A Season of Plenty

Feelin' thankful... and granola.

Money, one way or another, is causing everyone (myself very included) some aches and pains these days... How do we cope?

Well, first of all, take a look at Tracie's Happy Garden... it feeds so many with sweat equity. And yesterday, when I picked Silas up from school- he demanded fried green tomatos as his after school snack... Tracie hooked me up with a greenie turning yellow one- and it was AWESOME. If you want to learn more about natural ways of eating and living (read FREE) then read Tracie's monthly publication: Agrarian Urbanite. Also, you can always joint the Knoxville Permaculture Guild- its fun!

And I am also a fan of the guerilla gardeners out there who just put food into the world. Jon planted some maters in ditches in the hood, and I have some friends who shall not be named who have a GIGANTIC GUERILLA GARDEN on an empty lot in the hood.

And guerilla gardens allow us to scavenge, to forage... Much like wild blackberries (which make the bestest bestest cobblers and jellies- and tons of them are on the way to Seven Islands) and wild persimmons, which I can eat till I am sick, I scavenged some pears from a Fourth and Gill Street Corner yesterday. (14 pears to be exact).

The tree is a huge, old fashioned, baking pears tree. (I don't know the pear species, but suffice it to say that the pears are the kind your grandma grew, crisp and hearty and so sweet that they make your hands sticky, nothing like the smooshy ones in the grocery...) The tree is so ignored, that its branches are bending from the weight of the fruit, near breaking. Pears cover the street and the sidewalk beneath it, and there are so many people around just ignoring this gift from nature. .. So I accepted the gift thankfully.

I'm going to make pear preserves, and baked pears, and gift the pears, and plant one of the seeds in my yard. How beautiful life is, even without money...

A Kerfuffle of Confusing Parentheticals

Silas harvested the first food that he has ever grown from seed on Friday. He was so proud of his cabbage; he started the seed in science lab at school. Although the outer leaves had been annihilated by slugs (Tracie told me to put ground eggshells around her, but alas, I was a day late and a dollar short for Ms. Cabbage to go unscathed. Slugs love my yard.) In the meantime, Stella felt pretty proud of herself Friday when she found my lettuce patch.



She has dug herself a dustbathing hole and spoils herself by eating my lettuces as she bathes. I don't mind, they're all going to seed at the moment, and I don't believe that she's able to eat ALL the seeds. I'm going to collect them.





She's so full of herself. What a spoiled little girl. Stella's pretty smart; she even knows her name now.

By the way, I am a total fan of Earthfare. Silas never complains when we get groceries there (he just eats eats eats free samples) and there are NO Oreos for him to ask for. They buy as much as they can locally, and their corporate headquarters are in Asheville. They donate proceeds to charities, invited Beardsley Farm, the Cherokee Nation, etc. to their grand opening week, and well, their cheese selection makes me get the vapors... I may never have to go to Fellini Kroger again!

So, EarthFare and Twwly Suicide inspired me to attempt to make my own yogurt and cheese. (That and the fact that the sugary yogurts in the grocery taste more like jello; they have done away with the "tang") EarthFare, because they have the necessary bacteria and Twwly because she blogs blogs blogs about her cheeses (and her kids, and her family, and her tattoos, and her natural living choices). (I have followed Twwly's blog for some time; read it!)




This is my first ever ever cheese attempt and it turned out pretty good. (That's Tammy's desk and elbow behind there...) The flavor was like a tangy cream cheese with the consistency of goat cheese (which I love!). I'm going to find some goat's milk next, because I think I can successfully make my own goat cheese which is stupid expensive at the grocer. Of course, first I had to make yogurt...



Once we had all eaten our fill of the yogurt, I was left with curds and whey, which I drained through a coffee filter in my fruit sieve. It drained for about two hours and then was solid. I did not save the whey (although its packed with nutrition) because I had no idea how to incorporate it into our food. Must work on this later...




You can see the massive amount of whey that was left once we had dipped out the bulk of the yogurt. Tammy and I had ours with blueberries and granola; Silas had his with mangos and cinnamon. NO SUGAR ADDED.



I love this sieve. My grandma had one EXACTLY like it, and I found this one at the junk store across from my old office. I think I gave two bucks for it, and so far this year it has been used to make rose and peony jelly, and now cheese. Blackberries next!

By the way, I prefer wild blackberries. I think the flavor is more intense than the "tame" (read:gigantic thornless) ones, and the seeds are the size of grains of sand rather than bb's. I like to leave seeds in for cobbler and jams. Because of this, I am always keeping an eye out for wild blackberry patches and have found two. The first is on the way to Seven Islands; the roadsides are covered. The second is in the most unexpected of places; the far parkinglot of Splash Country is SURROUNDED by massive blackberry patches.

Woot!