorted collections of DVDs when my energy levels peak at the Potato level. I can quote you Jane Austen and Dickens lines. And Andy Griffith. And Chef. And Good Neighbors. And so on...)


I keep telling Jack the paid help never showed up ;-)

But on better news, I've started buying better quality meat, but less of it, each week. (Because Steak goes SO well with Couch Potato...) For some reason we both noticed the ground beef we were buying just wasn't sitting well with us the same way a bit of roast or steak would. I've got plenty of salad fixings and have taken one nice jar of bleu cheese dressing and extended it with active culture plain yogurt...and it tastes fantastic. Just a small drizzle of that over a salad chock full of finely-chopped veggies and herbs has been hitting the spot, alongside small portions of meat to go with it. It's my quickie cheat version of dinner while still feeling at 50%.


Also on the health front, we're trying Resveratrol. The claims seem inflated, but undeniably many people claim to have seen instant benefits. We need a good cleansing and boost to our immune systems, so went for the "free trial bottle" of one of the companies. Let's see how that plays out. I've only ordered one bottle, and had to get tenacious saying NO in a hundred different ways to the company's attempts to call me and upsell me other "youthful" products. The representative just didnt want to take No for an answer, and so when he asked me (in a somewhat astonished voice) WHY I didn't want the So-and-So Youth Formula that makes me LOOK YOUNGER...."You mean you don't WANT to look younger??"...I replied "NO. NO, I do not want to look younger"

He said "You must look very young, then. Nearly everyone wants to look younger." (THIS. On the day of The Conversation With My Daughter About How Ancient The Grays Make Me Look)

I replied "I DO look young. I don't want to look younger. (repetition, repetition, repetition??)" (Ok, so I'm not lying. I DO look young. When compared to someone ten years older than I am. I don't want to look younger, or Jack will look like he's perpetually accompanied by his grown daughter...ick) :)

He gave up and said "Well you do SOUND like you look young."

hahahahahahaha!

I'm going to remind my daughter from now on that I SOUND like I LOOK young...heeheehee

Then I called their customer service department to cancel further orders of the product. I got what sounded like somebody's teenage son. Confused, illiterate, and bored teenage son. I waited a total of three minutes while he sat there saying nothing and never was able to pull up my name on his computer. (I'm sure he was thrown off by how YOUNG I sounded, haha) But we finally got to the gist of the thing after a comedy of errors in which he kept re-entering eleven digits for my phone number instead of ten...asking me if the eleven were correct, I said no and repeated....and repeat. Then when he said "ok" I said "does ok mean you've canceled any further shipments?" and he said Yes and waited for about 30 seconds and then hung up. Weird. I'm chuckling!

All a nice diversion, in a slightly annoying way...


I don't know why, but I keep being afraid of one of us getting cancer, especially since the event of the skin cancer spot Jack had removed from his forehead earlier in the year. That's one reason I'm getting all my "yearlies" caught up. We REALLY need to be healthy.

I want this upcoming year to be the one in which we both lose most of our weight for good...the right way. I love this man so much and want us to have many years together. I remember the older women of my family on my grandma's side talking in a gaggle about their "old folk complaints," which totally repelled us younger ones back then...a laundry list of corns, bunions, the removal of this and that, repetition of the word "hemorrhoids," other terms like gout, hernia, high blood pressure, cataracts. Well, I'm on the Forties slide toward Laundry List Land, but am fighting it hard now. Jack's in the Fifties version of that and thankfully has been blessed with a strong constitution in most areas. It's funny but keeping all our components running well figures in largely to whatever definition we now have of Homesteading. It's funny how health is central to all other concerns.

Enough of creaks and squeaks..there'll be "funner" updates to come. I'm just feeling a little reflective after The First Mammogram. And sympathy for anything unmercifully flattened between two unyielding surfaces. And definately wincing at any sandwich referred to as a Hot Pressed Cuban.

It's time to end the post when you begin empathizing with fast food ;-)


Something hopefully more coherent to come, in future. I go now for my daily Aussie Walk Therapy...

A Handful of Harvest

These Persian limes fruited even after our transplanting the trees in the most disadvantageous time of year. Their roots really needed to spread out, and we were afraid of losing them entirely if they had to endure the summer in pots. We lost our Meyer lemon trees from last year that way, and didn't want a repeat.

These beautiful little guys are about as big as a VERY small chicken egg.

So many of our harvests at this point are handfuls (or handsful, for the English teachers out here)...3 limes, 6 figs, a handful of raspberries. But we'll eat them! Here's a somewhat blurred closeup of the figs we enjoyed tasting out-of-hand last night...





The exceptions to the handful harvest so far this year have been the tropical pumpkins and the purple hull cowpeas, and now okra. Even though our patches of those are small, they yielded well, and I can see how some judicious planning as far as times of year and how many plants could bring us in a modest bounty with some left over to preserve.

We have all the makings for a forest garden but the forest, but do have enough tree starts to group together to realize some fruit before too many years. We are already harvesting moringa leaves as we're able from the saplings Jack grew from seed. They're fast growers, so there is enough to harvest to enable us to collect a small branch once or twice a week for use as tea or to add to foods. It's got an incredible nutritional value, and we're leaning towards trying to incorporate as many of the preventive medicinals and nutritives as possible straight from the garden, since we use no chemicals.

That's also the fun of the handfuls, too...whether a little or a lot, we're not worried about any ill effects. The limes are very small, and we'll only get a few, but I can utilize the whole fruit without any worries about sprays or poisons. That's what's stopped me from using the beautiful citrus we get in the stores here...I have no idea what pesticides are in those lovely skins and just don't want to make marmalade or use the zests or preserve them in any way if they've been sprayed.

Ah well, enough of that ramble for now. I worked last night but there's okra to pick...and no complaints here! :)

I hope you have a great weekend!

Shabbat shalom to you from us...Jack, me, the songbirds, fireants, squirrels, herons, egrets, buzzards, hawks, bobwhites, woodpeckers, blacksnakes, deer, possums, raccoons, bobcats, weasels, denizens of insects, tree frogs, lizards, and rampant Bermuda grass... to you and yours!

Our First Real Crop?

Finally...I think we're going to have an edible crop of something! These purple hulls have exceeded our hopes and have survived our gardening ignorance. And now they're trying to swallow the garden chair alive...woo!



Here's a before pic (below). The Bermuda grass is obvious. Next to the purple hulls were planted Blue Lake bush snap beans. Both were off to a great start. But in the later stages, with the same care, watering, intermittent drought and constant heat, the snaps couldn't hack it. I'm glad we did a test plot to compare these...the ability of the cowpeas to handle the vagaries of our climate at this time of year really stand out.



Here's the After shot...it's a small patch. The cowpeas managed to compete with the Bermuda enough to stand on their own ...
These will be ready to pick before too long...yay!!

Here's the baby calabaza we planted a few weeks ago. The other one is mature and has very long vines going all over the place. This one is so small it barely shows in the picture. This is the Before shot, below... Jack placed freshly-cut willow branches over it, mainly to keep our neighbor, who dumps horse stall manure on the lot, from accidentally running it over.

Here it is as of a few days ago. Calabaza, in reading more about it, is a crop that can be grown as far north as the New England states, if started in plenty of time.



A few of the calabazas never finish developing past the baby stage...they yellow and simply fall off. Some do make it, and we have several on the first plant that will hopefully make it to the harvest stage before long. Here's a pic of one, below...


and another smaller one. We've placed spare plastic lids under some of them when we thought the failure of some of the small fruits might have been due to insect damage from below. We're not sure there's any advantage to placing the lids beneath them, but have just kept them there because they seem to be doing fine in the meantime. We may have about 7 or 8 mature calabazas developing at this time, and several other very small ones that might or might not make it to maturity.

That's the update for now. We've officially entered hurricane season, which is supposed to be wet and rainy, but for us the spring has had very little rain and recently quite intense heat. I sure hope we have some more rain. The few showers that came a couple weeks ago reallyyyyy helped all the growing things!

Update

I'm not here much at the computer, but we're staying quite busy.

I'm not sure what's going on with our calabaza vine. It's in the pumpkin family and has quite a few developing fruits that are larger, but the small ones I see trying to develop at the ends of the vines will initially make a small fruit, but then turn yellow practially overnight and simply fall off. We are trying to water consistently in this drought and I'm not sure what is happening to the small calabazas in those crucial developing stage...the ones that make it past that seem to be fine.

Doing well at the moment are the limes we planted in the ground, the jujube we planted out, and the moringas. Bermuda has overtaken everything crop-wise in the ground except for the purple hull peas...I've got to say they've outrun even the Bermuda! The snap beans we had such high hopes of harvesting are so far a disappointment. They are stressed, and have fingernail-size beans all over them that don't seem to be growing further. Arghh! But hey, we're learning.

Jack's doing regular digging and raising our yard level in certain spots by hand...which takes time. So far the kiwi vine and the grapevine are soldiering along.

We found that clustering the pots works much better for most our plants still in containers. We're only using our containers to raise plants to a stage that can be transplanted safely, but we do have a cluster of very small trees/shrubs that we're not disturbing simply because in their center are our two small figs that have NEVER done well for us until this year. They like to be snuggled in the protection of the other plants and are loaded with small figs this year. We're waiting till they finish fruiting, and then we'll move the surrounding plants into the ground, except for a few that need to remain in containers a while longer, which we'll snuggle up to the in-ground transplants in the meantime at their new locations because they seem to benefit from not standing alone.

We're noticing an upsurge of pollinators now in comparison with a couple months ago. yay!

We renewed the seed in the bird feeder for the first time since we initially moved here. We had decided at one point not to go with the feeders when we thought we'd be relocating soon. Be we have no timeframe for relocating at present, so that's why so many of the potted plants are going into the ground, and I noticed the birds visit the garden a lot. After reading in Gaia's Garden, I feel good about putting out treats for our feathered friends. They're my favorite entertainment in the cool of the early morning or evening, and if I'm still enough, they feed rather close without seeming worried. I think they forget I'm there when I've very still, because yesterday an adolescent cardinal that's still being beak-fed by its parents flew off from the feeder and sat only a foot away from me on the wheelbarrow handle, completely unaware I was that close. I love those moments!

I'm off to do some more things on the list...just checking in :)

Thank you to the many friends here who sent your comments and thoughts our way at the loss of my friend last week. I pulled the post after a couple days because I felt that it was too personal to leave up, but your words were lovely and I appreciate your friendship across the miles :)

Heat and Drought Plant Update

While most of the rest of the country is considering building arks because of the torrential rains, in this one little corner of Florida, I can count the total hours of rain since January on one hand.
So here's our update in light of the current high temps and low precipitation...

Doing well: The volunteer calabaza plant. We lost a lot of developing fruits to something that appeared to have cut them right from the stem at an early stage, but there have been continual flowers, even to this day. The vines have gone nuts -- each at about ten plus feet in length and counting. We're letting them trail around and through the 5 gallon buckets of small seedlings, sort of as a nurse plant to provide some semi-shade. Yesterday, Jack counted 7 surviving fruits still plumping up in various stages of development, and we're testing putting some of those many plastic bucket lids under them -- one under each fruit to keep it from lying directly on the ground. I don't know if this is wise or foolish, but we want to see if it thwarts anything that might be trying to come upwards from the ground to devour the young pumpkins/squash.

We also have had success in harvesting batches of the young leaves and slicing them chiffonade-fashion and cooking them as greens. How does this plant handle the heat? It's one of the few that is growing like crazy despite the heat. It wilts badly in the middle of the day, and by the end of the day is perky again. We do water it daily. It seems to be stronger than the Bermuda, and though it doesn't choke out the Bermuda, it towers over it and still goes strong.

So, all in all, the calabaza is a keeper for the summer...so far.

The snap beans: What started off with a bang is hating the drought and extreme heat. I'll have to take pictures, but we do not have irrigation set up to water the snap bean patch daily, and we're under heavy water restrictions and fines in our area due to the drought. So they're mature and even have flowers and small beans on them, but the heat and lack of daily watering have taken their toll. We probably will have no harvest for these this summer by the looks of things. This is a real disappointment after such a great start. We'll have to plant these later in the year when the temps are better regulated and hopefully when we get some steady rains.

The purple hull peas (cowpeas): They're amazing. Planted at the same time as the snaps, and even at later dates for some of the rows, they're heads and shoulders bigger than the snap bean plants, are a vigorous deep green, and are as hardy as all get-out. They've taken the same limited waterings as the snaps, but utilized the water better and really managed to handle the drought amazingly. There are no flowers on them yet, so we're not sure we planted at the right time of year (will they set flowers so they can produce?)...but they're lush and we've tested the leaves at the young stage for cooking greens, and they are simply delicious! We'll see if they produce a crop of cowpeas or not...if so, we have another winner. If we had livestock, it would be a double winner, cowpeas or no, because it's evident the plants are lush enough to use as fodder or to dry for hay.

There are only a few other plants we have growing just now that seem to be heat and drought-hardy. These are :
1. The moringa seedlings
2. Papaya seedlings
3. Malangas
4. Yerba Buena (in part shade)
5. Thai jujube tree
6. The baby guava trees
7. Two small lime and one lemon tree starts.
8. Cranberry hibiscus (edible)...let's see if they make it...
9. The okra
10. The gardenias
11. The brush cherry. No pests seen on this at all, and it survived all the freezes.

The two small fig trees in pots are surviving this year due to our clustering the containers of trees together (not with the citrus, though), and they have a lot of fruit developing now.

We went ahead and put the citrus in the ground finally...it's too stressful keeping them contained and not knowing what our final timeframe for relocation is. So in the ground they went, and seem to be doing well even having been transplanted during this weather. We keep them well watered. The key limes, however, were wimpy in the pots and still look wan after transplanting, so we're not really sure how they'll end up doing.

We were hoping to have some actual food being harvested by now from some of our efforts, namely the snap beans. The ones in pots produced a few, but are stressed from the heat. The ones in the bean patch I already commented on above, and it looks like the harvest will be negligible.

A lot of Floridians skip the summer as far as growing things, for these very reasons...heat and drought. Or depending on location, heat and monsoon :) When we visited the ECHO test gardens, they have plants growing smack in the middle of the hottest summer months, and we have yet to test many of those. Tepary beans, madagascar beans, and winged beans are some that come to mind. We actually have many of these sitting ready for planting, but we haven't started them yet.

We're down to one vehicle now, to share between two commutes and separate jobs however possible. This is a recent development, and a challenge. We're also down to fewer gardening hours with the changing work schedules, and very sporadic watering. One emphasis at the moment is to get all our present plants situated well, either in-ground, sited for better heat endurance, or some cleanup of the tired experimental subjects we've been playing with but are not thriving.

We need to be growing more actual food. We're not set up with some of the things we need, and so we're still in the semi-experimental stages. Which drives me crazy when I just want some tomatoes and peppers. But it's where we are presently. I suppose learning what does NOT work for us is helping us in the long run.

I do have to say that the eighty degree temps were pretty enjoyable until the mercury rose to the nineties. I'm not a happy outdoor person in the mid and high nineties, no matter how much some want to romanticize gardening. But seeing some plants thrive despite the oven-like temps still does my heart good.

The coffee trees are probably a wash...they look really bad since those freezes and have never bounced back.

I have a fanciful notion of trying to find some wild plum seedlings...I've always loved the way the air smells when plums are ripe and fallen on the ground.

That's all for now...I feel like I have nothing exciting to report. It's hot....HOT. And so very dry. It's at this point all nostalgia for living without AC vanishes entirely (y'know, those fancies of living in the log cabin with only a wood stove??), and I kiss my thermostat. My job requires me to work in unairconditioned environs, and after my shift I'm entirely physically wrung out. The range is 86-94 degrees at night where I work, and after that shift, I feel like I've been wrung out like a wet washrag.

Oh yeah...and I love ice. It's my affordable luxury. I pour myself some tea or water, and watch the icy tears of condensation weep down the glass...and I sigh happily as my garden bakes and we all pray for rain...again.

Officially, or not, summer's here with a vengeance.

Rain, Rain...Stay!

It was hot, hot today! And then we finally, FINALLY, got some rain. For two hours.
That's two more hours than we've had for most of the year so far, so it's time to celebrate!
Cornbread started out the soul food fare...

Greens picked from the garden fresh today...purple hull leaves and calabaza (pumpkin) leaves cut in a chiffonade (ribbons) and boiled like turnip greens. It was our first time trying them cooked like this, since we usually sauteed them. They tasted great...milder than collards or kale or chard, even. Perfect with the cornbread, mmm. They nestled next to some homecooked red beans and a small slice of tender roast beef.

It all went down goooooood :)
This was for later...Jack works tonight. I miss him even before he has to leave. We take whatever time we have for a date. Today's date was warm homemade berry cobbler with cold milk. And lots of kisses :)
We love the sound of thunder. The plants were still dripping when the brief storm let up.
Liquid gold...
I love how the rain beads on the leaf surfaces. These thirsty guys got a well-deserved drink.
This is part of the snap bean and purple hull patch. It's a sprint to see if we can keep the Bermuda out long enough for them to bear.
Here's more evidence of the chase...layering old straw and hay and wheelbarrows-full of old barn manure, and yet the Bermuda skips merrily along.
Marking off a new calabaza sprout with some stick debris and willow whips, to keep our friendly neighbor from accidentally dumping a load or two of stall cleanings atop the little guy.

I hope you had a great weekend! Ours was wonderful. I was with my best friend/beloved and mix in some outdoor sunshine/sunburn and a surprise thunderstorm, and it's my favorite kind of day. The cornbread, good eats, and cobbler didn't hurt, either :)

How was yours?

First fistful of Roma green beans ready for the picking! These were from the initial ones I tested growing in buckets. We'll be planting all our snap beans in-ground from now on when possible...about a third have not thrived in the buckets.

Baby moringa, grown from seed. So far, we have several of them thriving. This is a fast-growing and very useful tree good for human food and animal fodder. We hope to see it grow at least 8 to 10 feet this year. It'll go into the ground as soon as it's big enough. This is a plant we hope to keep a big patch of in order to harvest the fast-growing limbs for many purposes.

One wayward calabaza seed next to the compost bin sprouts into a glorious riot of variegated leaves and saffron blooms. We saw blooms and were wondering if any of them were being pollinated. It's sited near the swale that's overgrown with cattails. The drought this year means there's no standing water, but still it's slightly moist down there. We think we're getting pollinators from that area, though we've seen no honeybees around.
Hello, beautiful! These blooms can be eaten at a particular stage (we haven't tried that yet), and so can the leaves (cooked for greens). A peek beneath the vines found that many blooms have traded in the ruffled yellow petticoat for fertility's sake. There are a lot of little calabazas plumping up under there!


One such baby. Who will get to eat it first...the rabid bugs and ever-present pests of Florida, or us? Only time will tell! Maybe our stunning technique of "weed therapy" will keep the bad guys occupied? (crazy little laugh...ahem...oh how the Bermuda grass is making my life one big weed-battling duel, sorry!) :) I'm beginning to think that the subtropics down here are in a sense one big stomach, and anything on or in the ground eventually will get digested..and that it's just a matter of time to see if a harvest results, before it all returns to mulch again! ;-)
This week, on Survivor...here is a small shoot emerging from the freeze-killed Mamey Sapote (fruit tree) we were growing from seed last year. Grow, baby, grow!

Out at the cowpea patch, one area is doing great and another area is becoming engulfed with invasive Bermuda grass (what else??). The Bermuda lurks under all the other natural grasses around here, barely ever showing its face...UNTIL...one starts watering a garden. Then it calls all its friends, and in a single evening it begins having the sort of garden party it does no good to call the cops to break up. Ah. Well. My Fordhook limas are so glutted with Bermuda, it would kill them to begin (again) pulling it all up. Same thing with the okra...so it's a dead heat to see which (if any) of these will win by a nose...weeds, or plants? If the okra can get some height soon, maybe it'll stand a chance. The limas? Hmmm. The good news is that all the purple hulls and blue lake snap beans are at present SOMEWHAT under control (from the weeds). But they're there. I just keep smothering them time and again with straw, hay, mulch, stable cleanings. Until this crop has produced, there is no hope of turning the soil since it's simply a very very thick layer of composted stable cleanings. Sure, let's go with calling this "no-till," but "no-till" is looking messier than I like at this point.

Oh, the learning curve.

Hey, we're leaning in to the curve...the ride's fun! :)

How grows your weed patch?

Learning Curve

(The gynura plants rise like the phoenix from total decimation in our past freezes...they're all coming back, hooray!! And now let's see if alllll the other brown and crunchy things get the hint and follow suit...)

I've decided plants love to be in the ground. Yes, they'll grow just fine in pots (or buckets!). But I second the motion that my own plants seem to crave being anchored deeply in terra firma.

The thing is, they want those juicy worms, teeming things, microbes, volunteer seeds from elsewhere...they want nutrition and warmth and diversity from the ground up (at least that's my opinion just now).

With pots, we have to add many of those things from the top down, and yep, they'll do fine. But I've been noticing where they LOVE to be, and for most of them, they just look happy in-ground. So I'm trying to pass on some in-ground love to my container plants till they can be permanently sited in a home of their own where they can stretch and multiply to their hearts' content.

Here's how the potted things are adding up so far:

1. I learned I planted all the leafy greens way too close together in the "salad bar bins." The mustards are rugged and prolific, but crowded, and ditto for all the others. The lettuces seem to the ones that are more content with that living situation, but I still needed to sow the seeds much MUCH farther apart. Lesson learned. The radishes never produced because of the crowding, but the radish seeds Jack tossed onto hard ground where he's digging around on the lot next door...THEY were not overcrowded and are developing right on TOP of the ground, using their tap roots to mine for nourishment, and they are stinking hardy! Another lesson learned.

2. I need to nourish the container plants more. They don't get nourishment from anywhere else. We're doing some mixed plantings, of necessity. I pulled a lot of the overcrowded greens (they were stunted after their last "haircut") and let them lie atop the soil, and under planted them (sparsely!) with Roma bush green beans. I also did this for all the dead papaya plants in buckets and the crunchy shrubs in bins that we're not sure about surviving the freezes. I sowed some cleome here and there. We'll be making some manure tea and comfrey tea quite soon to feed the container plants with.

3. Sunflowers are hardy! They've hung in there and the one next to the horseradish seems unusually happy. I wonder if it's the combination, or the site? I'll keep an eye on it. If it turns out sunflowers love horseradish, that'll be an unusual future planting combination on a larger scale...

4. I hate to say this. It's not a complaint...it's just what it is... I am tired of buckets. I'm ready for a sprawling section of green things and some beauty, and the buckets are not beautiful. They are, however, functional. I'll deal with it a while longer, but this impermanence of our own living situation will I hope give way this year to a permanent plan. We're simply not spending another penny on anything, and that includes gardening. The same goes with our time. Work and time together take precedence. Maybe I'm getting too old to be wonderwoman!

Ok, time to make do with what we have and get some of these wonderful seeds going. I'm sowing radishes here and there around unsuspecting plants and bushes since they grow better for me with some neglect than they do with a lot of pampering. We hope to put in a good-sized patch of bush beans (green beans and Romas) tomorrow, given the time and weather. We'll experiment with putting lines of topsoil right on top of the spread manure/woodchips, planting along those lines and hoping they do well...we have no way of turning it into the hardpan other than by hand just now, and we lack the time and brawn for it at present...so let's see if the alternative works. Ah, experiments!

...and so go the babes in the hay as they continue to experience the learning curves and crave their own square 'o dirt...

Update

1. Vanna, I'll Take a Clue for 500:
The stress/cleansing herbs and the acai berry supplement were used for three days, Friday through Sunday. I had been feeling progressively worse up to that point, which is why I purchased them. It may have saved me from a hospital trip. I cut back to salads and lean meat or eggs, lemon in water for drinks, and herbal tea. I slept Friday night through Saturday noon a sleep I haven't slept in years...YEARS.

I'll boil down the rest. Making this complete halt and reversal in eating and in adding these herbs saved my bacon (haha, yeah, I know...not your typical Jewish turn of phrase). My body had a crisis over the weekend, which at first I thought was onset flu, maybe as part of the typical "healing crisis" I have when cleansing the yuck. I took more lemon juice and water, kept the liquids coming, but good gosh, I slept almost three days...um, yeah true confession. I simply felt so terrible that's all I could do...NOT normal! (I did manage to read through a 750 page Tom Clancy book during intervals, though, and have some vivid dreams) I lay there thinking "I want chickens, dogs, (continue the list for a few minutes...)...but I don't even feel like walking to the mailbox." Not my greatest moment.

Day Three was yesterday and when I tried to get outside to transplant a few baby plants and run to the library (for more Tom Clancy fix), I felt like crawling back under the covers and willing the world to disappear. At this point, my husband decided this was NOT a normal healing crisis, and we whipped out the blood tester to see my sugar levels. They were off the charts. Which leads me to conclude that they were at least double that three days ago and if I hadn't altered things radically at that point (SO glad I did!) I could be in the hospital right now, or worse.

I've halted the cleansing program till after my sugars normalize, but am keeping the foods really simple and will continue with lots of lemon and water. I'll pick right back up with the supplements when I've had normal readings a few days, since I did really like the benefits and want to see what they do for me in the long term.

And so, my little Lesson to Self is "Robbyn, lay off the stinkin' tortillas, babe!" (banging my head on the keyboard...oh how I love to eat Mexican) Nah, it's not just one thing, but it has been a gradual progression of things, and in the vein of "eating cheap" I've been including more and more starches in my meals...to stretch the meals. Well....crud. No more. And that's my little story. I'm not all the way back, but I'm not engaging in 14 hour sleeps any more, either...sheesh!

2. The little rock/crystal deodorant thingy I also bought at the health food store as a deodorant experiment ACTUALLY works! and yes, I'm constitutionally wired to give it a run for its money, but hey...no chemicals (especially aluminum) and NO STINK...yay!! That said, it's not an antiperspirant, so if I had to dress-to-impress, it wouldn't be a full solution in these hot climes. But since I don't have to impress anyone (meaning I can endure some sweating), I'll use this since it really does deal with the underarm-odor situation ...and hey, I was a Mitchum girl, Mitchum being the last line of defense for those with overtime underarms.

3. Some of the plants are coming back! The gynura is one of them. I spied two more nasturtiums peeping out from the soil, and I'm transplanting some of the lettuces under the dry brown crispy foliage of the plants that became toast in the freezes, in hopes they'll get chummy, shade the lettuces somewhat till maybe they decide to stage a comeback.

4. We've been talking ferro cement and papercrete, chicken houses, clothesline, drip irrigation, plotting sections of our garden. Still chipping away at all the niggling details of bills and getting out of debt.

5. My housework's abominably behind. The hired help never showed up. <------(hahaha, laughing at this till I hurt) The elves apparently are on extended leave, too...

6. I realized when horizontal for so long, it's been a long time since we had a vacation of any sort (read "stay-cation"). Work right now is much appreciated, though it takes us away from having much time with each other. I'd love a vacation where I'm feeling more "myself" and we can get a breath of fresh air. But for now, the thing is to stay steady. There is a momentum we need to sustain before we can relax it.

7. I need to take care of more 'puter duties and....that's all for now. I think I'll go wash a dish or two. Or three. And so on. Rome wasn't built in a day...

;-)

Health, Purity, and When Does the Maturity Kick In?

I've been feeling overall worse the past few months, and it's my own fault.

Last year during Jack's mom's hospice stays, I succumbed to frequenting the Diet Coke machines for those really cold "good burn" cans of Diet Coke, even though truth be told I'm not crazy about the flavor. But the cold and the burn was soooo good in the middle of all that parade of pureed food (Mima's), hospital smells, and sacks of cold take-out food.

I didn't do so well getting off that little treat once things settled back down and I was back home. It manifested in liters of root beer, Vernor's ginger ale, and more root beer, though we kept the kombucha going and always drink a lot of water. But I really didn't need that many "treats," and they eased their way into my grocery cart a lot more than they should have. (My own fault)

I also tried to get us off breads and empty starches so much, and have done so-so at that. I'm pretty happy most of our breads have been those I've made, but cheap sandwich bread has sneaked back in more and more.

And then recently, I just felt BAD..probably fighting off the creeping crud everyone in town seems to have to a greater degree than we have. I noticed my emotions hitting a bit harder than usual, cravings I don't usually have making their appearance, and my work schedule at night creating an unnatural cycle for my sleeping...which also impacted my eating.

I'm not a Diet person...never will be. But I do believe in objectively meditating on (not in the eastern sense per se) the habits I have from time to time, to examine just where I stand. In short, in the past few months I've begun to feel very unhealthy.

Some things are long term projects and some are short term. Short term, I can make some very important steps to return to better health:
1. Completely avoid aspartame and any other synthetic sweetener, in anything (meaning the diet drinks...I don't use artificial sweetners in anything else) I actually like most drinks unsweet, and if I need a sweet fix, I can use a tad of Xylitol (natural)
2. I've overloaded the proportion of my eating with red meats and taste substitutes. It's hard to be honest about this, but flavorings are chock full of preservatives and I've eaten stuff with those flavor enhancers all up in them. We've also been eating a lot of red meat. For myself, I need it now and then but to beef up (ha, pun!) more on my dark greens for those B vitamin fixes.
3. I've overloaded my body with large portion sizes. This also happened gradually...I'm not a snacker, so it mostly happens at mealtime...which is why I've not gained weight. But I feel like my system is overloaded. It needs some lightness.
4. I've made poor "fast food" choices when it comes to eating at work. I've actually bought and eaten pure old Seven-11 junk food, and last week ate Ramen noodles (yes with those awful preservative-flavor packets) nearly every night...no matter how bad they made me feel!! I was hormonal then, so I won't beat myself up about it, but the solution lies in never buying the stuff in the first place...I know better and know how it makes me feel, but ignored my better wisdom I know not why. Rebellion maybe? Well, it didn't end up making my world better. Better to have one or two fantastic pieces of real chocolate next time than carb-o-gazillion empty starches. Ugh!
5. Dramatically ramp down the fungus-loving foods...processed sugars, and much of the bread. I'll have to always watch the quantity of things like bread since I just like them so much. I have a hunch what with my diabetes and all,the anti-fungal connection is something I need to pay much more attention to, and make the very simple and satisfying substitutions that make my body unfriendly to a proliferation of things like candida, and other "fungus stuff"...meaning all the foods that feed disease rather than defending against it.
6. Ramp UP the probiotics...mature kombucha will be our main thing for this. We love it but have drunk less of it because I havent made as much of it as I was...but that's changing now.
7. Yerba buena. We're going to use it daily in our tea...it just has so many benefits and does so well in the climate, we need to use it! and it's delicious.


Thankfully, our modest pantry and freezer stock of staples has been a lifesaver..it really makes those trips to the store so much less expensive and it just doesn't take much to eat right...except eating right!! :)

I don't spend time beating myself up, and I've been thinking of what my body seems to be crying out for. I was delighted today on payday to be able to get a few things from the health food store to that end...

1. Women's Hormone-supportive herbal tea blend. I think that will ease a lot of the triggers I'm feeling as far as cravings
2. An affordable 10-day Stress Cleansing kit (herbs to address stress and cortisol, gentle cleansing herbs to get my system reset from the overload of yuck
3. Acai berry capsules -- for support, wide range of benefits, and I want to try it to see how it does with my body as I cleanse

I'm going to do a gentle cleanse, drink the hormone-support tea each day, and take the acai berry for additional support, while eating only small meals that are fish or lean chicken, dark greens and salads, water with lemon, plain water, or kombucha. I think that may help me to get back on my feet and understand how to fine tune my health a bit.

It's time for the mature part of me to put some constructive limits on the throw-all-care-to-the-wind part of me. Ultimately, I need to lose all my weight and see if I can ditch this diabetes once and for all. THAT would put a lot of things right in my world :)

I'm very aware of the purity of foods, too, and this is a longer term target area...namely GMO foods. It's said that 70% of foods are full of GMOs and are unlabeled to that effect. That makes me furious, frankly. So I'm becoming aware of the foods most often genetically modified (not meaning hybrids but meaning DNA tampering by the likes of Monsanto)....these are corn, soy, sugar, and canola...and I'm not sure what else yet. But soy and corn (think HFCS and other sweeteners) are in SO many foods...for instance, try buying a salad dressing that doesn't have soy or canola in it...nearly impossible. And think of what your food ATE...meaning cows, chickens, etc...was their primary diet corn, soy, things with hormones/chemicals/pesticides? They are what they eat...and we are what we eat when we eat them.

The other purity issue is preservatives. Since we're not buying much in the way of processed foods ( yeah, I know...Ramen noodles, in the trash you go!), this is not as much an issue, but it's still sneaky. To purchase a package of chicken breasts, you have to read the fine print...what was injected into them? Ah, a solution....?? (what sort of a solution, blehh) Was it packaged in plastic? Sprayed with something to preserve its color, freshness, keep from spoiling? Chemicals.

We have not been able to eliminate chemicals entirely...yet. We don't buy solely organic. I don't care what anyone says, we can't afford it. Yet. We're working towards that. First, to simplify our spoiled tastes and our habit of instant gratification, and our habit of overeating. This week's shopping trip brought home a couple small cabbages, some lettuces, celery, some grape tomatoes, one small pack asparagus, a pack of chicken breasts, 9 lemons, and a lot of clean drinking water (we have sulfur stinky water here).

That'll do us well...we have beans, turkey, staples like basmati rice & such, a couple calabazas and that Musquee Aux Provence we haven't cut into yet, along with the last quantity cooking I did a couple days ago (spaghetti sauce w/lots of herbs & a bit of rigatoni) to round things out.

I'm VERY happy to be working from a pantry-based list rather than a store-based one! I'm also really happy about fasting from heavy meals and going to salads and a lot of water and support herbs to get back on track.

Vitamin D? It's time to get outside and soak up some sun puttering among the seedlings! And then get some more much-needed sleep....ah, gotta love shabbat and that "enforced" day of rest, wooo! :)

Hope you have a lovely night and weekend!

Shabbat shalom from our family to yours :)

Remembering...Games

My post today on Not Dabbling in Normal is a rambly bit about games remembered...the sort requiring no assembly, batteries, joystick, or wall plug.

As an update to my post a few days ago, we never found the kitchen noise culprit, but I did observe my overgrown goldfish wiggling the hard plastic casing that houses the bubble stone, and it would tap the side of the tank. Just when I thought for SURE that must have been what I heard the other day, I heard another noise that put me in doubt again...so...we'll see. Arggh, the suspense!

The weather here has turned suddenly quite cold for this area, and I was under the weather the last few days. I haven't assembled the laundry soap yet, though I have the ingredients (the bars of soap need grating and all that), and I've done no more kitchen projects. I did, however, shovel and rake the entire two trailerloads of horse poo/woodshavings into a large-ish square shape about 8 to 10" deep. When it warms, we'll start with that as the location for testing some warm weather crops...when we have warm weather!

We've both been working a lot, and this morning I'm jet-lagged from spending time yesterday out and about with my daughter (instead of sleeping) and then working all night. Wow, you know you're getting old when you begin looking FORWARD to going to sleep again, ha :)

Watched The Bucket List last night and cried my eyes out. That, just on the heels of watching the Joe Black movie with Jack the night before. Any other movies that ensue are going to have to be less meaningful and maudlin, or I'll be a mess ;-)

We chip, chip, chip away in the blue collar way at our debt, debt, debt. Just had to say it again, because instead of tons of progress on fabulous handmade items or homesteady undertakings, it's our biggest contribution of time and effort. We're sort of on autopilot that way right now. And with that occupation, it makes for a lot of pre-occupation where normally I'd be having a nice creative flow and some mental synapse fun. Ah, well...I'll have to be boring a bit, I suppose, and just keep getting my jollies seeing another credit card be retired as paid in full, one at a time, thanks to Jack's oversight and both of our participation and time. Right now, just having time with him when we're not having overlapping schedules is the nicest treat, when we can catch those moments! We're very thankful to have the work...

OK, my eyes are crossing...time for some (always weird in the daytime) beauty sleep. Hope everyone is havinga great day, and for those of you in the path of the big cold system, I hope you're snug and warm!

Shall return soon...

Robbyn :)

Little Changes, Self Cleaning Ovens that Can't, and What's Making Noise in My Kitchen??

It's time to move the furniture around again...

and let's see how I do or don't like the new web palette and graphics. The header's from a favorite pic of a peacock that I played with in the photo program a bit.

It's been a long week, and we're both tired and soooo glad to be together again tonight. I'm refreshing a few things in the house and getting some simple food together before we crash -- I want to have everything nice when Jack gets off work.

I've heard something lurking in the kitchen...or pantry...or...somewhere. It sounds bigger than a beetle. Maybe a mouse? If so, it's a first.

But I can deal with a mouse.

But if it's a snake, you can find me back in Tennessee, and making the commute from Florida to there in record time. We have a lot of choices of unwanted visitors here in Florida, and insects or mice I can deal with. But snakes...BELONG OUTSIDE.

Maybe it's a bunny? A possum? (I know, here we go, I'm in total denial) A raccoon? (nah, I know what they sound like, with that little "chirrrrrr" sound) A little lost kitten??

This means only one thing...spring cleaning must commence. But not till "It" has been found.

This means the stove must be unplugged, carted outside, plugged into an extension cord, and put on Self Clean till it's pristine on the inside. Why? (What do you mean, isn't this how EVERYone cleans their ovens?? haha!)

Well a certain SOMEone who helped (term loosely interpreted) when selecting the oven for this house, decided to buy a self-cleaning oven. Normally, that would be delightful, and handy. Normal meaning if you have a full wall, not a half wall. Or 3/4 wall or whatever it's called when you have a wall that doesn't go all the way to the ceiling because it's supposed to help make the area look open so it only goes up to about 2 feet from the ceiling, for decorative purposes. Therefore, if you put an OVEN on that wall, you cannot VENT it through the wall upwards through the ceiling (unless you want the pipe to show). So you get this vent thingy that circulates the oven air through the vent thingy that goes right over your stovetop, through a carbon filter. HOWEVER, do not test the limits of the carbon filter-thingy by trying to vent an entire self-cleaning oven cycle of fumes through it. It will not like it, and will protest by filling your house with roiling clouds of acrid smoke you will only brave long enough to turn the oven OFF and run like heck with a towel over your face to the great outdoors, kicking yourself all along that you forgot all about the fact it DOESNT VENT THROUGH THE ROOF like NORMAL ovens.

And you ponder the mysteries and ironies of life, such as the fact that it's commonly supposed that if you just went ahead and cleaned the inside of your self-cleaning oven the CONVENTIONAL way (by hand) it supposedly is bad for self-cleaning ovens and "ruins them."

And THAT is why you can choose to baffle and amaze your neighbors by running an extension cord to the driveway and getting a dolly and maneuvering your self-cleaning oven out for all to see, in full view, AND call the fire department to let them know not to worry if they happen to get any strange calls about somebody's oven sitting in front of a house smoking for about an hour.

Better yet, maybe I can charge admission...? :)

I dare not think of what lurks under that stove. I am now approaching the kitchen to find whatever lurks. No worries...I'm armed with a broom and one of Jack's steel-toed work boots. I hope it's a runaway kitten, lost puppy, a hamster making The Incredible Journey, or just my goldfish having learned how to throw gravel against his fish bowl.

Because if it's something slithery, or a palmetto bug that thinks it's a pony.....Tennessee, here I come!!

5 Minute-A-Day Bread: First Try

Sweet success...this bread, I love! 5 Minute-a-Day Bread, I love you! Jeff Hertberg and Zoe Francois, authors of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, I love you, and now I shall go and buy your book!

You see, I found so much mention of this great and easy bread all over blogs and the internet, it was inevitable and I had to try it...finally. The "Artisan" part was a hook, but the real clincher was the "5 Minutes."

But the "No Knead" was what initially threw me off...

You see, I have a confession to make. It's sorry, lame, and ugly, but here it is...
I never liked No Knead Bread. I had a BBNKE (Bad, bad no-knead experience), and it took me a while to recover. I must beg humble apologies of Jim Lahey, the mastermind of the No Knead phenomenon.

Yes, I'm talking the dummy-proof bread that nearly every American now makes in their dutch ovens with, of course, no prior kneading.

I tried it, and it was a catastrophic flop. It's all my own fault...I must have done something wrong. And because I immediately moved on to loaf breads in search of the Great American Farm Bread Loaf, I never went back to try to correct my dismal failure.

And I do mean dismal. (Unless you're in the market for a reallllyyyy effective doorstop) I mean, you don't want to have to go register every time you want to bake bread, but the loaf I managed to turn out when trying the No Knead Bread should have required a license to handle...it was surely a deadly weapon.

Anyway, I'll return to the No Knead someday, and give it a better try. Till then, I'll be using this 5 Minute-a-Day bread because it actually seems to be Robbyn-proof...and it turned out to be delicious :)

You can access the basic boule recipe at the link above, and it's only 4 ingredients long...yeast, kosher salt, flour, water. You mix it in a roomy container and then cover. After an initial rise you can go ahead and cook with it or store it in the fridge for later access for up to two weeks. I've done this with cookie dough before, and really enjoy having stash of dough ready to scoop and pop into the oven when needed. With this bread dough, it only needs a 40 minute rise and into the oven it goes!

It's nice that there's no kneading necessary...everything's mixed with a spoon till fully incorporated. In fact, this is a fairly wet dough.

It took me a minute to get the hang of it, but you have to cut off a grapefruit-sized lump and form it into a ball, which is easy. The only tricky part was that it needs a good pile of flour and some floury hands to plop it into so the surface can be formed lightly without sticking all to your hands. Or you'll find your fingers stuck together in some breadmaker's version of the Swamp Thing... Above is a picture of the dough lightly formed into ball (boule) shape, and liberally dusted with flour. It's perched atop a generous layer of cornmeal, on an upside-down cookie sheet, my southern girl substitute for a pizza peel. While this rises, you have a baking stone preheating in a 450F oven on the middle rack, and you situate the bottom part of a broiler pan on the bottom rack. When it's risen 40 minutes, you slash the top of the dough ball a few times with a serrated knife, about 1/4" deep, to allow for expansion during cooking. Then you try to gracefully slide the whole unit onto the heated peel. Then you put a cupful of hot tap water into the broiler pan and quickly close the oven door on the whole shebang so that the bread crust will have its own nice little sauna as it bakes to a crispy exterior, and wonderful soft, lofty interior.

I had to remove the baking stone from the oven (with oven mitts), onto the stovetop (since I didn't want my raw dough to plop accidentally somewhere off-target in the maw of my very hot oven) before going further, then tilt my cookie sheet while getting a little momentum going via a metal spatula...and then the dough slid pretty well onto the baking stone. And into the oven it went to cook for 30 minutes. Here's the finished product, yay!!

And then it went on to do its disappearing act...

...only I think my hips just discovered where it went ;-)

For anyone who's followed my blog for a while, we had to make a big cutback in the amount of bread and flour we eat on a daily basis. We've done pretty well at that.

I have noticed that there are times we were buying a loaf of bread here and there at the supermarket to use for sandwiches, toast, etc on a limited basis. Even though our consumption of flour has gone way down, I wasn't pleased to be paying store prices even sporadically for something as basic as bread, that's so easy to make at home for so much less cost. Plus, there are no preservatives when I make it myself.

So this is what we're doing. I'm glad to have a recipe now that I can make as needed and store in the fridge in the interim. That's what we do with our kombucha (we bottle some for the fridge and store the rest at room temp), and it works very well for us. I'm delighted to find this versatile bread, and I'll pass it down to my daughter and anyone who's not likely to begin with a bread that needs kneading. I'll still make a good farm loaf now and then, but I'm delighted that this one will fill the bill for pizza dough, breadsticks, sandwiches, and pita...so very easily.

Yum! :)