June 28, 2010

The First Post!

Vegan starts in 3 days. I've been vegetarian for almost a month, and have had no problems with that, but all of my "practice" vegan days have been derailed by cheese! I am sure gonna miss cheese.

Anyway.... I've been preparing for the switch slowly and with lots of excitement... Talking to vegan friends, reading voraciously, stocking up on foods and books and recipes.
From Costco: big bag of flax seed meal, big bag quinoa, 5 lbs of short grain brown rice.
Bulk: Whole flax seeds (they dont grind for shit!), azuki beans, black eyed peas, wild rice, nutritional yeast and more.
Books: The Kind Diet (where I began this whole crazy trip), the Vegan Gourmet, Vegan Baking. I've been bookmarking websites like mad as well!

I've also got the local Farmer's Market schedule memorized (Sat, Wed and Thurs, depending on which part of town), and tons of plans for veggie broths, soups, and baked goods. I'm so excited!


My other excitement comes from my garden. This is the first time since I've lived with my parents that I've been able to plant a really real garden, and I'm relishing it! I share it with Jacob, and neither of us can get enough! We've done as much as we could out of free and found materials so we have tires, and found wood beds, homemade bamboo trellises, and nursery cast-off pots; we're also into homesteading so we have compost, lots of patio plants growing up the trellises, and plans for chickens and ducks to use as pest control.

We've gone a little crazy with the amount of produce we have planted, I'll admit, but I have so many plans for preserving and improvised root-cellaring and baking that I feel like we can handle any amount of food!
So far we have planted: zucchini (yellow and green), oriental cucumbers, russet and red and blue potatoes (in tires), lavender, an orange tree, chamomile, yellow pear tomatoes, green zebra cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, spinach, peas, bush beans (yellow and dragon tongue which is purple and white!), radishes, lettuce (two mixes) pickling cucumber, lemon cucumber, walla-walla onions, strawberries, mint and rosemary! (Wow until I typed all that maybe I didn't realize how much we had!)

We've also got plans for corn, carrots, butternut squash, and who knows what else that will strike our fancy! For Christmas I got a water-bath canner from Jacob's mom, and my fabulous hippie-in-her-heart aunt is bartering baked goods for a pressure canner! Which means I can preserve the excesses of our bounty, and give a bunch away to family this year at X-mas (it's a family reunion year, so I'll need a LOT to give.)

The major problem we've run into is those nasty slugs and earwigs.... They're attacking relentlessly, we've lost several squash plants and some herbs and every single carrot that sprouted! Thankfully we got an extra long roll of copper tape, so we will hopefully get the carrot bed cleared and do another seeding as soon as the sun comes out again.

Time to put bread in the oven. I'll get some sort of pictures going and share my newest, possibly greatest bread discovery next time.

2 comments:

  1. I have your slug solution... Come steal my neighbor's chickens!!! PLEASE?!?!

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  2. You are so brilliant! Who knew that giving you a book would put you on this track!

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