In The Garden

It is totally cool to be able to toddle into the backyard and come back with dinner. THAT'S food security.

It seemed like it took forever for the tomatoes to set fruit. Now, the plants are loaded with fruits. I've been harvesting paste tomatoes for a while now, but no slicers. Yesterday I spied my first Cherokee Purple nearing ripeness (not pictured here). Woohoo! (Next year: blow off school and get the garden in on time!)

I've started planting the fall garden. This is broccoli. I have more to put in, but nowhere to plant it! Time to expand the garden again.

It will be a race to the finish to see if the melons have time to ripen. I was feeling pretty confident until today, when I noticed some kind of borer damage in the melon patch. Go melons, go!

These Echinacea have had a hard summer. Something has been eating the petals. This was actually the first time I saw them more with petals than without since I planted them in late spring.

Cozy Mystery Challenge Update

Knowing that I would have little to no time to read for pleasure come September, I jumped right into reading for this challenge. I've completed five of the six books so far- and enjoyed every minute of it!

All five books I've read have been by the same author, and from the same series. This is Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mystery series. All the books in this series are set in and around the cozy, if somewhat murder-prone, fictional village of Three Pines, Quebec, Canada. The first book in this series, Still Life, was Penny's debut novel. It was a strong start.

In all five books, Penny displays a great knack for describing the complexities of human feelings and motivations. She deftly illustrates how an individual can be both wonderfully good and startlingly bad. And she wraps these descriptions up in a package gilded with descriptions of scenes that paint a lifelike and charming picture of the fictional Three Pines community. I don't want to tell you what happens, or even tell you too much about the characters (and boy are they characters!). Suffice it to say that I think if you pick up Penny's books you will be pleasantly surprised. My only caveat is that I recommend starting at the beginning of the series in order to avoid prematurely learning things from books that occurred earlier in the series. In order, the series is:
Still Life
A Fatal Grace (US title)/Dead Cold
The Cruelest Month
A Rule Against Murder (US title)/The Murder Stone
The Brutal Telling

And, a sixth book, titled Bury Your Dead, is set to be released September 28. That's not quite enough time for me to finish the challenge, so I'll have to pick up a sixth book elsewhere (and my local library system just put out a list of recommended cozies- how convenient!). But I will definitely be looking for The Brutal Telling later this fall. For more info on the Cozy Mystery Challenge, click the bookshelf to the right in the sidebar.

Reinventing The Wheel

It's been a while since I've posted here. Life has been busy. And complicated. And challenging. I've started multiple blog posts, only to not quite be able to pull my thoughts together. Just too much happening all at once in my mind. Sometimes that's just how it goes.

On the up side, I've seen compelling evidence of the difference resulting from the dietary changes we've made, and that even The Boy, who has fought these changes at almost every step, is starting to appreciate the difference in how he feels- at least when he stops eating this way. That's worth a lot. And it's part of what pushed me over the edge to tackle another, long neglected, food goal. Tonight's dinner preparation was the first of the kids' cooking lessons.

Sometime back toward the beginning of this journey, the reality of my own spectacular lack of training in the "kitchen arts" sank in. It was an overwhelming realization to confront while also trying to radically change the totality of one's dietary habits. But it also made me cognizant of the need to prepare my children better than I had been prepared. Yet, being at the beginning of that journey myself left me frustrated and not ready to tackle teaching anyone else. The goal was shelved until recently.

I'm still learning how to cook with real ingredients rather than short-cut ingredients that are convenient but packed with stuff we shouldn't actually eat. I still get frustrated in the kitchen on a fairly regular basis. And, sadly, I still botch meals on a fairly regular basis. Fortunately, I have learned that thats's one of the lessons the kids need to learn- that developing cooking skills takes time. It takes trials and, inevitably, errors.

I had been getting frustrated with the restrictions on what I could prepare- not only from my own lack of knowledge, but due to the kids "won't eat" lists. And I had grown tired of complaints when things didn't go as planned in dinner preparation.

Finally, this combination of circumstances came together to push me to just jump in where I am and let the kids learn first hand the trials and tribulations of feeding your family. I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel. I know the knowledge to manage a kitchen well and prepare tasty wholesome foods is out there. I'm still working on tracking it down. But that's okay. We can learn together- and they can avoid waking up when they're pushing forty and realizing they don't know how to appropriately feed their bodies. It'll be an adventure. The kids will gain a useful skill. I'll gain a few nights off from cooking duty. And hopefully we'll all gain greater appreciation for each others efforts. Wish us luck on this new journey- we're going to need it!

How about you- have you taught your kids to cook? Do you have any tips to share?

This post is participating in Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.

Giveaway Winner!

Well, we have a giveaway winner! The winner was drawn old-school in order to accommodate entries that combined, for example, a comment and following in one comment submission. Each entry was written on a slip of paper. All entry slips were combined in a bag and then mixed and shaken. Finally, one slip was drawn at random. I'd like to thank everyone who entered Please Be edible's first giveaway. This was fun!

The winner of the $60 CSN Stores gift certificate is Debbie C! Debbie C, your email address has been forwarded to CSN Stores and you should receive your prize via email before too long. Enjoy!

Cozy Mystery Challenge

This is completely unrelated to food and gardening... But Su-sieee! Mac recently blogged about belatedly joining in the 2010 Cozy Mystery Challenge and it looked like so much fun I had to join in too. Briefly, a cozy mystery is a mystery sans naughty language, sex scenes, and gore and often involves an amateur sleuth. You can follow the bookshelf link to the right (looks just like the pic above) for more info, a fantastic book list, and the opportunity to join in too!

Homicide In The Garden

That's the title of the post I intended to write today. It was going to be a double homicide. And I was going to perpetrate it. In the end, though, I just couldn't go through with it. I hope the two near-victims appreciate the reprieve. More than that, I hope they redeem themselves; but I'm not holding my breath.

You see, last year was the first year I tried the much celebrated Sungold tomatoes. They produced well but, like most of last year's tomatoes, tasted watery because it rained all freaking summer last year (except the time I was away which was crazy hot and bone dry and, naturally, did in much of the garden. *sigh*). This year, I gave the Sungolds another chance. It's been a tense relationship from the start. They have severe B.O.

I tried to ignore it. I tried to be sympathetic. I hoped it would go away and be replaced by that lovely normal tomato smell. It didn't. It got worse. The other day when I touched one of the Sungold plants it made my hands reek. When I came inside, The Girl actually recoiled from the smell... after I had washed my hands twice. The relationship just seems headed down a dead end road. Even with the new garden bed, space is at a premium in my food plot. Everybody needs to pull their own weight and, I now realize, not offend the gardener.

But I couldn't pull them out. I haven't given them a fair trial. I would just be wrong.

So, I'll check freecycle for someone giving away hazmat gear and walk wide circles around this variety. I won't grow them again next year. And I'll no doubt spend an inordinate amount of time wondering what nutter of a plant breeder thought it would be cool to introduce to home gardens tomato plants that cause gardeners to smell like roadkill with a side of toxic waste.

Please also see Would You Eat This? I'm so curious to know!

Would You Eat This?

Paula Crossfield over at Civil Eats recently posted an interview with Daniel Imhoff, discussing his new book The CAFO Reader. If you don't follow "food news," CAFO refers to Confined Animal Feeding Operations. It's an interesting interview and I encourage you to read it. However, at one point, Imhoff states "Ultimately where we’re going now is in-vitro meat, where we don’t need animals at all, we just clone tissue, and manufacture animal flesh." I've been thinking about this for several days and I'm curious... would you eat this?