Full Sun Farm CSA First Week!

When I wrote in Monday's post that I was hoping for greens from my first box from Full Sun Farm, I could not have anticipated this bounty:



Here's what we got:

Oak Leaf Lettuce, 1 head
Spinach, 1/2 lb.
Rainbow Chard, 1 bunch
Green Kale, 1 bunch
Green Onions, 1 bunch
Bok Choy
Strawberries, 1 pint
Cornmeal, 1 1/2 lbs.

Strawberries! Already?! How is it possible? I had to sit on my other hand while I was driving home so as not to eat the whole pint before my husband and son could have some.

This is the first year (this is my 4th year with this farm) that the farmers are offering cornmeal they milled themselves and I am altering my menu plan tonight to include this delicious recipe for cornbread.

1/2 cup rye flour (whole wheat flour is okay too)

1/2 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk (or regular milk, or yogurt)
3 tbsp vegetable oil or butter, melted
1/2 cup molasses
2 whole eggs or 3 egg whites
3/4 cup raisins, chopped dates, or currants

Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour a bread pan. Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl; whisk the wet ingredients in a second bowl. Pour wet ingredients into the dry and stir quickly to combine. Stir in the fruits. Transfer to the prepared bread pan and bake for 45 minutes. Let stand for 15 minutes in pan before turning out onto a rack or serving.

I am in heaven! I'd love to hear that you are also enjoying some SOLE (sustainable, organic, local and ethical) food! Please share what you have in your CSA box or what you're hoping to find at your local farmers' market this week!

This post is also my contribution to Fight Back Fridays found at the wonderful Food Renegade.

What's Cooking 5.11-5.17

Our first week in the CSA starts this week (I am SO excited!) so I will probably change up my vegetable side dishes/salads by the end of the week. Judging by what our farm (special shout out to the wonderful folks of Full Sun Farm!) offered at the Farmers' Market on Saturday I think we can count on baby bok choy, kale, green leaf lettuce and radishes. I'll let you know on Wednesday how it turns out!

I bought 2 bunches of kale when I was there because I know we always use it up - usually in my morning vegetable/fruit juice. And I bought 7 tomato and 4 lettuce starter plants. I may be forgetting something but the total came to $20 even.

At Amazing Savings I bought 4 cucumber seedlings ($1.49) and the bulk of our groceries for $48.46. At Green Life, another of our pricey whole food shops, I bought 4 basil starter plants ($2.99) and 6 other items for $17.14.

Including the trip to the Farmers' Market, my grand total for the week is $85.60. I think that is great considering the total includes a bunch of plants that will be providing us with the most sustainable, organic, local and ethically produced (if you don't mind a little child labor) vegetables that can be found in these parts. :)


Here's what we're eating this week:

Monday:
Curried Vegetable Saute
Brown Rice

Tuesday: (I'm back in the hospital for a 24-hour shift.)
Leftovers

Wednesday:
Grilled Tofu Steaks with Veggie Kabobs
Brown Rice

Thursday:
Banana and Black Bean Empanadas
Stir-fried Spinach and Garlic

Friday:
Pizza with homemade crust and sauce
Roasted Peppers and Pepperoni
Green Salad

Saturday:
Very Easy Vegetarian Sloppy Joes
Homemade Whole Wheat Buns
Sweet Potato Oven "Fries"
Green Salad

Sunday:
Broccoli-Potato Strata
Spinach Salad

A Very Happy Mother's Day

Even before I became a mother, Mother's Day has meant something important to me: Time to plant my vegetable garden!

Conventional wisdom in the mountains of Western North Carolina is that a hard frost could happen up to this very day, and I have learned the hard way (snow and ice in late April wrecking havoc on my tender blueberry blossoms!) to respect this wisdom.

Yesterday my son and I went to the Farmers' Market to buy seedlings for our garden. Of course I wanted tomatoes galore and we chose many new-to-us varieties based mainly on their delightful names - Mountain Magic (a red slicer, known to be disease-resistant and prolific), Sungold (our one repeat because we all love them so much - they are small and golden and so sweet my son calls them "chocolate 'matoes"), Taxi (bright yellow), Orange Glow (also promising to be hearty and productive and don't they sound like they will be a lovely color?), and Green Zebra (bright green and striped).

We also got some lettuce seedlings and lots of marigolds. I'm hoping to find more greens (spinach, kale and chard) and cucumber starts at the market this Wednesday, but if I can't, I can still start from seed and be all set. (Did you catch that: I'll be at the market this Wednesday to pick up our first CSA box! Hooray!)

This morning my son got decked out in his gardener's garb and we made quick work of the planting.



It is such a happy thing to see all the little plants in their new home.

This week I am rejoicing in being a mama: nurturing young life is a profound joy.

Food Waste for the Week

This was another challenging week: my husband was gone for a couple of days to attend a funeral (for his 95+ year-old grandmother - so it was a lovely celebration of a wonderful life) and came home with a stomach flu. That meant he wasn't able to help as much with left-overs at the beginning of the week.

Fortunately he recovered fully and set about helping me eliminate food waste. Today we both finished off less-than-exciting split pea dahl and brown rice for lunch.

But that still left some food that even I was unwilling to eat: 3 whole wheat pancakes (requested for lunch by our son on his birthday) and a small portion of the oven "fries" from dinner on Wednesday night.

He promised to eat the pancakes for dessert tonight and plans to make a Spanish-style torta (an omelet with potatoes) for breakfast tomorrow.

So if you look up the word "trooper" in the dictionary you should see a picture of my husband.

The Birth Necklace

My son was born 4 years ago today. Before he was born most of my dearest friends were able to gather for my Blessingway - a ceremony to celebrate and honor my becoming a mother.

I treasured having so many amazing and wonderful women with me that day, all of them mothers or beloved aunties.

One of my favorite parts of the gathering was the assembly of my birth necklace. All of my friends chose beads that symbolized their hopes for me. We strung the beads together to form a beautiful necklace and testament to our friendship.

In this picture one of my friends shows me the bead she chose and explains its meaning.



And here I am wearing the completed necklace.


I put the necklace on as soon as I realized I was in labor. I wore it during the entire labor and through the birth of my son. I felt the connection to all those amazing women and I know it nurtured and sustained me through the most challenging and joyous time of my life.


I now keep the necklace in a place of honor in my room where I see it often. I always wear it during the celebration of my son's birth.


We all have such full lives now: Even if we don't get to see each other as much as I'd like, I am immensely grateful that I still share an incredible bond with the women who blessed my way to motherhood.

My friend who is featured in the first picture is in the one below, too. She came to my son's party on Saturday with her son - the child I caught in my hands as her midwife 10 years ago.

What's Cooking 5.4-5.10

Crunchy Chicken's Sustainable Food Challenge is officially over but I found it easy to stick to its principles again this week. I was a bit short on time so I only went to our pricey whole foods market and I may have forgotten something in my haste (but I don't think so). I spent a total of $74.18.



Here's what were eating this week:

Monday:
Middle Eastern Lentil-Bulgur Loaf
Green Salad

Tuesday: Cinco de Mayo Fiesta con las Chicas!

My girlfriends are coming over. (It's kind of a celebration of my son's birth - you gotta celebrate the mama, too! - and an excuse to drink some of the leftover Mexican beer from my son's birthday party Saturday.) My husband will take our son out for a boys' night in honor of his birthday - the restaurant and movie of his choice. (We will also take him for a picnic lunch at a park with a lake and sandy beach - he's been asking to make sand castles at the beach for a while.)

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Burritos
Green Salad
Chips, Salsa and Guacamole
Beer with Lime

Wednesday:
Grilled Portobello Po' Boys
Homemade Whole Wheat Rolls
Oven "Fries"
Green Salad

Thursday:
Bow-tie Pasta
with Broccoli, Garbanzo Beans and Kalamata Olives

Friday:
Pizza (with homemade dough and sauce)
Roasted Peppers and Pepperoni
Spinach Salad

Saturday:
Curried Lentil Soup
Homemade Whole Wheat Rolls
Spinach Salad

Sunday:
Whole Wheat Pancakes
Turkey Sausages
Grapefruit

First Olympiad Birthday Party!

Ah, four years! Stellar athletes spend 4 years to become an Olympian and my son spent the last 4 years to become...himself. And he is quite stellar in his own right.

Yesterday we celebrated his birthday and it was a glorious event. My son was born on May 5th - Cinco de Mayo - so we always have a Mexican-themed fiesta the first Saturday of the month of May.

Every year it rains. I remember this upset me quite a bit for his first birthday party.

Around the time of his second birthday I learned of the Law of Attraction and used the "energy flows where attention goes" principle to my advantage for his second birthday party. I looked for what I wanted to see (happy children) and not what I didn't.

Last year it rained in the morning but then cleared and was sunny and beautiful by the time his third birthday party started in the late afternoon.

This year it rained all day, but it didn't phase me a bit. I *knew* it was going to be a great day with a wonderful party and it was!

I have lots of pictures to tell the story (and more should be coming in a few days from my dad's and sister-in-law's cameras):

Me and my little Olympian:

Me and my mom.
Me and my dad.

Every morning I ask my son if he remembers any of his dreams. For quite a while he has been saying, "I dream that Grammy and Papa give me the big Optimus Prime Transformer." (Thank you, YouTube!) Well, that long-awaited day finally arrived!
Thank you, Grammy and Papa, for making a little boy's dream come true! (And p.s., this morning he said, "I dream that Grammy and Papa give me the Bulkhead Transformer.")

Luckily we have a large wrap-around covered porch so we put all the tables and chairs for dining on one side and created a kids' play area on the other side. My sister-in-law is a genius and created a game that everyone loved: She cut a swim noodle into 5 pieces to create bats, blew up a balloon and let the kids at it. Such a cool (and thrifty!) idea and the kids LOVED it.

The kids - especially mine - REALLY loved this game!

Even when the balloon popped (look in upper-right corner) he was delighted. (And luckily, Aunt B. had a whole bag of them so we got right back to playing again.)


It was so wonderful to have Doug's sister and her family with us!

And then - the Taqueria Truck arrived! Folks place their order for exactly what they want and go back as much as they want. The food is incredible. My dad got pictures (and I hope to post them as soon as he sends them) of me with the owner, Wily, inside the truck - with a kitchen - it is so amazing! I want it in my driveway every weekend!


This is what I love to see at my parties - people who are happy and sated.




We have so many wonderful friends of all ages. Here we are with our next-door neighbor who just celebrated her 14th birthday. I asked her dad if he thought 4 or 14 year-olds were more challenging and he joked that they just keep turning up the heat in the pot, but you don't even notice.

Here's my tip for a kids' party on a rainy day: buy bright yellow balloons - instant sunshine!

Remember Olga of Olga's Desserts?


Here's the cake she made for the party!


It was the largest cake she had ever made and she was worried. She needn't have - it was SO delicious! Everyone LOVED it!



It's not a real fiesta until you get a piece of that pinata!








Everyone had such a wonderful time. It was so fabulous. I've already received emails from folks saying they are counting down the days till the next fiesta and I'm with them.

Some others may need a little more time to recover. After everyone left, and I cleaned up, I went to check on my boys. I found this picture :
This week I am rejoicing in my son and our family and friends that love and celebrate him!